Next week is my birthday and this combined with a recent interview for a podcast for midlifers has caused some reflections on my ageing – this is the first time I’ve considered I may be nearing the middle of my life and therefore perhaps half way to my death – what an inspiring thought!
I’ve always felt young and never worried about my age, in fact I’ve always been young until recently! However I’ve also been referred to a number of times as an old soul, wise beyond my years and my closest friends are all about a decade ahead of me.
Maybe I am ageing, well obviously I’ve always been ageing since I was born but it’s becoming more apparent. I find more hairs that should not be growing out of my chin than I ever used to, grey ones now grow out of my head and when I smile there’s a heap more lines appear around my eyes than I remember. I’m pretty sure my joints weren’t this stiff before and finding the car keys used to be much easier.
Having said that when I go on meditation retreat sometimes I am the youngest person sat in a chair whilst nuns twice my age sit crossed legged on the floor for hours so maybe it’s not age in the way we think of it. The number on our birth certificate or the candles on our cake but how we feel, how we live and the way we treat ourselves that determines our real age.
Despite the changes I’ve started to notice as I age there’s a flip side; I feel so much more settled in life, comfortable in my own skin and with who I am and much more wise than any previous younger versions of me have ever been.
We live in a society where we’ve been taught the younger we look the better that is, to conceal our wrinkles and colour our hair, even consider surgical intervention to slow the natural ageing process.
In some culture the wisdom we acquire with age is what’s celebrated, it’s mark of respect not shame. It means we’re growing into ourselves rather than growing out of our beauty, this is how I like to view it.
However, ageing can be a scary thought, if I am midlife it means I’ll only live until 74, this doesn’t seem old. Not compared to the ages we are living to these days, particularly women.
All the women in my family have outlived the men but whilst we’re living longer the quality of our life is deteriorating, especially those last 10-15 years. It begs the questions if the quality is to deteriorate do I want to live longer?
We also have a relativity when it comes to our own age. I can have women of 33 telling me they think they’ve left it too late to have the career they dreamed of or a life they love whilst at the same workshop women of 60 are telling me about leaving their marriage of 20 years and setting up their own business.
There are many more determining factors of our capability, wisdom and potential than the number of years we’ve been on the earth. Our experiences, our community/support network, our upbringing, our mind-set and our resources to name a few.
This leads us to the realisation at some point we will all die and we don’t always get the choice or the forewarning. It’s not the most joyful topic to consider and one we ignore until it slaps us in the face and we lose someone we love, who we’d hoped would be around forever. Yet something that is unavoidable and so certain, everything is impermanent, including us.
But let’s take a less traumatic example first! I love summer and admit to getting a bit sad once winter descends. I find myself desperately grasping onto each sunny day and trying to make the most of it at this time of year, wishing the days were longer and warmer and wishing I’d made the most of the summer whilst it was here.
Crazy when we know summer and winter come and go each year as the seasons change. There’s some interesting parallels here on how we live life.
You see one thing we all know for sure is that we will die, there’s no greater certainty and we’ve no idea when really. Because of this it’s so important we live whilst we’re alive. Some of us might get it pointed out in advance if we’re sick or receive a terminal diagnosis but we’re all on the same conveyor belt whether we’re aware or not.
How can this help us though rather than send us into a state of panic or depression? We never think about death in our western world. We live like we’ll be around forever and then when it comes (as it always does) we’re completely unprepared, scared and desperately hanging on to life, wishing we’d
actually lived it – like me with summer!
Here’s the thing from a Buddhist perspective. If we consider that we will die one day (fact), it changes the way we live, it changes our perspective. If we thought we may die today our interactions become different with people, we do the things that matter, we treat each other with kindness and the little things stop bothering us.
For anyone who’s been close to death, lost someone dear or been in the midst of an earthquake or natural disaster this may have become clear. It doesn’t need to take those things for us to have the perspective and awareness and to live each day with meaning and appreciate more of what we have.
The scary thing is each day we live is a day closer to our death. Yet we live like we’ll be here forever. The Buddhist nun who taught me this likens it to staying in a posh hotel. We know we’re only there for short time, we make the most of the fine white sheets, the fluffy bath robe and free shampoos. We enjoy it, appreciate it but we don’t believe we’ll take any of it with us or cry when we leave because we knew right from the start that we’d be checking out.
When we think about our death we stop chasing after the things we can’t take with us – money, status, material possessions and we focus on the things that make life meaningful. We stop putting things off “I’ll be happy when I get… (the job, house, car, partner)”. We learn to appreciate what we have and live in the moment rather than postponing our happiness to a point in the future.
When faced with death we stop worrying about getting it all perfect – our career, our house, the way we look. We tend to not want to think about death, it’s a morbid subject and we certainly don’t want to think about the death of loved ones – we hope they’ll live forever.
Let’s face it though; it’s only when something ends we talk about how much we enjoyed it, miss it and how lovely it or they were. This is true of holidays, leaving speeches and eulogy’s at funerals but why wait until then.
If, like Buddhists, this was our every day and not just in the face of something ending we’d learn to appreciate what we have, we’d spend our time doing the things that matter, with those we love and we’d tell people what they meant to us and what we appreciate about them.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, talks of this in her book Top 5 regrets of the dying. What is it people regret most looking back on life? That they’d worked less, appreciated more and lived more true to themselves.
And when our final day comes, because we don’t always get the warning, we’ll have fewer regrets and we’ll have lived each day like we’d have wanted.