Stop Telling Me "That Happens As You Age"

As much as I hate to call attention to my age--I turned 50 this year--to me, it's just a number. I am who I have always been, only wiser, and more seasoned in many ways that I like to think make me a much handier person to know than when I began this journey.

But I am getting increasingly annoyed at how often others feel the need to call attention to my age. Seems I can't visit a doctor for anything, that someone in the office, usually the doctor him/herself, can't throw in the comment, "Well, that happens as you age”, or some variation thereof. Not to mention the list of questions they feel compulsory to run through tailored you your age bracket.

If that isn't bad enough, you can't watch TV for five damned minutes without being reminded of what you should supposedly expect as you age, usually to sell you a product of some sort. A need for it might not even be present on the horizon, perhaps something that has not even presented itself in your known gene pool, but apparently it's standard protocol to remind you, just in case. God forbid you forget to worry about it!

Speaking of which, God bless you gentlemen who must endure the ads reminding you of the possibility of erectile dysfunction. What must have started out as relief to know a remedy was available for something you may have a difficult time discussing with others must by now be a major irritant, causing you to speculate and worry unnecessarily about singular, passing instances of it.

Anyway, you can't pick up a damned magazine, or view more than a couple webpages, open your email or snail mail--or do just about anything else--without all the aforementioned, nagging reminders brought to your attention one way or another. Some of them lovingly reminding you of the special stage of life you have now entered. Rather than treating your life as a seamless journey that you are still on, continuously evolving along the way, it is sectioned into stages dictated by the date on your birth certificate, dividing your life and identity into little, stuffy rooms that cannot possibly contain the whole of you. Ever.

And if all that isn't enough, I can't believe how often in conversation people wish to issue some "helpful" insights as to the reasons why you are experiencing something, whether it be a physical symptom of some sort, or some other issue. Or how often they wish to complain about their own and want you commiserate with them on what a bummer it is to get older and and swap war stories about the myriad things that have gone awry for both of you, and that you expect to go awry in the future.

Uh, hey world, listen up: sometimes a symptom is just a symptom and an issue is just an issue. Or as Freud might say, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

So if I say I thought I was 5'4" inches tall, but was recently measured at 5"3" at the doctor's office, I may have just measured my own height wrong in the first place. If I have a a new ache or pain, I may have pushed too far too soon trying that new yoga move. [Or something else.] And if I am hot, it may be that while you are comfortable at 78 degrees, I am comfortable at 72, and am simply sensitive to the difference. [Or it may just be August.] If my feet hurt, maybe it's the cheap shoes I made the mistake of wearing today. And if I've grown a bit pudgy in some area I wasn't a few months ago, I probably been eating a little too much and not slacking on the exercise.  Aging may have nothing to do with it. And it might even be one of the many things that, had it happened when younger, we often dismissed as a passing thing, a fluke. And it often was.

For the record, I happen to believe that if you expect it as the norm, whatever "it" is, it's much more likely to become reality for you. At least try to keep it in the realm of possibility, as opposed to a certainty, to give yourself I chance at a more favorable outcome.

What really gets me down sometimes is that after struggling to  grow up and claim my right to call myself a woman, and finding that in this modern, supposedly post-feminist world I must still struggle for full agency and person-hood, I am now so often reduced to an age, and forced to prove my relevance. I have come together in such a way that I no longer respond to the world and life from the place of gender, race, or culture, but from my soul, a place of timeless universality that at times, rises to the level of mystical experience. And, in my opinion, with more to offer than ever because of this fact. [And more intuitive as to how and when.] But the world continues to want to place me within one frame or another, shrinking me down, restricting the expression of all my potentials, holding me apart from my true self. [And itself, unless I'm willing to interact with it on it's terms.] If I let it go on long enough, it would divorce me from the original Source of my being altogether.

At which point, of course, the process of aging would transform into no more than a living death.

But of course, I have no intention of allowing that to happen. Because I have no intention of giving my age much thought beyond the requirement to give my birth date at the DMV, the doctor's office, or wherever. Or celebrating it as a milestone reached that I wasn't sure I would. I refuse to consider it when deciding the next goals to set to reach my dreams, how I work or play--or love--or include it in the criteria to be considered in regard to anything. I will consult the Universe/Source/God--or whatever term you prefer--about those things. And I believe in the God of renewal, rebirth, and resurrection.

I will be--am--considered a host of things for that philosophy. A Pollyanna or a Dorothy, deluded, foolish, refusing to accept reality. Maybe I am all those things. Or maybe I just question the nature of reality and how it is created in the first place, and wonder if our Creator has endowed us with more ability to influence the creation of our own than we have been led to believe.

All I know for sure is this: I will continue to hold my own inner conversation on the subject and ignore the outer to the best of my ability. And if I am destined to walk this Yellow Brick Road for many years ahead before reaching Home, I will do it my way, according to the paradigm of my choosing.

                                              

Rightly or wrongly, it’s bound to be a better trip.

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Photo Credits:
1. Flood G., Flickr; CC License
2. Jan [garlandcannon], Flickr; CC License