It looked to me like he was plummeting to earth before the orange chute opened, but he said he was flying. My partner/husband/friend/companion/accomplice could not stop smiling as he told me about his skydive.

He has also recently managed to stand up on a surf board. His “bucketlist” is getting shorter. Another thing ticked off his list was to build a new house.

Visit Paris –yes. Climb Uluru – yes. Visit Machu Pichu – not yet. Visit Paris again – not yet! I don’t like the notion of the “bucket list” and prefer to think of my life as a colourful palette. Each day we create what we will. Sometimes it can be a muddy mess while at other times it is so beautiful beyond all expectation.

I have felt like I was falling – my life changes so total I have struggled to find my feet. This morning I realised I am flying not falling. The typical morning-mind complaints rattled around in my brain, whinging about the injustice of having to get up early to drive to the rural airport; when a scene so unique and beautiful stopped me and made me realise how lucky I was to  be out of bed early after all.

I was driving through patches of fog as morning light illuminated the countryside in soft pastel stripes of pink, blue and grey. The pastures lit up in vivid green and the white wind turbines turned their man-made symmetry in slow motion above the fog. It was a jewel of a day, so lovely and precious that I felt lucky and privileged and snapped out of my morning fug. Indeed I was lucky to be alive. I thought about stopping and taking a photo but I knew this could not be captured within the confines of a small digital image.

And that got me thinking about how my life has changed in so many ways. I recall wanting change and now every day is different and new. I had lifted myself out of the stagnant predictable sameness that it was, into a fresh, vibrant, challenging, rewarding and creative experience. We (my husband and I) pushed the boundaries and expanded our life experience to be fuller and richer.

Last night I was in a small country town hall at a public meeting listening to locals talk about their town. Today (in an unrelated matter) I enjoyed fine dining in The Melbourne Room of the Melbourne Town Hall then just three hours later I am in the plane banking over Discovery Bay looking down on an emu racing back into the pine forest.

Maybe the meditation is having an effect, allowing me to be quick to appreciate life more often. The power of mindfulness.

We are Fifty and Flying not Falling.