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| Not so scary really when you think of it this way. |
I often tell people I'm not worried about aging, but I think writing a blog every single day for a whole year leading up to my 40th birthday is proof that I'm lying to myself. I do care, and here's why...
Turning 40 should be a milestone, because everything should be a milestone. Graduating high school is a milestone. Graduating college is a milestone. Getting your first job is a milestone. Meeting your spouse, marrying your spouse, and having your first child together: all of them are milestones.
A milestone of any kind is a chance to celebrate everything you've gone through to reach that moment. When Andy and I celebrated 12 years together this past December, my mind wasn't on what would happen in the 13th year. My mind was on how grateful I was for so many wonderful moments I'd shared with him up to that point. I thought of mostly the good and even some of the bad, but above all I thanked God for the gift of this wonderful guy in my life. Reaching the milestone isn't about the day after, but about all the days before.
But for all my happy moments, all my still-looking-good-for-39 gleeful days, I'm still a victim of ageism. People judge me. They laugh at me for my taste in music, or the way I dress, or my failure to see Hunger Games in the movie theater. They may not say so, but I know they're out there just hating me for who I am! Laughing at me! Mocking me! Getting together with their fellow younger people and just LOLing their full heads of hair off at how dumb and old I am!!!
Well, alright...maybe not.
I'm getting carried away, as we all do sometimes. We see the world as us-versus-them whether or not we want to, whether or not it really is. And we judge ourselves much harsher than others judge us. It's just natural, and it's quite normal. We are, all of us, self-ageists.
We look at where we are, we celebrate our lives and our marriages, our kids and our grand-kids, our houses and our careers, but then right there in the midst of our happiest moments, we look off at others with envy and a sigh. "I used to be that young," we think, and "I remember those days without a care in the world, just running around barefoot in the grass".
It's not all that morbid though, this ageist thinking. It's just once again an opportunity for perspective. Life changes. We change. Our hair slowly changes color over time and recedes. Our joints tighten up and crack more often. Our desire to run around barefoot in the grass is replaced by our desire to sit back in a chair and watch others do it. It's natural.
So as I once again pause to reflect on my age, and remind myself to stop being self-ageist, and stop worrying about others being ageist to me, I am also once again touched by a profound sense of gratitude. I'm grateful to have reached 39. My friend Sal didn't. My mother's first husband didn't. Matthew Shepard didn't. 10-year-olds with cancer didn't. For every moment I complain about getting older, I'm reminded of the blessing of this age. It's just 39. And soon, it'll be just 40. It's a somewhere-in-the-middle age. A somewhere-past-youth age. A somewhere age, like every other.
Somewhere out there, people remember their loved ones who left us too soon. Somewhere out there, people remember their own lives back when they were 39. Somewhere out there, people think about what their lives will be like when they reach 39. Somewhere, right here, I'm still thinking about it. And I'm smiling. And I'm happy. And I think that life is really, really good. And I should stop worrying so much, and start laughing a bit more. And maybe sometime soon, I'll go running through the grass barefoot, and appreciate the sun still shining brightly overhead.
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