Thoughts On Turning Seventy-five

 

I've always been a maverick, an outlier, someone who has to do things in the way I was able to do them. I started, at a very young age, writing down my thoughts and impressions without a clue why. I did love to read and I freely admit that I also don't recall when I first began to read but I know I've never gotten over it.

However, though that sounds like the beginnings of what should have been a writing career, my personality type interfered with my being able to admit that I could be a 'writer'. I never granted myself a byline or even put a title on anything that I composed because that would have been too presumptuous. Instead, I stuffed the lined notebook papers that held my stories and poems into the bottom of my sock drawer. 

Eventually, as I matured, I started keeping a journal. Still no titles or bylines but I did call the collection - Shadows Speaking. Cracks me up when I read those earnest passionate thoughts of my younger self.

I was a dreamer from the very beginning and so it was common for me to ponder things deeply. I wasn't good at self promotion so I was mostly talking to myself but I did secretly believe I had profound insights into human existence. I even thought I could imagine what it would be like to be old. I  wrote several poems about aging.

I didn't have a clue. Clueless I was.  But my old self is willing to be lenient on my young self. At least young self was trying to understand the aging process.

What old self knows now is that until you wake up with the same aches and pains you went to bed with, until you  start toddling and shuffling with carefully placed steps because you are no longer steady on your feet, until you realize that you have to let go of so much of what you worked so hard to learn how to do, until that which was once so important to you now seems irrelevant, you can't possibly know what it's like to be old. The downside should be obvious. 

But wait... there 's an upside.

When you are officially old, you have history, the good, the bad and the ugly but hopefully mostly good. You can be proud of those things you used to do with vigor and energy but you don't have to do them anymore. You have built in excuses for eating dinner early so you can go to bed early. Others understand if you can't do certain things anymore. You can have cereal for dinner if you want. Or cake. 

If you wear your shirt wrong side out no one thinks anything of it. You can accidentally lock yourself out on the back deck, (twice) and someone will pop in and rescue you and think nothing of it. You can forget things and say dumb stuff and be grumpy sometimes and get excused because... well, because.

So, yes, there is certainly a downside to aging but there is  also a silver lining to the dark cloud - you can be what/who you are without having to prove yourself or compete with the current standards du jour of expectations for perfection. Better yet, you are way closer to finishing your last story. 

I officially title this one Pioneer.

And this time I get to claim the byline.  

For Him,  

Meema