Blowing out the Candles and Making a Wish

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