'Eternally 14'

Looking in the mirror I am always a bit stunned that reflection doesn’t seem to align with my inner spirit and internal age. Most often I feel eternally fourteen. Oh yes, there are the aches and pains and gray hair and plenty of wrinkles, smile lines and an occasional gobble from an encroaching turkey wattle neck…. But clamoring from within is that fourteen-year-old who has taken up residency in my soul and refuses to leave. Thankfully our vision often fails at the same time as our youth so the imperfections are not as glaring -but for some undetermined reason the spirit of a fourteen-year-old- seems to remain intact. Hence the body may age but in many ways the spirit never does. That’s why we are able or called to remain young at heart.

However, the tidal bore of perception over reality, illusion over truth, style over substance-often feels as if we’re wading chest deep in a tidal bore. Where the incoming and outgoing reality push and pull and wash us to shore.

Who would have thought that age would be so perplexing-it’s not just the physical changes it is also the emotional layers that start becoming unglued. You begin to not just see the sand in the hour glass you literally feel it shifting.

I never thought it would happen that way, I thought I would just gently ride toward the sunset at a comfortable clip and feel pleasantly grateful to be alive-grateful to wake up each day on this side of the AstroTurf. Oh yes, we say, much better than the alternative. But as those layers become exposed … along with them come a plethora of emotions and questions and wonderings and fear. Not to mention a feast of regret, remorse and ‘I should haves’, ‘I wish I had' and ‘I’m sorry I didn’t.’ It’s all still there like leftovers on our dinner plate-but somehow, we have come to make peace with much of it-and chalked it up to life and ‘the best that we could do’ and the utterly human state of imperfection.

But there is also a peace and even a joy in sinking more fully or comfortably into our own skin- in waking up and knowing exactly who we are- what we love and where we’ve been - along with an encyclopedic reserve of memories and experiences to call on. Some of us are still ready to hop onto the next plane excited for a new adventure and others equally content looking forward to the next chapter of the novel on their bedstand.

Aging they say is not for sissies- whatever that might mean. It’s just the next chapter in the book of life-but don’t be surprised when you get there-when you turn that page- that the territory may seem familiar but many of the roadmaps may have changed. There is I believe a deepening into life itself-a reckoning with the gift we’ve been given- and a vision of our place in the galaxies.

And maybe that's the real surprise of aging. That even as our reflection in that mirror changes and the years collect, some vital part of us remains wonderfully, lovingly, persistently unchanged. That fourteen-year-old is still in there, she’s still curious, still evolving, still wondering what comes next. She is the very person I have spent most all of my life with-she is the dreamer, the skinned kneed adventurer-she’s the story still waiting to be written. And perhaps, if I’m lucky, she'll never grow up.