As forty five hubs on the horizon, I find my brain thinking things it never has. As youth slips into a distant memory, a great part of me struggles with goodbye.
Logically aging is part of the human experience. Emotionally however, it seems almost impossible to age when inside; when who I am stills believes she is nineteen.
The tug of war begins, and the battle scars reveal themselves around the corners of my eyes, the thinning of my hair, and the creases along my mouth.
As I look around I am reminded I am not alone. We are all aging chronologically, and the signs are impossible to hide. Perhaps this is the paradox.
The silent and taunting struggle so many of us feel as we approach middle age, is one we endure alone, in our own minds. We smile, but before us are constant reminders that youth exists out there, and inside us no more. In its place we tell ourselves wisdom has arrived and continues to grow. We search to remember this when handsome young men cross our paths, and plump young women grab the eyes of the men in the room. Its natural we tell ourselves, to age.
When we are in our teens, twenties and even our thirties, life seems as if it will never end. As we approach fifty, the brain begins to know more than ever that one day it will cease. Unable to escape what the brain knows is inevitable, our emotional selves struggle to keep up with revelations of mortality.
What then is the solution? How does one win this battle?
I find myself concluding that the only way to win this battle at all, is to fully understand there was never a battle in the first place.
There can be no war unless I agree that there is.
With great huge sighs of humility, I prefer to slip into this aging thing and to do my best to live in the here and the now, and to embrace what is rather than focus on what could have been, what was, or what my ego suggests what should be.
To all of you out there, struggling with goodbye, know you are not alone.
