When the temperature of our hometown of Tempe, Arizona recently hit 118 degrees, my wife had an inspired idea:
“Let’s get out of here.”
One of the benefits of being writers is the ability to work from anywhere. Two days later, we were standing on a hotel balcony overlooking a marina in deliciously cool San Diego CA.
I spent the following morning exploring the Japanese Friendship Garden in nearby Balboa Park. I was entranced. The winding footpaths. Gentle waterfalls. Koi ponds filled with large, colorful fish. A meandering stream crossed by a gracefully arching footbridge. Quiet fountains formed of bamboo and stone. I sat on a shaded bench and marveled at the exquisite marriage of raw nature and artful landscaping. I left the garden feeling deeply content, like my emotional tank had been filled to the brim.
When we arrived back in Arizona, I sought out our local Japanese Friendship Garden. Nestled in the heart of downtown Phoenix, this surprisingly charming oasis is available to all who seek respite from the bustle of city life. In almost fifteen years of living in the area, this was my first visit. Why had it taken me so long?
It’s so easy to be caught in a mindless routine, putting my head down and churning through endless tasks, appointments, and responsibilities. My trips to these gardens reminded me that seeking life-giving serenity requires intentional choices. I’ll be more mindful in the future.
So how about you? Does your emotional tank need refilling? Does dipping your toes in a pool of serenity sound delightful? Make some time. Seek out a garden, a park, a trail, a museum, a quiet wood. Press pause on your to do list and just be. If you do, you’ll come away refreshed, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
It’s not as morbid as is sounds. I’m not depressed or unhappy. While I’m in a creative lull waiting for feedback on my latest book, I’ve decided to tackle some projects I’d been putting off. A few of them made me face my own mortality. Rather than shy away, I’m trying to lean in, putting things in place that will make my inevitable passing easier for those I leave behind while giving me peace of mind now.
1. REVIEWING OUR LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES
Besides the blazing Phoenix heat, something my wife Lisa and I dislike about summer is the handful of life and disability insurance policy bills that come due. In reviewing them recently, we realized that our most expensive policy was no longer necessary. As empty nesters in our early fifties, our life situation has changed enough from when we established the policy that we could let it go. Reminding myself of how much coverage we had and when each policy is due to lapse also gave me reassurance that we were prepared for the future.
2. REVIEWING OUR FAMILY TRUST
Nine years ago, we hired an estate attorney to help us establish a Family Trust. It’s a legal document that spells out what we want to happen to our financial and material assets when we die, along with guardianship instructions for our children. Having a Trust in place will make settling our estate much easier for our beneficiaries, in all likelihood our kids. Not only does it clearly describe our wishes, it allow our assets to be distributed without going through probate, the mandatory court process that normally kicks in when someone dies.
In the last nine years, our situation has changed dramatically. Both kids are married, established in their careers, and great money managers. The safeguards we had in place for the doling out of our financial assets to them no longer made sense. I contacted our estate attorney and am now bringing our Trust up to date. Our attorney realized that when I refinanced the mortgage on one of our rental properties a few years ago, I inadvertently removed it from the Trust, a mistake he is now fixing. This process is a gift we’re giving our kids now that they will greatly appreciate when we’re gone.
3. REVIEWING OUR WILLS AND ADVANCED HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVES
Similar to a Trust, a will can state how you want your assets distributed after you die. It is simpler, but unlike a Trust, it has to go through probate. We have ours as a document nested inside our Trust. A quick review of our wills showed that they were still good to go, as were our living wills, a type of advanced health care directive. I made sure these still reflected our wishes regarding what medical care we do and do not want in the event that we cannot speak for ourselves due to accident or illness. It’s reassuring to know that we will receive the care we desire if that situation arises. Also, we’re taking the devastating burden of making those types of decisions off the shoulders of our loved ones.
