The Next Stage of Life?

Back in December when I was contemplating ways to make significant transformations in my life, I posted the following note on my office wall:

Make some change - get rid of something to signify putting things behind you and moving forward.

I struggled with this idea for a while, looking for something perhaps only symbolic, or perhaps more substantive, that I could put behind me to signify moving forward into a new stage of life. Mozart changed his middle name when he got married, which may have been his way of signifying a rebirth or new phase of his life. What change should I consider making?

Ironically, that note on my office wall foreshadowed the involuntary event of being laid off 2 months later. I guess I finally have my answer. For me, this may well become a new distinct “4th stage” of my life. The first stage was my childhood in my parents home. The second stage was my life in college. The third stage was raising a family and a 26 year career at IBM. Now I may well be entering a fourth stage with a new career and focus. As a friend recently told me, consider this opportunity to be a great gift to be exploited in the fullest.

With that in mind, I wanted to share an inspirational quote from Mary Oliver's poem When Death Comes that our minister recently shared with us:

When it's over, I don't want to
wonder if I have made of my life
something particular,
and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing
and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply
having visited this world.

Perhaps making this an end of my "just visiting this world" phases is a good way to look at my new opportunities.