I am almost gushy about how happy I am to be aging. I’m not thinking about the ripeness of great-tasting cheese or wine that has matured in taste and texture. I am thrilled about the newness and freshness that can rise with each new day. For me being older is a new world and a new life.
I am quite familiar with the physical pains of aging. Medical complaints seem to be a common topic of conversation when I get together with my older friends. I admit that I haven’t fully accepted this reality. But isn’t that part of what aging is about? It is a time that I can recognize things as they actually are, and accept them. Making friends with pain is part of that process. I become even more aware of my body. It reminds me to pay attention to it, I enter into it more routinely, I exercise it more intentionally, I judge more carefully what I am putting into it.
If I had paid this much attention to my body when I was much younger, I might even be more pain-free right now.
Aging for me has been an opportunity to put aside my concerns about social conventions. I am fortunate not to have to earn money at this point in my life, and I feel free to pay little attention to what society demands of me, such as work. I’ve probably never been “in step” with social conventions, but I feel even less constrained now by what society might expect of me. I do what I choose.
It is a time for me to reclaim wildness. I was born wild, and I learned to conform to the norms of my culture. This is not the wildness of shaggy hair, but the wildness of being born powerfully noble. I am reclaiming that splendor, that wild energy deep inside of me that is my heritage. It is a new beginning as I more easily put aside my preconceived notions about my life, my world. I am taking the place that is rightly mine.
It is a time I more easily fall in love. Loving has always seemed rather risky to me. Now it is a routine part of life. The focused awareness and open transparency of a lover is much easier for me to conjure and maintain. It seems no more difficult than taking three deep breaths.
My brain still functions, so it is a time of intellectual curiosity and depth. I cannot remember when I was more intellectually alive. I know this is because the emotional constraints on my mind have been lessened. I am so much less afraid to be unaware, to question and to explore. Aging gives such freedom of thought it seems a waste not to take advantage of it.
I am rejecting the image of being dumpy and frumpy just because I have lived a long life. Instead, I accept that old age can be a time to free up natural powers that have been under wraps and social constraints. It is a time to feel resplendent, if I choose.
I am more than an aging body. I am claiming my place as a manifestation of an intelligence and a reality that extends thru the universe. This is a good time for me to come home to my own place in reality.