That Pesky Number

I read an article recently explaining how some experts explained what “middle age” actually is. The age?  35. Well, I’ve sped right by that. Now, what do I do? What do I do with whatever time I have left? I went down the rabbit hole for a while of “whoa, time is flying, and I DON’T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT!” I was a bit of a mind-blower, I won’t lie.

Then I started thinking about people who died at a young age. My cousin Kelly at 16 when childhood cancer and the complications from that wore her out. My friend Emily died two months after her 40th birthday. Others who, even if their age was higher, were still full of life, like my Dad at 81.

I’m not trying to bring you down. I promise.

We get up, live our lives, and go back to bed. Some days are good, and some days are bad, right? Normal everyday things until we get something we must focus on, a change that stops us and has us take stock of our lives. Then we carry on. 

Even as fragile as life is, we keep going. We deal with loss, grief, and hurt. But we also deal with love, laughter, triumph, and joy. We see our families grow and achieve. We do the same ourselves. 

Sure, I hear you saying, “Well, what about mistakes I’ve made?”, “What about my screw-ups?” Let’s acknowledge those. In situations where we perceive we could have done better, we need to cultivate compassion for ourselves. That takes time. We have to move through the pain of it, then view the lessons and embrace ourselves as the works in progress we are. Perfection is a nice way to shame ourselves into never being good enough. We are good enough, no matter what we’ve done.

Think about it - we make decisions based on what is happening and what we know at the time. So the “I should have known better.” Well, looking back on that, you now have a different knowledge and you could go to the “should have known better” route. That’s an old pattern of punishment. It’s an excellent way to make you feel terrible. Is this something we should keep doing - “I should have…”?  

Consider decisions at 16, 25, 32, 47, 55, 62, etc. With time comes knowledge and experience. What I chose at 16 is different than what I’d do now. If you have elders around you, listen to their stories. They have not only the experiences but can help you figure out how to live life even better. They are the wise ones and could even be cautionary tales.

Here’s the point - age is just a number. I often wonder if Santisima Muerte has the list of people to bring back to Spirit form (death) when we’ve accomplished what we’re supposed to and not the age. It’s the time living and experiencing that makes us “old” or “young.” What if it is the transformations we make in our lives and others is that measure our lives, not the age?

We always talk about life is short and that we have to make the most of it. It puts pressure on us to DO things. But it’s the experience that counts. Doing things can be like checking off a list; it’s almost unconscious and makes little impact. Experiencing puts it into our bones and makes it part of us. If we see opportunities and the mystical everyone, well, that makes it a little shinier, doesn’t it?

So go out there and have those little magical experiences every day. Look for the gifts that are presented to you. And heal where you need to heal. Each day is different and sometimes you need to sit down and rest your tired mind. Be kind in that.

Forget about the age number, even if your knees remind you of it every once in a while. This is your path, don’t let anyone, including yourself, tell you something can or can’t happen because of age. You know what you’re capabilities are and what potential is in front of you, no matter what those numbers tell you.