Freedom at 50

23 Aug 2019 6 Comments

by Deb D in Insights Tags: , , , , ,

It took me 9 years to get over turning 40.  It wasn’t until I came face to face with a new decade that I began to appreciate the waning vision of my 40-something self in the rearview mirror.

We can probably agree that mourning the loss of years gone by and dreading an approaching age is a colossal waste of energy.  And yet, to pretend that aging doesn’t suck to some degree seems disingenuous.

Show me a person who celebrates the onset of wrinkles and joint aches and I’ll show you a liar.  Tell me I shouldn’t mourn a gradual loss of vision and hearing and I’ll tell you to piss off. Because at 50, I’ve traded a bit of decorum for frankness and I quite enjoy feeling free to speak my mind.

This more direct/less hesitant version of me can get herself into trouble with looser lips, but fortunately, she is invisible to almost everyone – irrelevant even – which allows for some space to experiment with expanded boundaries.

This passing year has kicked my ass for reasons related to stage of life rather than age.  Some years are like that. It is this exact perspective – knowing that sometimes entire years can be clouded in darkness – that pulls me through to the other side.

A boon of middle-age is having enough life experience to know that bad times don’t last forever.  When Life has grabbed you by the ankles a time or two and shaken you upside down until your pockets are emptied, you learn to take your licks without taking it personally.

This isn’t to say that I don’t sometimes feel like a little girl who wants to stomp her feet and cry her eyes out.  I do, more than I’d like to admit. But for the most part, I’ve traded the privilege of falling apart in favor of maturity.

In fact, there are whole categories of behaviors and thought patterns that have been surrendered to decades past.  Embarrassment, for example. It gets little air time because I’ve learned that it doesn’t serve any purpose other than to make me shrink into myself.  I have no interest in becoming smaller. Besides, the foibles of life are my favorite stories to share.  

Other gifts of aging require the donning of my strongest granny-glasses to detect. The inherent desire to slow down, for instance, disturbs my hyper-productive mind.  I still want to do, do, do, but the wisdom inside begs me to just be.  This increasingly sluggish pace affords time for noticing those things that a younger model might overlook. Like subtle kindnesses, or opportunities to help a fellow human, or wonderful synchronicities.  Being slowed down, regardless of the fight we propose, allows us to reap the harvest of a different crop.

These days, aloneness is more rejuvenating than lonely.  Choices are easier and are made with more conviction. I am more compassionate with myself and others.  More forgiving. And free to experience life without wishing it were different.

Herein lies peace.  Releasing the need for everything to be perfect in order to feel joy.

As birthdays go, I’m less inclined to celebrate the year and more apt to celebrate the moments. I don’t make birthday wishes anymore, I make birthday observations.  From a distance, I can hear my 80-year-old self cheering me on and reminding me to say ‘thank you’ for the gifts that I will receive on this birthday, even if they look grey or wrinkled.

I don’t know what my 50’s will ask of me, but I do know that Life will conspire on my behalf and provide more than I could wish for.  

 

Halfway – Reflections From a Birthday Girl

02 Sep 2014 4 Comments

by Deb D in Greatest Hits, Insights, Just Life Tags: , , , ,

twin peaks with flagI’ve reached an imagined halfway point – halfway between birth and death.  Research tells me that barring fatal accident or illness I could live to 90 years old, which sounds like a long time but it’s tricky to resist the ‘getting old’ mentality when wrinkles and joint aches pile up.

I’ve flirted with the idea of death and decline before, as have an increasing number of my middle-aged friends thanks to the ‘Big C’ and other cradle-robbing diagnoses.  What I’ve discovered is that if you marinate in fear of aging you’ll turn sour and ruin any chance of enjoying a delicious life.

I’m not the first philosopher to uncover the revelation that what matters is not how long one lives but rather how.  How have I lived? In themed decades, it seems.

In my teens I worried a lot. (About being popular and pretty and smart.)

In my twenties I dreamed a lot. (About success and family)

In my thirties I did a lot. (Bore children, cared for a house and a career.)

And in my forties, so far, I’ve learned a lot. About life.

Mainly I’ve learned that the older I get the less I know. In young adulthood I was so sure of everything.  The sky was blue, personal safety was my birthright and friends would be friends forever.  But maturity has a way of blending black and white certainty into a canvas of gray.  Losses and disappointments pile up alongside victories – twin peaks of the same mountain – and blur what once seemed so clear.  One day, maybe on a birthday, you stand atop the mountain and gaze across the horizon wondering, ‘what’s it all about and what happens now?’

In many ways I am at my peak.  I suspect I’ll spend some time here enjoying the view from the top. But I already feel the pull to begin my descent.  Life calls me to finish my journey in forward motion and not squander it with wishful thinking, refusing to budge from this sweet, sweet spot.

I know I won’t travel the same path down the mountain that I chose on the way up. I’ll bypass the gullies of naïveté and ambition and stop more frequently to cherish a loving gesture. I’ll be in less of a hurry to reach my destination and more willing to put aside my agenda in favor of lending a hand.  And I will love every step and misstep because it will remind me that I am still living.  Not just alive, but living.

In a sense I’ll be un-learning all the things that sustained me on the first half of my journey; gracefully (I hope) unraveling the knots of the rope that I climbed on the way up.  When all is said and done and I return to my starting point, I hope to look back with satisfaction knowing that no matter how many travel this way again, the mountain will never be climbed exactly as I climbed it.  No one can do or see or be exactly like me.  Each of us is unrepeatable.

 

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

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