I’m kinda old. I’m not usually coy about my age, as some women are. In fact, when I was younger, I insisted on telling people my age, especially at work, because people took me for much younger, ALL THE TIME. ( I wanted credit for that decade of experience.) And now that I’m actually in the upper echelons, if I lie at all, I prefer to lie UP about my age. If I tell people I’m 62, they say, “omigosh, you look great for 62.” Why would anyone lie, down?
But I’m not interested in aging, or how you’re aging. Aging is about your skin and ailments. And much as that might preoccupy you – because, pain is a pain, and physical limitations are actual – it has limited interest for anyone else. And you have only slight control over how you age. You can exercise, eat well, use fancy expensive facial creams, but your genes are already in there, aging you, on their own plan. Aging is as dull as acting your age.
I’m thinking about “olding.” Olding is about your attitude and energy for life as it is. And this cousin of aging is 100% in your control. Your mindset doesn’t need to show its age. You can be open to what is now, in love with what is here.
How are you olding? I think I’m olding better than many my age. (Not to brag.) And I think it is 100% because of the massive amount of coaching I’ve received over the last decade. Because of all the coaching and self-development books I read, I’m much more able to accept what is, enjoy now, and be present for things as they happen. And as a reward, I remain in concert with the world.
Could Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg have it wrong? Martha is 76 – and a homekeeping and business master. Snoop is 46 and an accomplished rapper and businessman in his own right. How do they have crossover? They are each olding well. Each is open to what is present and now, stripped of their expectations and judgements from their past lives and expectations. They are apparently good friends, now with a variety show in its third season on CBS – Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, where apparently they “dish” and “spill the tea” with their celebrity guests.
How did I arrive at this dumb acceptance of what is, this lack of desire to wage war on change? If you despair of the change in the world (good and bad) you’re living within confines you constructed in your mind, eons ago. You’re letting your past define and confine your present. This is utterly unnecessary and causes pain.
I know I used to feel terrible about where we were in life, vs. where others were, or where I thought I’d be, or should be. Our house should have been bigger, or grander. Our kids should have gone to Ivy League schools. I mourned my dwindling ability to bike 75 miles in a day. People called it ambition and I thought it was part of what made me a good person. These were all stories in my head, broken expectations that I was unwilling to let go of. They were olding me. Hard.
I’m still ambitious, true, but without benchmarks lodged in my past expectations. I want stuff, but I’m starting to enjoy the striving. It is not upon accomplishment that I will begin to feel happy. Where I am now, who I’m with now is pretty awesome.
There is no pill or cream for olding well – and the good news is, you don’t need one. You can old well with a mere flick of a switch in your brain. Presence. Living in the now. This is what keeps us young and engaged in the whole world – not just the world that agrees with us/looks like us.
In his late-in-life diary, Einstein railed against the pain and discomfort of aging, but he seemed to be olding beautifully. He wrote to Queen Elisabeth of Belgium, his friend, upon losing her husband…
Springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding;
Presence and enjoyment of what the day brings.
and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond the hand of fate and of all human delusions.
I love “human delusions.” There is a naive and painful delusion that we have control, at all.
And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope.
Fear and Hope – is not always the domain of the young. It is the domain of the unevolved, undeveloped person. You can choose to quit that oscillation whenever you tire of its sturm and drang (to borrow a phrase from Einstein’s vernacular.)
For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.
It is a privilege to age. (As my mother is fond of saying, it beats the alternative.) Olding – at any age – is about allowing your mind to stay in the present – not live in comparisons to the past or angst about the future. Don’t permit yourself to be limited by concepts that you may no longer hold dear. How are you olding? Don’t judge yourself harshly. Just live happily in and amongst what is happening in your life, now. On his 75th birthday, Einstein received a parrot as gift. After deciding the bird was depressed, he tried to alter its mood by telling bad jokes. That’s a fine example of a dear and present old man.