Older is Better: Live the Hell Out Of This Year, OK?

How did I get to be middle-aged without actually growing up? – Meghan Daum

Oh, birthdays. I know: I’m supposed to be coy and feel embarrassed or secretive about the fact that I’m 47 years old this week. That’s the “rule” isn’t it? As a woman especially, when asked I’m supposed to giggle and lie about my age and my weight and the fact that I colour my hair.

Well screw you, cultural standard! (Do you know anyone over the age of 10 who doesn’t colour their hair?)

Who are we keeping our “real” age from, anyway? And who seriously cares? If I tell you I’m 35 and you think “Hm. A few hard years maybe…I would have pegged her as older” or if I tell you I’m 53 and you think “Wow. How inspiring! She really takes care of herself” you know what? It doesn’t change what I actually look like! So it may as well just be what it is.

My age is very inappropriate for my behaviour - someone awesome

The truth for me is that life becomes sweeter with years. We are inundated with press about "defending" ourselves against the “ravages of time;” this idea that age not only kills our beauty but robs us somehow – and it doesn’t just “kill and rob,” it devastates! The noise is crazy-making: Age is not a goddamned wildfire, laying waste to everything lush and lovely in our lives! Yes, time itself is never rediscovered, but age brings so many glorious births and creates an original and wise beauty that can only come with experience.

By mid-life we are free. We’ve learned to quickly separate the meaningful wheat from the useless chaff, so we care less. About virtually everything (the proverbial “no fucks to give”). We have the courage to break from the pack and follow what’s true. We’ve acquired the wisdom to need, want and chase less “stuff.” We are potent not because we are young and effortlessly sexy but because we have been churned up by life from the inside out and lived through it. Rather than randomly rained down on our lovely young heads, our power is a deep river, authentic and earned. “Go ahead. Try me. You have no idea what I can take…” 

That strength, that certainty, that solidity as a person – THAT is beautiful. Not the soft, naïve, fluttery-eyelash, pretend confidence of the young, but the coalesced, experienced, straight-in-the-eye muscle of having lived.

Only age can give the gift of perspective. We breathe more deeply at 45 than at 20. We accept our gifts and weaknesses, and know the difference. We are less easily offended and less awed by our own brilliance (thank you, Jesus!). Age brings a deep sense of gratitude. And gratitude, as I’ve written often, carries more of everything good in its wake.

There’s an old joke among women: “If I’d known the body I hated in my 20’s was the one I’d covet in my 30’s, I would have appreciated it more. If I’d known the body I criticised in my 30’s was the one I’d long for in my 40’s, I would have worn more bikini’s. If the body I loathed in my 40’s …” you get the idea.  I think age is the same. Which is why you need to appreciate and make the most of the year you’re in. Because sure as shit you’ll look back and think “damn…”

I admit to little patience for the boo-hoo and whine of time passing; all that “I’m not having a birthday this year” silliness. As if not marking the occasion will somehow buy you back the year. 

We all know the days are long but the years are short – and if you don’t know it by middle age, you have not been paying attention. So cowboy the hell up and make the days count, whatever that means for you. This is no time for fear: “Fortune favours the brave!” Happiness, it turns out, favours it too.

In my experience the ease with which I embrace another birthday is in direct relation to how much control I took of my life that year. The years you let just happen to you? Those birthdays are not-so-much. And a lot of us have a lot of them.

As someone who let life “happen to her” for maybe more years than not, I appreciate that some years we just don’t have it in us to be inspired (or whatever). The point, though, is to not live in that treading-water place; the point is to start again and make the days, the months, the year mean something. Something more than just paying the bills and fixing the car and killing yourself over what the hell to put in a kids’ lunch every day. All of that matters in the micro, but none of it has meaning in itself. Rise up. Take the eagle view of your fabulous self. And for the love of everything good, run interference on living a life of “if only…”

“The problem is that you think you have time.” I am quoting someone… Buddha? I don’t know, but I keep the reminder close. A year can be a slippery fish and I am reluctant to let too many more get away.

Instead, I intend to pull that sucker out, fillet it like a pro, add some spice and enjoy the hell out of it. The years can just support existence, or they can actively sustain and nourish. We get to choose how it goes.

I’m 47 years old this year (in case you hadn’t heard).  Come with me. Know in your bones that because “this too shall pass,” you will take the next 12 months and make them delicious. And make them count like the rest of your happy life depends on it. Because of course, it does. xx