So how about you? Have you thought about your own death in a healthy, proactive way lately? If you’re feeling guilty or overwhelmed right now, relax. Take a deep breath. You’re not alone, and this is not as hard as it sounds. A few relatively simple steps can go a LONG way toward you giving this incredible gift of preparedness to yourself and your loved ones:
1. Review your life and disability insurance policies.
Most people are covered for disability by social security. A quick check of your online social security account can confirm that for you. In most cases, simple term life insurance policies are relatively inexpensive and easy to set up. You can shop online for competitive rates. If you want advice in figuring out how much you need, it’s worth talking to an expert. In most cases, you don’t have to pay for it, as life insurance salespeople are paid by the company they help you establish a policy with. Obviously, it’s important to choose someone trustworthy with experience and good online reviews.
2. Consider establishing a Family Trust.
This is a more intensive process and requires an estate planning attorney, but it covers all your bases and is an inclusive option. Your attorney will help you prepare your will and advanced health care directive at the same time, so you can wrap up all your estate planning needs at once. They also help you think through things would never occur to you on your own. Again, an online search for a highly recommended estate attorney is a great first step. If you work with an accountant or other financial professional, they may have someone they can recommend.
3. Make (or review) your will and advanced health care directive.
If you decide not to create a Trust, these are very important but relatively simple documents to prepare. Using an attorney is obviously the most comprehensive route, but there are relatively inexpensive online options as well. legalzoom.com is a well know and highly rated website that has low cost forms you can fill out yourself, and they have lawyers on call to answer any questions.
4. Make a simple “upon my death” sheet.
On it, write the location of and access info for important documents like your Trust and will. List your financial accounts (bank and retirement) and life insurance policies, along with the names and contact info of any financial or insurance professionals you work with and the people you’d like to be told of your passing.
Whatever steps you choose to take, make sure you share them with your loved ones. Show them where you keep important documents or give them copies where appropriate. Estate planning can be a daunting task. Take it one step at a time. Schedule yourself one small task a week. Before you know it, you’ll be sleeping easier and feeling the joy of having given your loved ones an incredible gift. And you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
When we are no longer able to change a situation . . . we are challenged to change ourselves.
Viktor Frankl, Auschwitz prison camp surviver, psychiatrist and author (1905-1997)
Sometimes it’s not the words, but the person who says them.
The above quote is compelling on its own but takes on a much deeper level of meaning when we know the story behind it. As an inmate at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl was subjected to horrors most of us can’t even imagine. Yet as he reflected on that experience, Frankl found hope and valuable insight into the human condition:
“The experiences of camp life show that humanity does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Humanity can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the people who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. . . .”
In later years, Frankl came to mentor Edith Eger, a fellow Auschwitz survivor. Edith was sixteen when her parents were killed on their first day at the concentration camp. Frankl’s work was a catalyst for her becoming a therapist and aided in her own healing. She wrote honestly about her personal journey:
“The choice to accept myself as I am: human, imperfect. And the choice to be responsible for my own happiness. To forgive my flaws and reclaim my innocence. To stop asking why I deserved to survive. To function as well as I can, to commit myself to serve others, to do everything in my power to honor my parents, to see to it that they did not die in vain. To do my best, in my limited capacity, so future generations don’t experience what I did. To be useful, to be used up, to survive and to thrive so I can use every moment to make the world a better place. And to finally, finally stop running from the past. To do everything possible to redeem it, and then let it go. I can make the choice that all of us can make. I can’t ever change the past. But there is a life I can save: It is mine. The one I am living right now, this precious moment. . . .
And to the vast campus of death that consumed my parents and so very many others, to the classroom of horror that still had something sacred to teach me about how to live—that I was victimized but I’m not a victim, that I was hurt but not broken, that the soul never dies, that meaning and purpose can come from deep in the heart of what hurts us the most—I utter my final words. Goodbye, I say. And, Thank you. Thank you for life, and for the ability to finally accept the life that is.”
I can add very little to such powerful words. I simply encourage you to sit with them, let them speak to you, and embrace their truth in your own way. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.
This post was based on Richard Rohr’s Daily Mediations from The Center for Action and Contemplation, May 19 & 20, 2021 www.cac.org
Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon Press: 1959, 2006), 65-57, 112.
Edith Eva Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (Scribner: 2017), 155, 156, 232, 233.
