I can hear the fear in my friends voice when she tells me she is turning 62 on her next birthday. 62!! She can’t believe it. And sure, the time does feel like it passes more quickly the older you get. I’m not sure why that is. One theory I have is that the older you get, the smaller one day, one week and one month will be of your entire life up until that point. So if I live to be 100 years old, then 1 year will only be 1% of my entire life! While 1 year of my entire life when I was 5, made up 25% of what I had experienced so far. No wonder waiting for Santa on Christmas felt like an eternity as a child.
My relationship to aging have developed over the years. When I was a young teen, all I wanted was to be older and grow up! When you finally were there, and maybe had a few children, a job and all the responsibilities filled your life, and the time flew by. Suddenly I was 50 and I realized I was on the other end of live – the second part. I could see it in the mirror! The gray hairs starting to appear and everything was suddenly 10 cm lower down on the body that it used to be. No cream or lotion in the world would ever make me look like 30 again. And is that even something I wanted?
Today my children are all grown up, and I have even had the joy to have several grandchildren! I feel fortunate to have got this far through life, and to have got the chance to age. I can actually feel happy to get one year older. One year more of new experiences with the ones I love. Long gone are the days of comparing myself with other people, because I know my worth, and I know it has nothing to do with the way I look. It is all the experience that I have gathered over the years I have been living, and the relationships I have formed through the years that matters. The older I have got, the more I have dared to do, which have lead to more experiences.
At 60 now, I feel like i’m surfing on a big wave, taking me through my second phase of life. Im at the edge of ‘middle aged’ and am now to decide what I want the third act to look like. it is an unwritten page, with less responsibilities than the previous one, and more freedom than the first one. I am no youth who have to suddenly decide what to do with my life, and I don’t have to worry about my career. What a bliss to have come this far.
I once read that us humans are like trees with their ring – we carry all our years in us simultaneously. We never leave a year behind, be are all ages at the same time! This can be a nice way to look at aging, the days you look at yourself and feel ‘old’. To you who still feel anxious about aging, I have written down some benefits you can enjoy as you collect more years:
As you age, you start to realize the truth in the cliché that the beauty comes from within. And hopefully you have stopped comparing yourself to other people and strange ideals, and feel more confident in yourself. You will have more and more life experience to fall back on when making decisions. The wrinkles and scars that have appeared on your body are signs of life! A body that have lived will have marks, and that is amazing and something to be proud of! Happiness and laughter, tears and sorrow will leave traces, and that is called LIFE! And last but not least: you stop caring so much about what other people think – life is simply too short for that!
If all the things I have mentioned above doesn’t help, there is one more important thing to consider: Regardless if you enjoy getting older or not, it is definitely not that bad if you think of the alternative.
Here you can enjoy a video from my 60th birthday party we celebrated in July 2020! ❤️ (sorry, it’s only in Swedish).
Love, Marie