Age

Just the other day I said to PatMa, I look forward to being 60! I think it will be fantastic. At any rate, I said something to that effect, and it’s the truth. I really do believe it. I usually feel excited to turn a year older, or at the least, I feel ambivalent.

In a few months, I will turn thirty, and just like when I was seven- or eight-years-old, I feel the desire to emphasize how close I am to the next year, how far I've come in this life of mine: whether I'm seven-and-a-half or twenty-nine-and-three-quarters, I'm thrilled to have gotten this far. These distinctions count.

Depending on our experiences and how we are able to process them, aging can mean we’ve just become more (re) (de) fined versions (finer? Or better versions?) of our earlier selves: less insecure, wiser, more skilled. Well, this is the hope.

Experience in some way has helped me to extend beyond the perspective i once had, as painful as it often is. i have met more people, gained more connections, tried more hobbies, pursued joys, transformed through my losses. Or i’ve tried something new--a simple but intimidating task, which is an accomplishment in itself. Embarking on anything new or different, whether i perceive that the actual task is successful or not, is at least a way of being that i’ve tried, right? Even if i didn’t like what i tried OR maybe if i liked it too much and somehow doing it got me in trouble. Just being able to say, I tried it. Isn’t that something?

so when I read this passage from tuesdays with morrie, I smiled. I liked the way morrie explained age and growing older.

morrie: “ . . . if you’ve found meaning in your life, you don’t want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can’t wait until sixty-five. . . . it is impossible for the old not to envy the young. But the issue is to accept who you are and revel in that. . . . You have to find what’s good and true and beautiful in your life as it is now. . . . The truth is, part of me is every age. I’m a three-year-old, I’m a five-year-old, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old, I’m a fifty-year-old. I’ve been through all of them, and I know what it’s like. I delight in being a child when it’s appropriate to be a child. I delight in being a wise old man when it’s appropriate to be a wise old man. Think of all I can be! I am every age, up to my own” (118, 120-21).

(p.s. i don't know why the font is all funky on this post, and i can't figure it out, so there! nothing to be done, but get on with the night! which is another way of saying, i'm going to bed now.)