What these two books taught me about living my own life
Lately I have been reading two very different books, Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf and The Seeker and the Sage by Brigid Delaney, and they have landed in the same place for me. Both of them ask the question, what is mine to carry and what have I taken on that was never mine in the first place?
Haruf’s story of Addie and Louis shows how complicated life can remain, even in your seventies. They reach for companionship and connection yet family demands and old loyalties still shape what they can do. Their courage is quiet, and their freedom is always conditional. It reminded me that age does not cut the ties of obligation. It only changes them.
Reading that alongside The Seeker and the Sage made something else caught my attention. My life is my own. I don’t have responsibility for anyone except my garden, my cat and my chooks. I can choose how I spend my energy. I can choose what I carry.
I also know myself well enough to understand the part that needs some refining. I am a fixer. I see what needs mending and I step in with everything I have. My intentions are good, but sometimes I go too far. I pour in energy, time, clarity and effort, and when the response does not match the investment I can feel undervalued. That is where bitterness creeps in, and I am not interested in giving bitterness any space in my life.
What these two books have shown me is that this is not a flaw in my character. It is a calibration problem. I can still be a truth teller, still be someone who cares deeply about justice and fairness, without exhausting myself. I can match my effort to the invitation. I can offer support without taking on the whole load. I can say the wise thing and then step back, knowing the outcome belongs to the person who asked for help, not to me.
Both books reminded me that freedom is not only about independence. It is also about boundaries, about choosing where my energy goes, and about protecting the parts of myself that make me generous and steady.
I felt the need to put this journal entry into the world because these books held up a mirror and I recognised myself clearly for the first time in a long while. There is something grounding about naming a pattern out loud, something steadying about saying this is who I am and this is what I am working on. I think I shared it because many people my age feel the same tension between caring deeply and carrying too much, between wanting to help and feeling worn down by the weight of it. Putting it into words makes it real, and offering it publicly feels like an invitation for others to breathe out and say yes, that is me too.
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