Okay, so today I ended 68 years of living on this third rock
from the sun and began my 69th year. Holy Cow! It's a little hard to wrap my
brain around that. But, even more difficult is realizing that I'm only two
years from replacing the number 68 with the number 70. It's something I never
imagined.
Often you hear someone ask a question like, "How does
it feel to be (fill in the age)?" Well, as I usually reply, "about
the same as I felt yesterday only with one more minor ache." In reality, I
don't know if I have one more ache or not. I really don't have much in the way
of aches or pains. For that I feel lucky and blessed.
Now, my brain (perhaps it's my lizard brain) is saying to
me, "you're 30-something." However, my body is saying, "stop
kidding yourself." What a conundrum. Which do I believe? And so goes the
aging process.
So many people say they are "39" like the late
comedian, Jack Benny who was 39 for decades before he finally passed away. Then
there are those who simply don't want to accept their age and don't want to
state a number or make believe they don't celebrate their birthdays any longer.
There are jokes about being over the hill. Which hill? I've been over a lot of
hills during my lifetime. Or the joke that goes, "How do you know when
you're really old? When the candles for the cake cost more than the cake."
Okay, time to face up to the facts. You can lie about your
age. You can make believe it isn't important. You can stop celebrating your
birthdays. You can tell jokes about it. The hard fact and reality is, even with
the best face lift money can buy or all the Jim Beam or single malt, 16 year
old Scotch you can get plastered with, NOTHING stops the clock. Underneath it
all, you really are getting older by the nanosecond.
Why fight it? I actually believe that, while there are a few
. . . okay, a number . . . a bunch of negative facets of the aging process, the
benefits of wisdom, slowing down, smelling more roses (and coffee), letting go
of what other people think - especially about you, your corny jokes, your weird
ideas and your no longer perfect (was it ever) body, this can be, should be
and, if you accept it, is the best time of your life.
Birthdays should be YOUR personal holiday. Your year doesn't
begin on January 1st unless you just happened to be born on January 1st. Your
year begins with whatever day of the year you left the warm, comfortable
surroundings of your mother's womb and began facing "your brave new
world." Your birthday, whatever day of the year, month and week of the
year it falls on is your most important holiday. You can forget about New
Years, President's Day, Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day, Veterans Day,
Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and all
the Jewish, Muslim and other religious holidays as well as Mother's Day and
Father's Day. Not one of them is as important as your birthday because if you
had never celebrated your day of coming into this world, you wouldn't exist and
none of the myriad of other holidays mean a thing.
So, To Birthday or Not to Birthday has only one logical
answer. Party Hardy in whatever way suits you. And, since it's YOUR day to do
anything you want to with it - you can celebrate it on another day if it's more
convenient. You can expand it to a long weekend or even a week if you choose
to. Be proud of the years you've been on this Earth. Every one of them is
marked with achievement and each in its own way is a badge of courage. In order
to reach whatever age you are, be it 30, 50, 70 or 90 you've overcome much,
accomplished much and come a long way, baby. Bask in it.
So, here I am, embarking on my 69th year on the planet. I'm
older, wiser and, frankly more motivated to accomplish things on my life list
because I don't know how many more sands are in my hour glass of life. I'm not
fretting or concerning myself about that unknown except I know that my days
future are definitely less than my days past. I'm not regretting or allowing
the past to control the future. I only have right now, as I write this, to
live, for sure. I can't change history, so why should I worry about it. But, I
can have a whale of a great time in the future for however long that may be.
I know I'll die with unfinished business, so I'm not going
to attempt to cram everything in. I'm simply going to live every moment of
every day to the fullest so that as the time to take my last breath approaches,
I'll have fantastic memories of a life well lived with all the scars, mistakes,
loves, beauty and accomplishments. And, I hope, like George Burns, I have
something spectacular planned for my 100th birthday. But, I'm in no rush to get
there.
4 comments:
It's "your" special day, #1 or #10 or #69 it's still "your" special day.
Happy Birthday!
My age has so little to do with my daily life that it seems almost irrelevant. Except I feel freer to live it now than I did when I was young. For my birthday each year we go to my favorite steak house--the one so expensive you have to have a "reason" for going there. :)
Exactly, Rob - and I enjoyed my thoroughly. I hope you practice celebrating your "special" day fully, too.
Age shouldn't have anything to do with our "special, personal holiday." The disconcerting point is that too many of us don't learn about being free (some, unfortunately never do) until we have allowed so many years to lapse. Being taught about personal freedom and celebrating our own unique lives should be taught from infancy. But, since so many parents aren't truly free, they can't be advocates for it.
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