Scenes from the Journey: A New Age

Sunday, May 8, 2016

A New Age

The blink of an eye. Two shakes of a lamb's tail. A nanosecond. That's how long it has taken me to go from zero to seventy-nine. Within viewing distance of the bit eight-oh. Age is the topic today.

At seventy I wrote the book on aging (well, a book on aging). And then I pretty much forgot about it for these almost ten years.

But it's back in my sights, filling the viewfinder of my camera's lens. At seventy I admitted (to myself and anyone else who was listening) that time was not going to reverse itself. I was getting older.

Now I'm at a new phase. Conversations with my peers often detour into the Age Talk. Conversations with my ten-years-younger friends are becoming advice sessions on the details of aging. Even my children, now in their early fifties, are becoming acutely aware of age and the dangers of a feckless approach to health.

So that's the preamble. Where's the amble? Well, one thing I didn't expect is how easy it has been to let go of Doing. As a (lifelong) Capricorn, I have been a go-getter, never without a project or two, able to multitask at an enviable speed. My friend Sally used to remind me of my motto at fifty: it it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing fast. That was me on speed. At speed. No one could keep up with me when I walked. This intensity was my persona.

Well, the mask is being removed! For the first time in my life I am floating free. I do have a project in the sense that I will have to promote and market the newly published cookbook, but other than that I'm just hanging out—and in the slowest possible way.

My perspective has changed. Although I'm aware of occasional worries, I no longer obsess about them. I think I have realized the validity of that much-repeated truism: life goes on. For the first time I am actually aware that life will follow its merry path with or without my meddling. I get to do nothing, if that's what I want to do.

Here I am in excellent health, no worries, and a soft life. Uh-oh. Sounds like the precondition for an attack of guilt. But no. Not yet, anyway. I'm just enjoying what comes. It's a New Age!

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