Growing Older

Greetings from Brooklyn, New York.  The weather doesn't know what it wants to do today...one minute it's sunny, the next clouded over.  Had quite a scare a little while ago.  Couldn't get my computer to open.  Actually, it was MSN, my home page.  Once I finally got in,..after about an hour of trying... I put Firefox on as the new homepage.  We have it at work, and it is pretty speedy.  I have to say, I was already going through withdrawals.  How did I ever survive this long without a computer?

Well, my friends, today is my birthday.  I'm 63. My sons both gave me wonderful gifts--Barnes @ Noble cards.  They know how much I love my books.  Already spent a hundred.   It seems like only yesterday I was dreading the big five-O.  I've grown so much since then.  I've come to terms with aging and feel at peace with myself.  After I turned 45, I discovered that when I looked in the mirror, my mother's face was looking back at me.  Much of my youth had been wasted (or so I thought at the time), and I wasn't ready to let go...so began the process of fighting off the effects of time...jars of face creams, makeup, lying about my age. 

"Youth is a gift of nature, but age is a work of art."--Garson Kanin

We are inundated with negative messages from the media, from other people, from writings.  While there are many societies that embrace aging, sadly, ours is not one of them.  Ours is a society obsessed with youth.  But, while we dwell on our double or triple chins, the deepset wrinkles about our eyes, our sagging skin, the extra poundage...we tend to ignore the fact that 'youth' is an attitude, a state of mind.  What we think about aging determines how we feel about it.  Embracing our age rather than deny it give us the courage to move through any fears we may have about aging.  Who remembers when the 'over the hill greeting card' line began to poke  fun of people who hit 50?   Today, 60 is the new forty...and who knows...in the future it might be 70 or 80. 

"I like Spring, but it is too young.  I like summer, but it is too proud.  So I like best of all Autumn, because its tone is mellower, its colors are richer, and it is tinged with a little sorrow.  Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of Spring, nor the power of Summer, but the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age.  It knows the limitations of life and is content."--Lin Yu Tang

My turn-around came when I learned how to focus more on what I had gained than what I had lost.  I learned to appreciate both the lessons I had learned and the wounds that I have healed.  I began to welcome the fact that people sought my wisdom for that meant that I had had a life well lived.  Oh, there are still times when a pretty young woman gets on the train and I whisper, "What if?" while I feel that wee twinge of envy, but the difference now is that I can let it go and appreciate my life where it is.

Let's face it....Aging is relative.  There will always be someone who is older or younger than us. Energy flows where the attention goes...and we are in charge of what we pay attention to.  If we choose to focus on the negatives about aging, our energy will flow in that direction, but, when we courageously choose to concentrate on the positves, our energy will be expanded.  We can all choose where we focus our attention, and that will determine how we feel as our birthdays roll by.