Perceptions of Age

I've noticed my Son being a bit preoccupied with his age. It seemed to start about the time he turned 40. It's been kind of a family joke, with the black balloons etc. I guess you can start noticing those small physical changes, like greying hair, especially in our family with a genetic predisposition to going grey early. My Son is lucky, I found my first grey hair in my 20s. I've also noted a certain preoccupation about ageing with other people I've known. One friend almost retired to her rocking chair when she first became a grandmother, even though she wasn't quite 40. It took going out and getting a job after being a stay at home mother, to get a bit more involved with the world at large.

I suppose that the fact that we have such an emphasis on youth in our culture makes people worry more about getting older. Still, that's starting to change, due to the "baby boomers" and thier determination not to let getting older stop them.

I've been reading a book by Marianne Williamson called, "The Age of Miracles, Embracing the New Midlife". She talks about turning 50, how traumatic it can be,(I know it seemed like that to me.) She also talks about this new idea of midlife being a time to open up to new perceptions of your life. You can open to these new perceptions and live a new way, or you can close them off, and join the old ideas and restrictions of what you can and cannot expect for the remainder of your life. She says that this new midlife is the time to look back on our lives and access what we've done or not done. We probably will have regrets, most people do, but now is the time to learn from those mistakes of things done and opportunities missed.

One of the main ideas from the book, is to challenge the traditional expectations of age. Don't think that you're "too old" for something you may have the desire to experience.

Another idea, is that we've spent the first part of our lives being obsessed with ourselves, to a certain extent, though, of course,we're concerned for our spouse and children. We spend a lot of time worrying about our careers and futures and collecting "stuff". Now,when we have the chance to slow done a bit, it's time to get away from thinking with our egos and go into ourselves and listen for guidence from God to help us know how to spend the remainder of our lives.I'll bet that guidence doesn't tell you to sit around worrying about hair loss or how your joints feel.

Granted, you've earned the right to slow down and enjoy life a bit, but that doesn't leave you sitting in a rocking chair all day either. The important thing is to refuse to do ageing like many of us have expected to do. We need to think about things that we've thought we wanted to do, but were afraid we were too old to do them. We can still make a contribution to our worlds as well, even if it's just by living a good example. We can choose to have a rebirth in midlife, rather than start a prolonged march to death.