What My 50s Taught Me About Dharma
As I near my 60s, I’ve been reflecting a great deal on what the past decade has revealed. My 50s were not a tidy or linear journey. They were full of questions, doubts, and a persistent longing to live my deepest truth. Even before I had the language for it, I was searching for something more authentic, something that aligned with my true essence. That search put me on a path I now recognize as dharma.
It wasn’t until my mid-50s that I learned what dharma really means. For much of my life, I thought “purpose” was about what you do—the right career, the right role, the external achievement or contribution that would prove I was worth something. But dharma reframed everything because it isn’t about proving, performing, or producing. Dharma is about alignment—living in harmony with your deepest truth and allowing your life to reflect the essence of who you are.
I’ve learned that dharma is not a straight line from here to there. Dharma shifts and evolves with you. As you step toward your dharma, it unfurls. It compels you to move closer to it by feeling into ease and flow then hitting the sweet spot of deeper alignment. It also changes over time—sometimes in subtle shifts and sometimes in dramatic breakthroughs. And now with the perspective of decades as an adult, I can trace the winding thread of my dharma not only through the past 10 years but throughout my lifetime.
Looking back, I see so clearly how my natural interests, my strengths, and the things people have always come to me for is “the right stuff” that makes up my dharma—the building blocks and guiding lights I didn’t always recognize because they were so natural to me that I took them for granted. Until one day, I realized it was all right there, under my nose, so close I couldn’t see it.
It reminds me of Dorothy and her companions in The Wizard of Oz, each of them searching for what they already carried inside: a heart, a brain, courage, and home. I feel a bit like Dorothy at the end of the story, waking up to the familiar faces of loved ones and realizing with new eyes what was always there. I see my dharma like that. It’s a longtime, familiar friend that now appears as a golden thread woven through the tapestry of my whole life, patiently waiting for me to recognize it without question.
This past decade has taught me to pay attention to this unfolding, to trust utterly in the trail underfoot as it reveals itself step by step, even when I can’t see where it leads. But I’m no longer concerned with searching. Instead, I’m more devoted to embodying my dharma in the present moment.
This next decade of mine is not about hiding or hustling. I’m leaving that behind. (Thanks for your service.) This next decade is about radiating a conscious field of presence rooted in dharma. If my 50s were about discovering dharma, my 60s are about “doing it full out,” as Stephen Cope teaches us in The Great Work of Your Life. Goodbye apologies. Goodbye hesitation. Goodbye to the younger me who shied down when she would have rather shown up. Because when I show up whole, I offer something of value—whether or not it’s recognized, whether or not it’s perfect, whether or not it’s what others expect. I know now that alignment itself is service.
When I am aligned, I naturally ripple presence, integrity, and love into the spaces I inhabit. And that ripple touches others in ways I may never understand. I’m walking into this decade knowing that my dharma is me. It’s not something that has to be chased down but something I’m already living when I dare to be fully myself.
So here’s to the next decade, friends! A decade of embodied dharma. A decade of seeing, with Dorothy’s clarity, that sometimes the treasure we seek is already in our hands. As such, I’ve chosen a theme to guide me into this new shining era: Me, Amplified! The years of shrinking and editing myself are over. This era is about turning up the volume on who I truly am—radiant, aligned, bold. This is the gift I want to offer the world in my 60s: my dharma … with the volume turned all the way up!
My birthday wish this year is that you’ll raise a glass to your golden thread. After reading this, turn toward your dharma by taking a few moments of silent meditation to tune into your essence and then explore the following journal prompts. I’ll be thinking of you ... Cheers!