The Magic of Being 50

      

     Yesterday was my 50th birthday. Monday I received my first piece of mail from AARP. I laughed.  Over the past few weeks I overheard many snippets of conversation related to wanting to be 20 or 30 again. Not me. I want to be 50.

     My body is different than it was at 20, 30 or even 40. Menopause gave me my very own mustache. Cuts and scrapes take a few more days to heal. Although the fuzz on my arms is still brown, the rest of my hair is decidedly gray.

    The lines, wrinkles, scars and other ways gravity pulls on me are trails in the map of where I’ve been. I haven’t felt the need to dye my hair, buy “age defying” face cream or worry about my uneven skin tone. I’ve lived. I don’t want to look like a blank slate.

   I feel some aches and pains. My spurts of moving fast don’t last as long as they used to. I can’t lift as much but I can carry it further.

    Physically I feel a bit like I’m aging in reverse. I was born with a rare knee disorder that began impacting what I could do physically in my early teens. At 50, with two bionic knees, I can do things I couldn’t do at 20 or 30.

    I love the sense of wholeness and okay that continues to deepen. At 20 and even 30 I often felt like a collection of disparate pieces loosely corralled in skin. Many of those pieces seemed like things that needed to be fixed right now. The urgency has morphed into acceptance and quiet determination. I’m a work in progress. I want to still be saying that when I’m 80.

     In my 20’s and 30’s I felt an internal pressure to find out who I am and what I’m about. I looked at that as some kind of big arrival. It’s not. There are many arrivals. Each leads to more discovery and surprises.

     The core of me remains constant. As I get better at listening to my soul and surrendering, the way that core shows itself becomes more and more fluid. Now I am more sure of who I am and less able to define that.

     Even the core bits I stumbled onto in my 20’s rest differently inside me. I’m still adventurous. Adventures these days are motivated more by a desire to explore than a need to rebel. Rules mean less. I break and bend them when they don’t fit. The “rules” are no longer something I need to fear, feel pressured by or define myself against.

    I don’t have an issue with age. In my 20’s I heard over and over that I’d grow out of that. Age would matter more as I got older. It hasn’t so far. My youngest friend is in her early 30’s. My oldest celebrated her 80^th birthday a couple years ago.

    Yes, having more years on this Earth can provide more opportunities for experience and depth of experience….but that’s not a given. I’ve met people in their teens and twenties whose experience and understanding of themselves surpasses that of my peers.

    Aging is inevitable, but growing old is a choice. Old is a state of mind and spirit that has nothing to do with how many years my body is wearing. I know people who were old at 30. Old is about rigidity, lack of engagement in life, loss of curiosity, choice and closing off to new things.

    I’ve seen those seeds in many of my peers. A few years ago I was part of a revealing discussion about teens and cell phones. There were four of us, all in the 45 to 55 age range. As the discussion moved more into exclamations of “these kids today” and how texting was going to ruin the English language I felt more and more uncomfortable. We weren’t old enough to be doing that.

    Each of us has been on the receiving end of at least a few of those “You kids and your ___. I don’t understand” statements. I remember in my 20’s beginning to hear the fear behind those declarations. The speaker put this thing they didn’t understand in the category of youthful folly for fear that it actually represented the way life might be passing them by.

    The world is full of things I don’t understand or participate in. Most of that has nothing to do with age. At 50 I am more aware of what’s important to me and what interests me. I’m more discerning about what I invest myself in. That lets me be less swayed by trends, whether it’s this year’s fashion or the latest cure all supplement discovered in a South American rain forest.

    Lack of discernment does more to put me in the position of missing something than age does. Having a deeper awareness of what’s important to me means I am less likely to miss something because I’m not so distracted by shiny objects and what society says I need to keep up with.

    I have childhood memories of just being me and that being okay. Around the time I turned eight that began to disappear. From my teens into my 30’s I rarely felt that way. At 40 that sense of being me and being enough began to come back but it was fleeting. At 50 I see the possibility of feeling that way most of the time.

    No, I don’t want to be 20 or 30 or even 40 again. At 50 I’m comfortable in my own skin a lot of the time and pretty happy with who I am. I wouldn’t give that up for anything.