Ever think about the journey?When I was much younger, life seemed everlasting, stretched out before me, the end as far away as the horizon. Days were long, sometimes interminable-feeling, morning and night seeming completely disconnected from each other because of the endless hours to fill in between. Fun or not, the clock or calendar did not matter; time itself did not carry much weight because I always knew that there would be a tomorrow and when that one ended, another would just magically appear.
It wasn't until recently that when I see old people I think about their passage into the present. I used to take for granted that old people were just old - I was not readily cognizant of the fact that the elderly lady in the grocery store had not always been the way she appeared to me right then. I never stopped to ruminate on the fact that it had taken a lot of living for her to arrive before me with a wrinkled face, a puffy neck, blue-veined hands. What had she done, about which I had no idea? How many children did she raise, worry about doing the right thing for? How did she get through when there wasn't enough for the bills or when her parents died or her greatest plans fell through?
The transformation of my own self wasn't a huge deal until one day as I sat under the harsh lights before a salon mirror and noticed a small sag where there wasn't one before. I was unnerved. Fine wrinkles around my eyes didn't faze me, the fact that I'd been coloring gray strands every six weeks were things I had gotten used to ten years ago. But the skin on my neck had developed the slightest downward pull and the moment I saw that my outlook changed. I realized that no matter what I did, put up a fight or not, gravity was going to do its tricks, time was going to march it's way through my life they way it has every old person I have ever seen.
No one has arrived before me the way they appear. Every person has lived through their every dawn, every sunset, sick or well, happy or sad, rich or poor. There have been good days and bad, times when they thought they might not make it, times they prayed to never end. But they always do, they always end.
It's a journey for everyone and I really respect that.
3 comments:
I think about that all the time. Remember though, you are still young. Those old ladies had more than twice as many days as you have had so far.
No matter what happens to you the truth of one day following another infinitely will remain. It reminds me of the narration at the end of Barry Lyndon;
It was in the reign of George III that the above-named personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.
Your thoughts are a sign of maturity. In a good way, of course! We reach an amazing place in life when we not only accept that we are aging but revel in it. The concerns of our youth become secondary, even unimportant as our perspective changes. There are a lot of very good things about aging. But, hey you're young...enjoy your youth!!
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