Seems like I’m having a lot of conversations about aging these days. Or maybe I’m just noticing them more. Some are stray comments similar to …
I’m turning 50 this year!
I’m in my 40s and my body doesn’t work like it used to!
I’m approaching 30! Is this even happening?!
I’m also fortunate* to be able to engage in deeper conversations about aging.
Do you remember what it was like when you turned 30?
I don’t feel on the inside what I look like on the outside.
As an older woman in a youth-oriented culture, I feel invisible.
As a 60/70/80-something, I’m determined to restore my physical capabilities to continue enjoying life.
I am not my body
Intellectually I know I am more than my body, and yet, I’m still concerned about my ability to thrive in the physical world. For over 60 years, I’ve relied on my body’s capacity to adapt and heal. In fact, when I’ve faced challenges related to family/friends/jobs, I’ve turned to physical activities to help me cope. In the busyness of my former life, it was easy to forget about my age as I powered through.
These days, I can’t look away from my physical limitations. Managing this illness has been a full-time job. Every time I recite my birthdate to medical professionals, my age is there staring me in the face. Even though I enjoy deep conversations about almost everything, I will not lie: I am fearful of getting old and often prefer to ignore it or intellectualize it.
The thing is, these techniques don’t quell the fear. I know this to be true, because I attempt to alleviate the pain from that fear through consuming food and drink and media, and working.
Becoming familiar with that fear is a better technique for me. I do this by reciting from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Fear:
I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old.
Becoming familiar is much more than memorizing the lines. It’s sitting for awhile with the feelings that the words engender. It’s repeating this practice.
Repetition helps me avoid the pitfall of believing I can think my way out of the fear. Hanh writes:
We shouldn’t just leave it to our intellectual understanding (“Yes, yes of course, now I’m young, but one day I’ll get old”). That’s just an abstract notion that brings no benefit, especially since our mind usually works to repress and forget about it right away after we say it.
Practicing helps to lessen the fear’s power over me so that I can live happily in the reality that includes growing older.
I am not my job
I’m not working at the moment, a painful situation on occasion. I know that I am more than my career, and yet, I feel lost at times without the validation of my worth as a paid professional.
A few years ago I was thinking about taking a long break from my job. I kept putting it off until my body made the decision for me. In 2021 I had to interrupt the day with an emergency trip to the ER. The interruption extended to a week, then a month, then many months. The interruption of my regularly scheduled life continues.
How could I let this happen? Surely there were signs of dysfunction. How did I not see them?
Fear was the driving force behind my unwillingness to pay attention to the signals my body was giving me. I thought that I needed to earn as much as I could before stepping away from the job. Duty, recognition, and the joy of collaboration also held me in the job. All laudable, except that they masked how unbalanced my life had become.
I knew intellectually that the benefits of the job were not as important as my health and well-being, but didn’t think the time was right to make a big change. I believed that I had the situation under control.
I was not listening, but my body was keeping score. As I kept ahold of my routine, I was unprepared for the monumental change that was about to engulf me. This passage from Hanh’s book jumps out:
All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
My professional life is dear to me, and I was not ready for being abruptly separated from it. Hanh describes my unpreparedness:
If we practice and are able to release, we can be free and happy right now, today. If we can’t let go, we will suffer not only on the day when we’re finally forced to do so, but right now today and every day in between, because fear will be constantly stalking us.
I suffered in 2021 and 2022 as I navigated the illness and felt compelled to constantly consider returning to work even though I knew it wouldn’t have been the right decision. Fear was stalking me. Last fall, I told my employer I would not be returning from medical leave. It was a tough decision, but the right one.
As I participate in my healing process and rediscover joys I’d abandoned decades ago, I’ve flipped the narrative: my regularly scheduled life is not interrupted — it’s thriving (without a formal job). I plan on returning to the workforce one day. But not today.
Today I’ll be reading The Summer Day:
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean— the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?—Mary Oliver
*Not everyone wants to go deep. I do. See intensity and Diamond League Finals.
You know you're writing a book, right? Thank you for sharing the wisdom. Hugs!
Q:“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
A: Living a wild life with Leah