A Foreign Place: Aging

 

 

A Foreign Place:  Aging

“Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.” – Seneca the Younger

When we catch our stride, things go smoothly, rhythmically, repetitive and time flies by.  Life goes by smoothly, peacefully, and calmly and all the body parts work as a beautiful engine…then, we age.   It is important to remember that things can still run as smoothly as long as we practice change to meet the natural change of our body, mind, heart and soul.  It is not about “how much can I do and how fast”.  It becomes, “I can do this at a new pace”.  Suddenly, life is a foreign place if we do not prepare ourselves for slowing down. 

Sometimes we have to put on our old lady panties and gather up our courage and try new ways to do things that were once a snap to do.  We forge new paths.  Life is not easy…aging makes it more difficult in many ways we may not even have thought of.  It is like, suddenly, we cannot do what we did and we could become frustrated, depressed, when all we have to do is do it “however” we can rather than "same old…same old”.  Sometimes, in the midst of some kind of episodic change in our body, is just do what you have to do, today, to keep moving forward in some way... not the old “I can do it all…I will do it all.” 

 Women do amazing things.  Admit it!  You have done amazing things.  You did amazing things when there was no one to watch…no one to be our cheerleader… no one even asked what amazing thing you have done for the day.  We all have miracles that happened in our lives.  We have worked miracles.  We have done things we can not believe we were able to do.  Our body is resilient.  Buty, like a rubber band or a wound-up energizer bunny, we wore down and there is no magic key to turn to turn back on all that it took for us to stand where we stand today. 

There are unspoken things we go through.  There are things of the mind, the heart and soul that change.  Our moods change.  Our coping skills change.  We have one identify and then we lose someone or something and we are not who we were before.  Aging means there are lots of losses and one has to remember that it is only going to become more losses.  Our roles change.  Once we were daughter and then we are the matriarch of the family. 

We have more time for reflection…and, of course, regrets.  But we have to remember what opportunities we had, what successes we had, what dreams we had and how our dreams changed as we made detours, rose above personal disasters in life.  We did what we did when we did it, with as much maturity and education and we learned from our choices (good and bad). 

We become more vulnerable.  We can say we are not but aging means that we become more dependent on people, places and things.  We can be anxious about it.  We can become frustrated.  But it is what it is.  Our body functions decline, become a bother, and we fear vulnerability.  We have to plan ahead and always have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C.  And, even then, life will throw us a curve, a hill, a mountain that forces us to change.  I have come back from a month-long vacation with a new sense of doing what I can and when I can and not pushing myself any more. 

I have to admit I cannot do what I always did and how I always did it.  Some days I will still amaze myself.  Some days I won’t.  Youth and vitality have gone and now I must find a way to peacefully accept what I am capable of.  I have been planning ahead.  I refuse to accept that I will lose myself, my sense of personal identity.  I am still the core of who I always have been.  The positives outweigh the negatives.  It is okay if others do not see it.  I know it.   Love and service will always be at my core.  Erenst Hemmingway said something about loving too much but the gist of it in this context is that aging means we will lose things but we must not lose ourselves. 

Yes, this is foreign land and we might even feel foreign to our own self.   But, in reality, we have paid attention to Elders, to the aging that aged before us.  We have role models.  We have to stop batting at windmills.  We are become a more compressed identity. We have flung off the bindings of who we meant to be.  We get to be us.  Love us or leave us.  Give ourselves credit for who we have become, that we are even here to age, at all. 

Carol Desjarlais 10.25.2024