Just What Have You Accomplished?

I got this email today.

And I answered it.

And I realized that I hadn’t written an answer, I’d written a testament to my life.

So I thought I’d just post it here as good practice for speaking my truth.

The email was sent in response to my latest newsletter, which referenced my 50th birthday. And it said…

Dear Dixie:

So just what have you accomplished in the first third of your life?

Or is it a midway point…with BONUS years on the end.

I hit “reply” and started typing. And when I came up for air this is what was on the screen…

I have lived, I have loved, and I have learned.

And I have shared my life, my love, and my learning with people who are near and dear, and with people I will never know.

For someone who intended to die at 15, who tried to harden her heart against love because she associated it too often with pain, and who thought that all learning came from those more educated than herself – I think those count as accomplishments.

Today, my lifetime as a separate carbon life form dates 50 years and 3 days. It might span a total of 50 years and 4 days, it might continue for another 50 years and 4 days. I don’t know. And truly I don’t consider it important. What is important is that I continue to live, love and learn.

And that I do those things in my way so that others can see that their way is always open to them.

So I believe that I will count this enough – no matter how long I live, or what deeds I do, or what wealth I accumulate – that I lived and loved and learned in my own fashion and released all that I am into the universal stream so that it might never die.

And that is all. My truth. That without that email, I might never have known that I knew.

Who says all learning comes from education?