And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
As humans, we have a love-hate relationship with age. When we are young, we embrace age and squeeze it to the very last minute (think, “I am four years, seven months, five days, and twelve hours old”). But as we enter that middle age, there is a tendency to hide from it. We start achieving the impossible by turning twenty seventeen years in a row or simply “not” having a birthday. With age come privilege and respect, but with age come responsibility and consequence. Not to be pessimistic, but the invention of age-reversing pills are still in the realm of impossible. So how do we learn to accept, and further, live gloriously no matter what our age?
Obviously I am no pundit on the matter, but I think it has something to do with regret. Or rather, avoiding regret. Living every second as if it is your last (I realize how ridiculously clichéd that sounds). But it’s only clichéd because enough people believe it and repeat is as a mantra. If we’ve taken every chance, expressed every feeling, shared every thought when we felt it necessary and appropriate, there is no reason to go back. We won’t deny an age of having occurred because we played it to its potential.
Already at twenty, I have minor regrets. Not enough for me to lie about my age or feel like I need to go back and redo it or pretend it hasn't happened yet. But I have felt that minor gnawing of that parasite regret that lives in our intestines. The heaviness of the throat. The feeling that nothing is going my way and that all should be forgotten or redone. But the feeling is short-lived.
It’s not living each moment because it’s supposed to mean something or trying to give each minute meaning, but living each moment the way you want to live it and being able to look back on it and think, “even if I could go back and do it differently, I wouldn’t.”
I can't say I've accomplished this way of thinking, but it's the plan at least.
Obviously I am no pundit on the matter, but I think it has something to do with regret. Or rather, avoiding regret. Living every second as if it is your last (I realize how ridiculously clichéd that sounds). But it’s only clichéd because enough people believe it and repeat is as a mantra. If we’ve taken every chance, expressed every feeling, shared every thought when we felt it necessary and appropriate, there is no reason to go back. We won’t deny an age of having occurred because we played it to its potential.
Already at twenty, I have minor regrets. Not enough for me to lie about my age or feel like I need to go back and redo it or pretend it hasn't happened yet. But I have felt that minor gnawing of that parasite regret that lives in our intestines. The heaviness of the throat. The feeling that nothing is going my way and that all should be forgotten or redone. But the feeling is short-lived.
It’s not living each moment because it’s supposed to mean something or trying to give each minute meaning, but living each moment the way you want to live it and being able to look back on it and think, “even if I could go back and do it differently, I wouldn’t.”
I can't say I've accomplished this way of thinking, but it's the plan at least.
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