by Eddie Pipkin
Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay
Well, I turned 60 yesterday. Hopefully, I survived the day. I finished the blog beforehand, so that even if I didn’t make it through the outlandish observance I had planned, you will still have one final blog to remember me by. More self-aggrandizing details on my personal “birthdayathalon” when you click through to the full blog, but the point of writing about this watershed moment in this space on this occasion is to offer some thoughts on the importance of acknowledging milestones – and the variety of responses such recognition can take, each appropriate to its own context, loud or quiet, serious or playful, choreographed or free form.
Milestone events are a regular part of our personal lives and the lives of the institutions that we serve, and people react to them in different ways. I had breakfast with a friend this week who talked about his shrug-of-the-shoulders reaction to the “big-0” birthdays, and I share his nonchalance about these numerically memorable anniversaries, but I have other friends who are greatly impacted by them as era markers. Some people throw a big party or take a bucket list trip. Some people make a pilgrimage of silence to the top of a sacred hill. Some people let them pass by quietly with only the smallest of adjustments to their r