When I turned fifty, one of my birthday cards said, “You’re not over the hill, you’re standing on top of it.”
Inspiring right? Selecting cards can be tricky. I pondered the meaning of that card, and took the optimistic approach.
When I turned sixty, I woke to a sunny day with a surge of excitement thinking, “Wow! This is the beginning of the next thirty years of my life…how blessed am I!” I had crossed that abyss called mid-life crisis, and thanks to all my studies and training and support got through relatively unscathed! So I was even less impressed with suggestive dementia cards!!
It was with great trepidation that I allowed the grey wisdom to be revealed, centimetre by centimetre. The judgements and perceptions were continuous, even if subtle. It seemed that the whole world had me labelled and slotted into a convenient place…. seniors cards, magazines, funeral insurances, advertisements for my declining health… even Maccas offered me free coffee! What do I fill out on the travel visa? Retired? My own Comparison Voice had many a chance to enhance the opinions about younger or older than, reinforcing deep wounds and creating more doubts.
A business coach at the time suggested I might be a Midlife Mentor….(the rest of the group were under forty!) That was a turning point! What would it mean to me to be a midlife mentor? What beliefs did I hold in my being that still created these emotional responses? What would I really have to accept about myself, about aging, about life? What was driving this need to re-invent myself and at the same time holding the brakes on with lots of fears?
For ten years I had been exploring the purpose and meaning of life through spiritual studies and personal growth programs. The time had come to accept the REAL me, the lovable and unlovable bits, and recognise that I had excelled with creating and living behind this false identity, keeping myself safe, for decades plating out roles on the stage of life! Well done!
It was on a spiritual retreat when this huge realisation hit me. I had indeed taken up residence in the beliefs and myths around mid-life and growing old. The very things I was determined to avoid had already become as comfortable as my fluffy slippers, as I continued to hide behind yet another identity.
I made a conscious choice in that moment….to live my best, authentic life, with purpose, joy, compassion, and in service to a greater good.
My search for meaning across culture and demographics about GROWING OLD uncovered many beliefs, expectations, and myths about aging. What seemed to be fact and fixed is now being challenged by medical science research.
I realized that we can change so many things, that we do have a choice, and often we are unaware of what and how to go about it.
Looking back on my forties and fifties, now in my sixties, I can congratulate myself, have compassion for some of my choices, accept that everything I lived through was my unique journey, designed by me at some level, that all my choices were okay, for the ME I was at the time. “Life is what’s happening while you’re making other plans”….John Lennon was right.
Heard of the 10×2 rule? Ten little two letter words?
IF IT IS TO BE IT IS UP TO ME