What to embrace about 53??
Embracing 53 is in part about learning to love, or at the very least, accept, the “aging” process. “Aging” is an odd word to write, because it’s not quite what I mean — it sounds sort of like we are on the verge of senility or belong in an assisted living facility. Even the phrase “getting older” does not quite work, because it implies that we are old already. So, then, let us call this process “advancing.”
Some things about “advancing” really stink. Weight gain? Wrinkles? Onset of arthritis? Eek. It can be pretty scary and depressing.
What then, is there to embrace about “advancing”? For if we are to embrace this time and process in our lives, there has to be something worth embracing. For me, reflecting on this topic has been fruitful, for much of my life I feel as if I am a teenager in my insecurity about what I know about myself and life. There are some things I have come to know, and these are the things worth embracing.
Freedom
Traditionally, for women in their late forties and fifties, this time is accompanied by an empty nest and the freedom from (in part) responsibility for raising children. For me, that is not the case. I have a nearly 16-year-old, a 14 year-old, and a 5 year-old. I started late, and ended even later! Since many women are having children later in life, that finished-raising-children kind of freedom does not accompany this “advancing” stage of life.
However, I do feel a kind of freedom in my life right now. My first two children are nearly grown, and they do not need me in the way they used to, although I am still needed in many ways. My ex-husband can sometimes be counted on to take our older two if I need a break, and my loving husband is great about saying, “Hey, go take a day…or weekend… away.” Last year, when our family situation was really stressful, he surprised me with a visit from my sister and a weekend with her in Palm Springs, complete with massages.
I used to feel guilty about taking any time away from my children, especially when the older ones were younger and my time with them was already compromised by the fact that their father had them 30% of the time. I did not want to be away from them anymore than I already was, so I rarely took any extended time away. I do not feel guilty anymore, and that freedom from guilt allows me a sense of freedom to go out, to write and to occasionally get away by myself.
GOOD JUDGMENT
While I do not feel like I am a fount of wisdom, I do feel like I have developed good judgement through my experiences. Decision-making is a skill which involves rational consideration of the options, evaluation of consequences, and experience, and like anything else, the more we make decisions, the better we should get at making decisions. I feel like I offer good advice to my students and my children, like I can speak to balance between need and want, for myself and for others.
PERSPECTIVE
What one gains with age is simply a bigger world view and a broader sense of time. When you are a young person, difficulties often verge on tragedy because there is too little life experience with which to “read” them. Young people sometimes see this moment, this moment of difficulty, as huge, as irreconcilable, as life-changing, and maybe it will be life-changing, but perhaps not in the way they expected. One does not have to believe that everything happens for some cosmic or providential reason, but time allows the perspective that there may be a reason, or at least a result that is positive (or at least not as tragic as it might at first seem). Perspective allows adults with experience to see that they will indeed survive, that they have the strength to get through most things, that a difficulty/change/tragedy is a blip in our grand experience. When my father died, for example, I could barely breathe, and there was not a single thought that could comfort me. I will never see his passing as a good thing, but I was able to put it into perspective with time. My father passed away the day after the tragic shootings at Columbine. That helped me cope just a little. I was able to think, “At least I had my father for 63 years. At least I had a chance to say goodbye, to let him know that I was there for him, to sing his favorite hymns when he no longer seemed conscious of who we are. I am not those parents and friends dealing with the loss of a young person.” In time, I was able to see my father’s passing as an eventual opportunity for my mom to have a different life than the one she had with my father, who worried about money. She was able to have a life of travel and luxury with her new love. That did not make the loss easier. It just helped me see it differently.
Perspective has also allowed me to see that most things really do not matter. Perhaps this comes of too many years of reading Camus with my students, but really, most things do not matter. My relationships matter. My morals matter. My work matters (sometimes). My messy kitchen, the ding in the side of my new car, my water-soaked phone, my child’s sometimes less- than-stellar grades or behavior, the stain I didn’t notice on my shirt before I left the house, the friend with whom I no longer “click,” the imperfect shape I am in, that the dog peed on the carpet, the PTA President who said nasty things about me…you see my point. Hopefully, we dwell less on these things as we “advance” because in the grand scheme of things, they do not really matter.
ACCEPTANCE
It took me a long time to come to terms with who I am, and I still am not entirely there, but I’m finally settling into myself. I am not as thin as I want to be, nor as beautiful, accomplished, athletic, or well dressed. I am also not the perfect mom I hoped to be, but I am accepting that that is okay, and that I am okay. Not much has changed about how I feel about myself. Self love is a concept I have never embraced; self-acceptance is about as far as I go. It is funny, in an ironic sense, how I used to laugh at my mom for complaining about her fingernails until months before she passed away. “They look terrible,” she would say, showing me her short, rough nails, and I would reply, “Mom, you’ve had these nails for 85 years. It’s time to accept them. I struggle in the same way, but I’m getting there.
UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF CHANGE
Closely related to perspective is this understanding of the nature of change. I know I struggle with change. I struggle with my children being teenagers, replete with attitude and desire to be occasionally free of me. I struggle with my five-year-old, who is going to be six, when I swear he was just born, and helpless, and needed me every second. Having read and listened to Buddhist thinking, I have tried over the years to put a Buddhist slant on this concept for myself. Change is life; life is change. Humans will be more content when they accept this flow and change. Marriages would all last (or last longer) if individuals accepted change as part of the process, and every moment as impermanent. They would not do as I did (and still do on occasion) catastrophize every disagreement or problem. “How can I put up with him if he said that? I won’t! This is the end.”
I can still catastrophize now and then, but I am trying to allow ebb and flow, in my marriage, with my children, and in my judgement of myself.