It's a big year for a lot of my friends. This year, everyone turns 50. Many of the conversations we are having are centered around launching kids, aging parents and our own mortality. Thankfully, I have chosen a slightly different path by playing and traveling for much of my young life, having kids later than most of my friends and getting Cancer. I've lost all of my grandparents. My parents are still alive but life is hardly what I would call it. Both of my parents are 69 this year and both seem to spend their days waiting for imminent death. They are not healthy people and I have yet to figure out what brings them joy. What is the reason for this human experience? Is it to pine away in bitterness and anger over missed opportunities or the degradation of our physical bodies? Is it to leave this life with some sort of epiphany that will guide us to the next opportunity? Or does the light in our soul simply go out and that's it?
Who knows.
I'm not the first to ask this question nor will I be the last, but I have no qualms about sharing an interesting observation based on perspective and one of my very favorite quotes by Wayne Dyer.
"Change the way you see things and the things around you change."
Many of my friends are lamenting their 50th trip around the sun. No one wants to admit that they are 50 as if crossing over the 50th threshold is some sort of intolerable threshold. It's true that we begin to look older. Many of the men are gray, less fit, while the women are starting to show smile lines, a few gray hairs and body parts are heading southward. The bad choices of our young lives are starting to show outwardly and suddenly an AARP card is closer to our future. I am deathly afraid that my joints from the waste down are all going to start a mutiny. Already my left knee tells me that it's done with high impact activities and my right hip replacement is a constant reminder of my left hip's future. My cohort is aging. Aging is inevitable. We are all going to get old. That's just a reality, but how we age is another matter.
The death of a parent puts all of this in sharp perspective. Worse, is the slow decline of a parent who needs constant care. It grates on your soul in the sense that you know that your kids will one day have to take care of you in much the same way. Some of my friends have already given in. They've seen the end and have decided that pursuing love and joy and freedom are worthless because we're all just going to end up in the ground anyway, or in my case, go up in smoke. I am not deterred by this, having been a nurse for 12 years. I have already witnessed humanity's worst and I have already seen the extremes of the human life continuum. Life is what you make it. My husband's 93 year-old grandfather continues to smile and look positively toward his future as he witnesses great grandchildren, sunny days in southern California and continuing his few remaining friendships. He is not jaded one bit by the multiple years he endured taking care of his wife who suffered a slow decline of Alzheimer's and cancer. Instead, he is grateful for happy days between hard ones and the opportunity of a family visit.
For people turning 50 in my age group (mostly the women), no one wants to celebrate a birthday because it's an admission of age. It's a surrender. We are plagued by anxiety related to decreasing desirability to our male counterparts, that our post-menopausal state makes us less useful to the human race, and that our future is relegated to a title of "Grandma." As women, we can do a number of things to put off the effects of age. There are skin treatments, hair extensions, hair color, eyebrow pencils, artificial nails, eyelash extensions, make-up, perfume, and plastic surgery, none of which any woman is too principled to enlist in her quest to look a few years younger thus putting off the role of "old woman." Therefore, no one wants to broadcast their actual age, so celebrating a birthday is no longer actually celebrating. For what are we celebrating? Granny panties, reading glasses and support hose?
This is the part where I get on my proverbial soapbox and start scolding anyone who is grappling with their "mortality."
Life is about choice. You can choose to be happy or choose to be miserable. You can choose to get out in the world and make a difference or you can choose to wallow in your misery behind closed doors. You can choose to let a spouse guide you down a lifeless path or you can choose to make a stand that requires your spouse to live a life of joy and love at your side. You can choose to be affected by the bad news that streams in on the idiot box or you can choose to turn it off.
I choose life.
When you face a cancer diagnosis or the potential end of your life you realize how petty and stupid it is to choose sadness, shame, or suffering. It is ridiculous to waste your precious time on this Earth with people who don't value it. It is moronic to choose despair. Life is for living. It is an opportunity to celebrate each other and to cultivate love wherever you find it. It is to celebrate one more minute, one more opportunity, one more moment that you've been given.
Next year, I will be 50. I will shout it from the rooftops. I will share it with everyone I know because it will signify that I have endured. It will be evidence that I refused to choose despair or suffering or shame or sadness or being a moron. It will confirm that I value this life and the people in it, and that the choices I make are ones that continue to contribute to the youth of my heart. It will validate all of the efforts anyone and everyone has ever made to make my life worth living. The gratitude of my life is the proof that I love my husband, my children, my family, and my friends. It is the only proof of love. I choose to celebrate my 50th trip around the sun. I choose to be ecstatic that I made it! I GET TO be with my husband one more day. I GET TO watch the sun rise and fall on an Earth filled with oceans, trees, rivers, waterfalls, deserts, and mountains. I GET TO witness two young people declare their love for each other at a wedding. I GET TO ski, kayak, climb, play guitar, color, kick, punch, grapple, swim, or read a book. I GET TO love. Love my people and watch my children grow.
Sure, I've had to sacrifice some things including but not limited to body parts, flexibility, speed, strength, memory, my ability to perpetuate the species, or jump more than 12 inches vertically. It's true that our original capabilities change over time, and more sacrifices will be made.
But 50 years later, I am still here. I am proud to be here and I am grateful to those who have helped me get here.
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