Virginia once raced through the world like a woman with a personal vendetta against gravity.
Go-Go at Full Speed
In her Go-Go years, she was a force of high-stakes motion. Whether she was organizing a midnight rescue for a stray llama in the Andes or perfecting the art of “extreme gardening” by planting two hundred tulip bulbs in a single afternoon, Virginia lived at a relentless pace.
She believed a vacation was only successful if she returned with a passport stamp, a tan from a desert she couldn’t pronounce, and at least three new hobbies she intended to master by Tuesday. These were her years of full throttle, characterized by a seemingly inexhaustible vigor.
Slow-Go Downshifting
She then began to recognize the subtle change into what has been called the Slow-Go years, arriving as a natural downshift in her internal rhythm. It started with an exuberant appreciation for her new velvet ottoman. Soon, other small revelations followed.
She realized she preferred the rhythmic clicking of her knitting needles to the tactical nightmare of the annual block party, which she now recognized as a sport for the limber and the chronically caffeinated. She found herself opting for the audio tour (from a shaded bench) rather than the guided trek through the ruins. This stage felt like gentle coasting, the drive to excel outwardly loosening its grip.
She took up the leisurely art of the two-hour lunch. She traded her underwater camera for a set of professional watercolors, finding she could savor the curve of a single petal for longer than she used to spend navigating Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport. She might still travel to a remote village in Provence, but instead of hiking to the castle at the top of the hill, she’d spend the afternoon interviewing a local baker about the existential properties of fougasse, the region’s sculpted sourdough. She was aging well by having invited time to settle into a humming resonance rather than trying to redline it.
No-Go Stillness
Eventually, the vibrant saunter of the slow years evolved into the No-Go stage. For Virginia, this was the most exotic chapter of all because it required the one thing she had spent a lifetime avoiding: stillness. She approached it with the same resolve she once brought to the peaks of Peru, and found it no less expansive.
She knew she had arrived when the perimeter of her world yielded to the size of her sunroom and back garden, yet felt larger than the Sierra Nevadas ever had. On the side table, a small woven textile from her Machu Picchu days sat near her tea, an endearing reminder of her earlier velocity. Aside from her beloved writing, music, cinema, and reading, an internal radiance would often grace her days, arising spontaneously or from reflections or memories. The stillness she had once feared had become her most faithful companion, a peaceful country she had finally learned to inhabit.
The Wisdom Carrier
Her spoken words and stories were becoming heirlooms now. Decades of family ritual lived inside her: the secret pinch of cardamom that saved the Sunday roast; the reasons behind the traditions no one else could quite explain; the long view of who her people were and where they had come from.
And it wasn’t only family who sought her out. Neighbors, friends, the younger people whose lives had brushed against hers over the years found their way to her home, drawn by something they couldn’t quite name. Virginia knew how to listen. When life presented them with its harder passages – the crossroads, the losses, the moments of doubt – she offered something steadier than advice: context. The assurance that things had been weathered before, that lives had bent and re-formed, that meaning often arrived after the fact.
She felt a curious anticipation for what lay beyond, and took heart in the wisdom of Italian film director Federico Fellini, who understood the surreal and beautiful flow of existence:
“There is no end. There is no beginning.
There is only the infinite passion of life.”
Virginia knew she would simply be moving through a gateway into the next mystery – and, characteristically, she was already tuned and ready for the ride.
Let’s Reflect Together:
Can you sum up your three stages: Go-Go, Slow-Go and No-Go? Which stage are you at right now and what do you love most about it? What is the reason to transition from one stage to another?
