The Thing About Getting Older...
Credit: @theomzproject
I don’t mean to oversimplify (though I’m about to), but it seems to me that the biggest thing about getting older is that you begin to run out of excuses.
What I mean by that is that, as the years go on, as our experiences educate us, and as we start to realize what we value, we realize that the only reason we aren’t where we want to be, is because of us. Of the choices we’ve made.
I’m not simply referring to the ‘economic’. Life isn’t just about making money and climbing some financial scoreboard. I’m also talking to the emotional, the interpersonal, the spiritual.
Age has a way of distilling what really moves us and means something real to us, so long as we’re actually listening. Because if we are - if we truly are - we realize that the excuses we’ve been dishing out are, well, just excuses.
Some of this realization comes from the simple fact that we don’t have the time left that we once had.
Some of it comes from the fact that there is no perfect time - that time when the stars will align and we’ll suddenly be ready to do what’s needed.
And, yes, some of it also comes from the realization that the answers we need - about “how” - aren’t with anyone else - they’re within us.
In some ways, it’s dispiriting to realize this. All that wasted time, all those wasted expectations, all that misplaced trust that was supposed to do for us what we needed to do for ourselves.
But it’s also liberating in so many ways. You finally realize that you aren’t beholden to anyone else and you don’t need their approval. That it’s still in your hands. That you get to set the standards.
The fact is, that it was never going to be delivered to us. We were always meant to go out and get it.
You see, the thing about getting older is that you suddenly understand that line from that Beatles song, the one where Paul McCartney sings:
"You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead..."
And because of that realization, you understand that you need to get moving.
