For life to begin at 40, what needs to end at 39?

I turn 40 in a couple of weeks on Sunday 1^st of May, 2011.

I concede I am struggling within myself at accepting it as real.

Hear me out first before you dismiss me as not being in touch with reality.

The main aspect of the intra-personality conflict is that I have ‘nothing’ to show for it on the material front. I am guilty of violating the 12345 by 40 rule: 1 wife, 2 children, 3 bedroom house, a 4 wheel drive and a 5 acre plot.

Now, popular talk that age is nothing but a number or that there will hardly be any difference on my birthday than on the day before is still not helping matters.

On the spiritual front, however, I am a content man. I do, if I may say so, have a gratifying sense of accomplishment.  I am grateful for the process and investment it has taken to be where I am in my journey. I can safely acknowledge that I have no one in my book to whom I have any claims of any sort. I hold no grudge and it is indeed a freeing place to be in.

Nonetheless, I have not arrived. Spiritual growth is an ongoing work in process.

So, that leaves me with me to contend with…a long standing struggle to forgive myself of a past riddled with alcoholism, incomplete projects, aborted start-ups, economic stagnation, deep loneliness and unhealthy relationships.

The conflict is that forgiving myself means I am letting myself off the hook. I am intellectually aware that nothing less than letting go of the past in its entirety is what I am being called to do. But in my heart, the sense of self-condemnation runs deep and the conversation is that I need to pay in full for my past sins and, that, preferably before I turn 40.

Now, how do I do that in only a couple of weeks and live?

Stoning myself has never been worse.

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