Aging and the Spring-Soul

"If you are pining for youth I think it produces a stereotypical old man because you only live in memory, you live in a place that doesn’t exist. Aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been.” David Bowie

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, are the stages of all things.  And, yes, some seasons overlap in many ways.  We can, at once, be oldly young and youngly old.  As well, things from each season add into each other season.  Being 'old' does not always mean in chronological series.  As we age, we become more and more unique individuals.  I love to see unique older women.  I want to be a unique older woman.  I think trying to stay the same, oldens one.  I am thinking of the women in cults/groups/religions who are commanded to wear their very hair exactly the same, their dress just the same.  I think that this makes comparisons even more stark.  Yes, slipping from one season surely means we are slipping into the next.  But what we gather along the way is what counts.

I want to age wildly.  Sometimes I forget this and tend to slip into a typical-looking, acting, woman.  I have always been a nonconformist, at heart, so I choose to be that now.  I know emotions plays a huge part in this.  I want to have vitality, passions, a good-thinking brain, and, I wish, a working body.  Sometimes there are trade-offs, I have discovered.  We do live longer than our ancient ancestors.  But, so we live well?  As the baby boomers age, we are realizing that there are more age-related problems that are coming to the forefront.  And, yes, attitude has a great deal to do with it all too.  It does not mean we will live longer, necessarily, it means we will enjoy living longer. 

I have noticed that my passion for creativity has quadrupled and I have time to be able to do art when and as I please.  Most of my portraits of women are young women.  My soul is involved in the creativity and perhaps it expresses itself.  And love has changed; I mean the connotation of love.  I love more deeply.  I have moved off and away from those who do not love me back.  I am more content than I have ever been.  I am more compassionate for myself.  I know that my art practice every morning makes me think more deeply and thus I think I am healing much of what the Younger Me experienced.  I, also, deal with new issues more quickly.  And I crave the laughter that never changes from childhood.  

There are so many things that I have gained in this Springtime Soul of mine.  I am more connected to others in deeper ways.  I ride the waves of life more easily because there are no more minor emotional tsunamis.  

"The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you.  We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share:  being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend.  We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love." - Tennessee Williams

©Carol Desjarlais 4.18.19