Is Ageing Gracefully Something To Fear or Embrace?
I thought getting older was about your body ageing. The grey hair, the eyesight, the hormonal shifts. I embraced all of that, I felt like a woman moving into her prime. I was passing the peak of the ‘nurturing everyone else phase’ and moving into the liberated wild woman!
I envisioned a life of belly laughter and caring so much less about what everyone else thought. A life where I finally knew myself and my wants and had the time and (hopefully) the money to go out and get them.
I was so focused on looking forward with excited anticipation, I had forgotten to say goodbye to the past. I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge the things left undone.
The life I wouldn’t have.
The moments that now belonged to those heading into their twenties and thirties.
I had a moment this week. I was watching a teen rom-com with my daughter and I realised that the storyline didn’t apply to me anymore. I was not heading off to college, I didn’t have all my huge life choices ahead of me, I, in fact, was a middle-aged mum with a daughter who soon enough would be taking her first steps down that path.
Of course, I had realised that before. I was fully aware of the years passing and of the fun, I had had celebrating my 40th. I’ve always said that ageing doesn’t bother me and physically it doesn’t. I am genuinely proud of every white wisdom hair that sprouts from my head. I love the lines on my face that prove I’ve laughed more than I’ve frowned, and I believe there is a confidence that can only be acquired through experience, which shows itself in a woman’s walk. As Maya Angelou said in Phenomenal Woman…
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
Perhaps I’d been ignoring all the other things that my age was impacting. For the first time it dawned on me that certain doors were closing, certain experiences wouldn’t be mine to remember. And it hurt.
I found myself grieving for choices that wouldn’t come again, even though when they were mine I’d made them happily.
I felt sadness for the days I wished away or was too shy to make the most of. A part of me wanted to reach back into my history and call a ‘do-over’. I wanted to call a pause on everything and bargain my way into more time, and not just any time, that special youthful unknown. Sitting with that feeling, I wondered if perhaps it was the ‘unknown’ that I wanted more than the experience of youth all over again. I didn’t want to be young and unsure, I didn’t want to live through the harder times that teach you so much, and help you grow into the strong, independent people we become. I was proud of the greys, but I didn’t want to earn them all over again.
My grief wasn’t over a lack of living, my life has always been full and rich.
My grief was for the possibilities hidden behind doors that were now closing for good.
There are few opportunities that age can take from you. I’m a firm believer in the idea that it is never too late, not for anything. But age and indeed the wisdom it gives us becomes the lens by which we view the world. The chance to learn how to paint and express myself through colour wasn’t disappearing, but the chance to go to art school full of youthful insecurity and arrogance was.
I can’t go back, and I wouldn’t want to. Instead, I can travel ahead and do things my way, a different way for sure, but one just as rich with adventure.
We tell our children that the future is bright and filled with potential, that they can be and do anything they want, but that doesn’t just apply to them. That potential never has to end, it’s just that we have to actively seek it out and refused to fall into the trap of routine.
So now with this new insight, I have a sense of urgency to discover the experiences still shyly lurking against the wall inside my mind. I want to hold my hand out to them, coaxing them onto the dance floor so we can spin and laugh together.
I’m swapping closing doors for new lenses, and the ‘undone’ is starting to look like the next grand adventure.
