By Dr. Leahcim Semaj
Psychologist | Author | Social Philosopher
The Semaj MindSpa — Where Mind, Spirit, and Science Meet
LETTER FROM 75 TO 85
Dear Leahcim at 85,
If you are reading this, we made another ten cycles. Well done. I hope you’re still walking. Maybe the 5K has become 3K. That’s fine. Keep moving. I hope you’re still lifting something heavier than the television remote. I hope you’re reading, Thinking, Writing and Laughing.
I hope there are still people around you who will challenge you rather than simply agree because you’re the oldest person in the room. I hope the MindSpa is still alive in some form – perhaps one I cannot imagine from here. I hope you kept creating. But if you slowed down, I hope you did it because you chose to, not because somebody told you that old men should disappear quietly.
Protect your curiosity. Protect your independence. Protect the relationships that nourish you. And if your world has become smaller, make it deeper. At 75, I am walking towards you. Don’t disappoint me.
Leahcim at 75
AND BEYOND
There is something beautiful about the phrase cycle ’round the sun. The Earth returns to approximately the same place each year. We don’t. We come back changed. Perhaps life is less a circle than a spiral. We revisit love, loss, work, family, fear, hope and identity again and again – but, if we are paying attention, from a different level of understanding. So here I am.
Seventy-five cycles ’round the sun. From Michael James to Leahcim Semaj.
From boy to man.
Student to teacher.
Teacher to psychologist.
Psychologist to writer.
And from there? I don’t know. I rather like not knowing. There is still road ahead. Still another sunrise. Still something to learn. Still something worth saying. Still someone worth loving. Still work worth doing. I am not finished. And maybe that is the best birthday gift of all.
The Best is Yet to Come. But at 75 I would add one important qualification: It won’t come by itself. We have to get up and meet it.
75th Cycle ’Round The Sun — August 17, 2026