Twenty-Nine

It has become an annual tradition (with myself, and I do suppose with all of you) to share my birthday reflections. I must say, this year, both the day itself and the reflection has snuck up on me.

Soooo.

29.

Hello there.

29:

The atomic number of copper

The number of days in a lunar month

The track from which the Chattanooga Choo Choo train departs in the Glenn Miller song.

Saturn's number of years to orbit around the Sun

 29 is a Markov,  Perrin, and Størmer number.

A beautiful prime number (technically the tenth prime number, a twin prime pair with thirty-one, the sixth Sophie Germain prime, a Lucas prime, a Pell prime, a Pillai prime, the 10th supersingular prime, and an Eisenstein prime!) Plus a tetranacci number. YO. 

The number of letters in the Turkish, Finnish, Swedish, Faroese, Danish and Norwegian alphabets.

"$29.00" - A on the album Blue Valentine by Tom Waits.

AND, the iiiiiiiiinfamous N-29 night bus that got me home so MANY a time from Central London all the way north to Wood Green. 

*

You know, every seven years we have a complete new body of cells-- our bodies are literally fully transformed, our cells completely turned over, a complete body chemistry change and a need for unfolding. Twenty-nine is the first step in external integration with the rest of the world. 
It is a cycle. 
It does not come to "get you." 
It comes to present you with an opportunity.

And every age has special things to be known, understood, and worked with. There is no time in your life that does not have validity.

This year I know I actually felt my cells turning over--every single one of them. My mind, my body, my outlook, my spirit, has been transformed. As I stand here, a new body, a new self, I also realize that for the last 20 years or so, I have been in "survival" mode: frankly, using achievement and a driving sense of life purpose to keep away pain and fear.

I am no longer surviving. This year (through particularly uncomfortably difficult inner work), I healed those wounds. I am moving into a phase of life where I can expect more than survival. I can choose to thrive. To build a positive life, throw light along the dark and unknown tunnel of the future full of the knowledge that there is nothing to fear that I have not already met, seen and conquered.

...That is the best birthday gift of all.
To look ahead with such extraordinary inner peace...
              and excitement.