I found myself taking inventory of the obstacles and upsets that people I knew were dealing with. There were children with autism. Parents with Alzheimer's. Financial crises. Career disasters. Addiction. Abuse.
And that was merely the stuff at the tip of my nose, in plain sight. How much else lurked beneath the surface? Show me someone with a seemingly unbroken stride and unfettered path. More often than not, he or she is hampered and haunted in ways that you can't imagine.
....What I am going through is what everyone endures as the years accumulate and the wear and tear starts to show. It's aging writ vivid and large. I'm bumping up against my limits. The trick is figuring out when to focus on them and when to look away.
Am I Going Blind? by Frank Bruni
New York Times Sunday, February 25, 2018
On Tuesday, I celebrated my friend's 60th birthday with a group of wonderful women. Inevitably, discussion turned to the milestone of reaching another decade of life and the challenges of aging. For me, 40 was far more notable than reaching 50, because my body sent me the first indications that I was aging: aches and pains, wrinkles and gray hair, and restless nights made their first appearances. Prior to 40, aging was completely off my radar -- never discussed or considered in any way. Even menopause was a mystery to me.
Part of my ignorance rests in the fact that my father has aged incredibly well. He has always looked young for his age, has never battled any chronic illness, and has exuded boundless energy. At 84, my father remains active and engaged in the activities he most values like walking and biking, gardening and woodworking, helping family and neighbors. I have always imagined that I would age just like him, I guess. However, in my 40's, I began to see in the smallest but most unanticipated ways that my body was going to be worse for wear. I could no longer deny that I would have limitations of one sort or another as I got older even if I aged as well as my father.
When I think of aging, I often return to a brief encounter with an older women who seemed to embody a sense of how I would want to age. In my early 30's, I was invited to attend a Harvard Principals Summer Institute, a three week program for new principals. We engaged in intensive learning throughout the day and socialized most evenings. At a dinner one night, Harvard rolled out the dance floor and a DJ encouraged us to dance with Motown hits and disco beats. I remember being mesmerized by an African American woman from Houston. She was tall, big boned, and angular. She wore a colorful dress, orthotic shoes, and a well-coiffed hairdo, a look that reminded me of how many women were portrayed in movies in the 1950's. As she danced, she lived in the music and the moment. It wasn't beautiful or graceful, but it was freeing and all-encompassing. She enjoyed herself with every fiber of her being, and her dancing was magnetic. I wanted to let loose, too, but I was too self-conscious, too intimidated, too uncomfortable in my own skin.
As the years have passed, I realize that rather than simply bumping up to my physical limits aging may be more about coming into my own. Each year, I feel like I am understanding who I am all the better and shedding notions of who I ought to be. I am finding and expressing my own passions and desires rather than the expectations I perceive that others may have for me. I want to be fully myself rather than a carbon copy of someone else. I care less of what others think of me and care more that I am content with myself. I like to think of this as a shedding of all the layers of uncertainty that come with youth only to reveal more of the pure essence of who I am and have always been as a person.
As I reach the core of who I am, the essential elements of my being, I am able to make the most of every moment and live with greater contentment in the present. I know that some people just seem to instinctively be themselves fully and completely from early on and couldn't imagine being anyone else for one moment -- in fact, it would be impossible for them. In contrast, I have been slow to embrace myself, slow to remember that a daffodil has always been a daffodil and couldn't ever be a tulip. In the same way, I have always been myself and couldn't ever be anyone else, yet it took me a long time to see the foolishness of such yearnings and uncover the wisdom even nature understood.
As such, I am no longer a spring chicken, but I will no longer focus on the limitations of aging. Rather, I will watch the daffodils emerge from the soil once again this March with surprise. I always forget where they were planted and am sure to find myself startled by their color against a backdrop of brown, wet leaves. I will pause to see the beauty of being a daffodil and nothing else, of being myself and no one else. May I make it my mantra to dance among the dew drops, in the kitchen with my husband to the laughter of my daughters, and in my soul to the beat of my own drum without hesitation. May I embrace aging for all it might possibly offer rather than only see what it might take away.
Some Glad Morning
Joyce Sutphen
One day, something very old
happened again. The green
came back to the branches,
settling like leafy birds
on the highest twigs;
the ground broke open
as dark as coffee beans.
The clouds took up their
positions in the deep stadium
of the sky, gloving the
bright orb of the sun
before they pitched it
over the horizon.
It was as good as ever:
the air was filled
with the scent of lilacs
and cherry blossoms
sounded their long
whistle down the track.
It was some glad morning.
