Who do
you see when you look in the mirror? And
what do you notice about yourself – perhaps beyond just your reflection?
Let me
tell you what I’m thinking about …
I celebrated
my birthday a week ago. And I mean
celebrated – for about a week and a half.
Maybe two. Well, to be fair – I was traveling for work
on my birthday weekend, and away from home, so I guess you could say I took advantage
of every opportunity to observe the occasion.
And happily I have friends and family and colleagues who indulged that – and a husband
who made it festive every time I was home during those two weeks, and even sang
happy birthday to me long distance when I was in New Orleans working on the
actual day. So I’m lucky - but that’s
another story. This is mostly about
birthdays, aging and how you look at and think about things.
I really
do C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E every passing day and year. Yup, I’ve got the wrinkles, crinkles and (some)
grey hair as well as a few of those other delightful and less glamorous effects
of gravity over the years. Nothing works quite the way it used to or looks that
way. And of course, there's all the kidney stuff. But as I often say – it is what it
is: nothing less, but certainly nothing more.
I think other things have come forward to compensate: I don’t get
mad or flustered as easily as I used to.
At least I don’t think so. I
laugh a lot more often, (and loudly), sing in public (with enthusiasm) and never mind looking silly (a lot). I’m a Clown, for Pete’s sake. Maybe best of all, I also push harder
for the things that are important to me, and worry a lot less about what others think
or what they might say. I think I have
arrived fully at me, and I am okay with that.
I celebrate and embrace it.
Happily, there are others who like me the way I am, a few even love me, and that’s good
too. (You know … and there’s also a few who
don’t. Oh, well – as Rick Nelson sang in “Garden Party”: “… you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got
to please yourself. “)
But I
do know some folks who moan and groan over each passing year and live in dread
of the advancing number that is their age.
You know - it IS just a number.
Really. Why would you let it
interfere with where you are in life and what you are doing? Or spend even a second of your precious time
worrying about it? It’s not like you can
change it!
The way
I look at it, the one who celebrates the most birthdays and gets to the biggest
number where years are concerned – wins.
I know
too many people who have been denied that.
If you
were to ask me to what I owe this philosophy of life – I guess I’d say
it’s a lot of things. Mostly experiences
that have taught me that you have to live and enjoy every day. Because you never know.
I get
reflective around my birthday too, in a “grand scheme of things” kind of way –
and so I add to my ongoing bucket list.
What do I still want to do, haven’t done, would like to try or get to
see or experience or become? Okay, maybe
I won't make it to “Concert pianist at Carnegie Hall.” (All that practice, practice, practice.) But I
check a few things off as “done” and I add a few more on all the time. I
always think I will never have enough days to live to accomplish all that I
want. For heaven’s sake, I have 1987
items on my Amazon wish list alone! I’d have
to live to be 300 to actually get through them all! But I do like to think about that. We all know there are never enough hours in
the day, or days in a lifetime. Ever.
Thinking
about that, I found this calculator that tells you how many days you have
been alive. So on my birthday this year
– it was 20,089 days. That's a lot. And counting. A lot more to come, hopefully. It made me think of the beautiful song from
the Broadway musical Rent: “525,600 minutes – Seasons of Love.” Thinking about how we count our time. We all want more of it always; it’s our most precious commodity. I say celebrate it.
Why
spend any of our time - our years, our days, our minutes - in a place of
worry or anxiety, being sad or depressed.
Especially about our age. Yes, I
know we can feel all of those things with the very real challenges any of us can have, but
I think it’s important to try not to dwell there. It isn’t as if any of that changes anything or makes it better –
its time invested in nothing. Dorothy
Belle described it well in her piece on being the “Old Lady:”
…if you're going to have to be old, you'd might as well be fully
alive while you're being it. The capacity for joy and invention lingers for a
good many years, even when all you look like is just a wrinkled old thing.
So meanwhile, do enjoy—madly enjoy—being 25,
33, 40, 48, 55, or for that matter 60 and beyond. It all really is exceptional.
Don't waste a minute of it worrying about the passage of time. Time, I assure
you, will rush past on its own even without your worry to hasten it.
Good
advice. Like a lot of things, it’s all
in how you look at it. I also love
George Carlin’s routine on aging. He
starts:
Do you realize that the only time in
our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids?
If you're less than 10 years old, you're so
excited about aging that you think in fractions.
"How old are you?"
"I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're
four and a half, going on five! That's the key.
I think
he’s right. So I can hardly wait until
sometime late in March when I can celebrate my birthday “and a half.” A whole new occasion to mark and a reason to have a party. Hope you celebrate one too - and remember to make a great wish when you blow out those candles. And smile when you see that face in the mirror.
Take care and stay well ... Kathe
Take care and stay well ... Kathe
