I've been coming here every day. Thinking about everyone's problems but haven't had anything worth contributing for a long time. However a friend recently sent me this little story which I thought was well written and I enjoyed it so much and am thinking that my friends here may enjoy it also. It is especially relevant for me because of my age and the old folks home where I'm now living.
..................OLD FRIENDS
Old friends are like quilts-they age with you, yet never lose their warmth.
I have seen too many dear friends leave this world, too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging.
Whose business is it, if I choose to read, or play on the computer, until 4 AM, or sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of the 50s, 60s & 70s, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love, I will.
I will walk the beach, in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves, with abandon, if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.
I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And, eventually, I remember the important things.
Sure, over the years, my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break, when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody's beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength, and understanding, and compassion. A heart never broken, is pristine, and sterile, and will never know the joy of being imperfect.
I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turn gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.
As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don't question myself anymore. I've even earned the right to be wrong.
So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it).
What a lovely thing on all levels this bit of philosophy is.
Old Friends it's entitled and isn't about that. Instead Old Friends are the motivation to 'understand the great freedom that comes with aging' which isn't the philosophy either.
This article is about turning acceptance into empowerment through our outlook.
The writer knows this and isn't afraid to leave the thin tie-in to the narrative to reveal the motivation - the pain of loss where "I have seen too many dear friends leave this world" and then right into the actual topic - which is allowing ourselves to be.
Allowing ourselves to be. The great underground river of humanity's potential filled with the lost choices we didn't make for reasons no one knows and always populated by the common bond that conception and opportunity did not meet.
The pilgrim struggles to the mountain top to speak to the wise man. "How can I find better feelings?" he asks. "Value more what you already have." The wise man answers. Whereupon the viewer changes the channel. The viewer changes the channel because no one including the 'wise man' teaches you how to do something like that.
Notice that in your entire life no one taught you self management. Except in one way. When your behaviour was being curbed - by our parents, by our friends, by our partner, by our employers.
Ah! That's not true is it. The truth is we remember deeply the things we learned that really did help us find ourselves and we usually remember those people fondly for that. The person that revealed how a skill works. The person that showed us a kindness. The person that gave us a straight talk when we needed one.
This story will be seen as inspirational (which it is) because on one level it shows an attitude that we all want. It is only the instruction manual it is outlined to be, though, for the ready and motivated. That sounds like those people are better and more fit like they've worked out in a gym so now they are 'ready and motivated' - but no one knows why or how people suddenly change and take something on differently.
I'm sure you could explain how you moved from devastated to largely involved with your present but what I know that entailed is a sea change in outlook. The bad things do not disappear nor do their effects, but the power of that to sweep you is overtaken by the power of your own ability to self determine - and from there forward it's largely a transition to you at the wheel.
This story retains it's theme which is the choice in outlook in the face of others of great meaning who are lost to us now. To learn not just to see ourselves and allow that - but, to nurture it. Most of us aren't taught that skill in life. In fact, most of us have reactions to thinking objectively in terms of our own selves even though everyone forges ahead with actually being themselves.
Before we can do any of this, we must survive the gauntlet that is caregiving and some recovery from it. I was unable to see any of this because I was up to my cow lick in it. It does ebb though and one day you see you're moving steadily into the inconceivable, and one day you notice you're staring right at it and nothing's happening, and one day you realize you have a lot ahead of you to get done if you are to have any kind of life.
It is at that point where what I would call recovery from caregiving has ended. You are at the wheel and you know it. It is also at that point where the lessons here begin. Because we end up recovered to the boring schmuck we always were with more emotional range mostly of the bad sort. Learning to enjoy what we have more likely involves growth. What a joy. And yet, that's the path.
I gave this the title "Old Friends" but as Wolf points out, It should be "Benefits of Aging". I was very much intrigued as to where it came from. And after some Google searching, I found it on the Gaston County Gazette website. (a newspaper in No. Carolina). It was mailed to them anonymously.
Whoever wrote it certainly had a talent for positive and far out thinking. It could have been written by Wolf. Everyone here in the Hillcrest old folks community really loved it.