What Does Aging Mean To You? Downhill Is The Fun Part - Part 3 of 3

I am an action-oriented woman, in motion, always changing, but I have completed most of this now. I am not done, but I have done most that I have wanted. I get to sit now in the seat and watch life.

I see young mothers and young families pulling their baby garb out of their cars to head inside the grocery store, and I look at them, barely remembering those times. I look at them with joy that I have the memory and also joy that I don’t have to do that part of my life anymore.

Those times were so busy, and then, like catching that shooting star out of the corner of my eye, I am writing about this today, and I don’t know where the time has gone. And I don’t know where the time will go. I find myself in the not planning phase for a change.

My partner and I were discussing this, and he said that he had never planned. That besides grad school, life for him has just happened. Maybe it is because of his experience of being drafted at 21 for Vietnam. I sat a bit in awe of this notion as surely this has never been my personality. I am a planner, a doer, a get shit done kind of chick, I can’t relate to life just happening, but in many ways, life does just happen. No matter how much we think we control, as the cliche goes, life is often what happens when we are busy making other plans. My unique relationship and living arrangement with him have taught me how to lean into the idea of just living. My grandfather, who lived to 103, spent the last six or seven years of his life waiting to see when and how death would take him. He lived his life, but there was a pragmatism to his thinking. Something is comforting about pragmatism.

I am sure I am too young to think like this, which surprises my notion of aging. There is a calm rhythm to my life, a routine, a loose structure, and in all of this, a unique freedom to explore whatever I want. Perhaps it is not knowing what’s next, perhaps it is the downhill part, or maybe it is just living and seeing what that feels like. Maybe it is the open road ahead and a full tank of gas.

This is what aging means to me these days. Just settle down, put my feet up, chill out, and stop. Just stop. Covid has definitely aged me. I think it has aged all of us in different ways. I got more done in the last two and half years for my business, my home, and my life than probably the first twenty years of my business life. Maybe this feeling of quiet and waiting is exactly what I need for the time in my life right now. Waiting is interesting, alertness coupled with patience and curiosity. This is comforting too.

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