I noticed the soft lines under my eyes in this morning’s light. I didn’t like them and felt a little offended to be honest.
But I just did yoga with 4 women at least 20 years older than me.
I just recently thought of my friend’s birthday – the friend who passed away in high school.
Aging is a privilege.
I sometimes forget that the best case scenario is that we are all old together.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t ask for a light therapy mask for Christmas.
What I used to fear was vanity when I was younger, I now see as care.
Similarly, what people so desperately tried to convince me was naivete, or overly idealistic, I now know to be my standards. I expect more and better of people and systems and communities. That’s not youthful foolishness. Those are my principles. That’s the bar I set. I believe in more. Out of all of it.
For the past 30 years or so, I have let people tell me to “be realistic”. And because I am a creative, a poet, a person drawn to things a little magical and mystical and spiritual, I have thought maybe they have a point. But actually, they don’t. Because the truth is, I am also incredibly realistic. I am logical, pragmatic, and systems oriented. My expertise is human behavior. I do actually know that we all can be better. And I don’t mean that in a perfectionist way – I mean that in a character and decency way.
That we let one another off the hook and allow one another to be less than decent is laziness and foolishness, but it is not necessity. People can behave appropriately and treat one another respectfully. People can operate businesses and organizations without exploiting others. People choose greed, bitterness, cruelty, and to overall indulge their worst impulses and call it “freedom”. It may be in our nature, but we are not without the tools to do better. We are not slaves to our worst selves and our society is not either.
The idea that the older I get, the more willing I would be to accept “the way it is” couldn’t be more wrong. The older I get, the more sure I am that nothing has to be anything.
I have sat in the depths. My own and other people’s. I know the mire. I know the weight. I am not believing in better because I don’t know worse. I do. And that’s why I know. I know a thousand things that don’t have to be the way they are.
One of gifts of age is calling b.s. out for what it is.
And “that’s just the way it is” is a cop out. I don’t think everything that is subpar can be revamped or improved quickly or simply or without growing pains. But it surely won’t get any better if no one ever bothers trying because it’s “too hard”. We criticize teens and children for giving up too easily when things get hard, but what if that’s what we’ve been setting the example for?
I think more of the future now than I used to. My kids are older and my brain has space for it now. I think of my next 30, 40, 50 years. I think of the life I want to look back on. The choices I want to be proud of. The memories I want to smile at. The sacrifices I want to see the value of (and the things I want to stop sacrificing). I think of the challenges I hope to have met with grace and dignity and strength and integrity. I think of what I hope to have spent my time doing, and who with and who for.
I hope to spend very little time letting things slide because “that’s the way it is” if the “way it is” is a heap of trash. I hope to spend only a little time thinking about the lines on my face while I make more. I hope to be full to the top with the living of a life and the efforts of a person who believes better things are always possible.
We can not live better than in seeking to become better.
Socrates
