Sometimes homework does really make you happy you did it. Here is an assignment I had to do that made me smile a little and wonder who is this wildly optimistic person? The topic was,"Growing older in America, how do you feel about it?"
Growing older is a process that is happening despite how busy we are or what we think of it. America seems to have a love hate relationship with aging. It perpetually swings from cringing at what aging does to our bodies, to honoring Betty White on Saturday Night Live and fawning over the older generation. I enjoy the teen-age mood swings that our media seems to have when portraying aging in our culture. There are a few ideas that kept bubbling to the surface as I reflected on what I personally think about aging.
1. I am so happy to be older than I was a decade ago. Whether it’s the inherit goodness of entering my fourth decade, or purely faulty perception I enjoy being older. I see life through my personal lens of experiences that seem to have more wisdom and less care now. I have spent time serving people in a variety of situations on a few different continents and am very grateful to be aging in America, or just aging for that matter. I spent a year sleeping with a gun under my head during the Iraq war, expecting to be shot at or killed daily. I never knew if I would make it home to become a wife or a mother. Having to write your own will at 23 years old was an event that aged me. After a year spent in a war dodging the threat of having no future, embracing aging has been like having tea in the afternoon. A welcomed daily event that brings a smile to my face. It’s like winning a prize when I look in the mirror, I got it, I got to make it home and have a future! Living through a war is part of my past, but it has made my present feel like an honored prize.
2. Entitlement is a badge of getting older that I hope to let go of in order to embrace the attitude of friendship. Life is hard, and everybody needs a friend. I want to have eyes that continue to see the needs around me, as I navigate aging. Toddlers having a tantrum are the best to sit down next to, and say, “This is hard isn’t’ it?” Adults bloom when an unwarranted kind word or compliment is given to them. Whether my body sorely disappoints me, or I experience significant losses, I see myself connecting and cheering on those around me as I age. A quip that comes out of my mouth way too often is, “life is for living”. As long as there are people in the world who need a nurse or a friend, I will be part of that instead of resenting the losses age has handed me.
3. Reaping what you have sown in your previous years is a significant component in aging. I believe that this is not talked about as clearly as a part of aging as it should be. For people who invested in their life in a healthy way, they seem to be delighting in their age in life. They are experiencing the fruit of invested friendships and family relationships, and satisfaction in how they spent their life. For others who may not have invested the way they wanted to, this is a lonely time. This is when self-reflection happens and they don’t have relationships to enjoy, only burned bridges, missed opportunities and family who don’t want anything to do with them. In my opinion, this is the underlying reason for the drastically different attitudes of aging that occur in our culture. You only get one life with an undetermined amount of time, not having spent it how you wanted to may be a bitter reality to face. I think about reaping and sowing, and it helps me direct my priorities on a daily basis and it allows me to enjoy aging. Evaluating what you are sowing into and will eventually reap makes me confident and pretty peaceful about each year spinning by. Nothing is perfect, but knowing that I have a choice about what I invest in and what I may reap in the years to come brings meaning to the day.
4. “If you only had a year to live, what would you stop doing? What would you keep doing?” That thought frequently enters my conversations and my mind. It is a good question that can put some big picture clarity into the daily grind of life. It allows a person to check in on what they are investing their life into. While working in oncology and hospice care, I frequently saw patients who truly started living their life once they had the indefiniteness taken away by cancer. This made a significant impression on me, and created a foundation of intentionally evaluating my days, months and years. I enjoy hitting the bulls eye on life, uncovering what really matters to me feels like spring cleaning in all its pine sol glory; fresh, rejuvenating, and brimming with joy. Self-reflection isn’t something that happens at the end of life; I think it is a constant recalibrating that brings an enjoyment of knowing where I am aimed at in life. Imagining that I only have a couple years to live is a way to make sure that I am not hurrying through my days so much that I miss living them.
5. I think aging brings out my creative best. You have to get creative when you don’t have everything that you need to the job, that’s when the fun starts. Life is never going to afford me the exact amount of time, money, energy or opportunity that I think that I need. That is when I practice doing the creative best I can to live out my dreams on a daily basis with what I have been given. Aging is part of that. I get to relive my childhood by staying home with my two little boys who are not in school yet. Watching them “age” puts the wonder back into time walking on. Its unbelievable what develops in a week as kids grow into themselves? I don’t think it stops at some point where age goes from developing into breaking down and rotting. The growing I think is still happening, it may look different on the outside, but it is still happening. I believe we don’t stop growing into ourselves as life keeps throwing us curveballs. Meeting people who have not stagnated, or given up on using their creativity to keep adapting to what they have been given is an undeniably positive event. I have met quite a few in my family, and I hear a distinctive gratefulness when talking to them instead of disappointment. I saw this as I watched my grandma lose her 105-year-old mother. She continues to say it was an honor to have her mother with her for so extraordinarily long even while she has to choose how to process the grief. She see’s time as an honor and something she has to do her creative best to keep handling even at 86 years old.
Aging can be a many splendored thing when I take the time to reflect on what aging really means to me. It has enabled me to meet the faces of two beautiful boys, and continue to watch them grow into themselves as I simultaneously admit I am still growing into myself. “Life is for living” still seems to apply way to often when I reflect why it’s okay to take the chance, make the phone call or give something impossible a try.
