by Judy Merrill

Created on: October 03, 2007

Each decade of life is defined as focused on material as well as spiritual awareness. In our 20s, as an example, we are busy setting our focus on career and job sites. We are trying to fit into the pattern of the modern business world and find our place in it to progress.

By our 30s we have entrenched all ideas we have been aware of through our lives to this point. We solidify these ideas to the point of closed minded thinking.

Through the 20s and 30s is building time for families as well. We are marrying and fitting into the societal pattern of couples with or without children.

By our 40s we find so much freedom in thought and life, when the struggles are no longer so vital and the family allows us to be ourselves in all that we pursue. We then find the time and energy (after all, we are still young) to begin whole new careers and whole new spiritual ideas.

We are free to explore ourselves. That is the journey there just wasn't time to take during the busy career and family building times of earlier decades. Responsibilities are changing. We find we are no longer needed in the same way. We are free to take up our own interests and find our path through life with spirituality. We are truly starting anew.

By the 50s we are busy building our new life. We are busy understanding our own self in all its manifestations. Spirituality is so much more important than the materialism of the earlier decades. After all, you can't take it with you!

If we consider the present generations, we find that they were colored by wars, depressions and recessions that cost us our financial security as well as peace of mind. There was a need to open to spirituality in so many ways to give the world our view of peace.

These events have strengthened the current generations in these decade markers. It has produced a firm awareness that we can be as strong as human existence and as weak as our reliance on a higher power. That higher power has defined our lives. And we are stronger for its presence.

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