To all the regular joes & janes that run ... on the roads & in their heads.
Things to accept when growing older
As I am starting to get older (invariably), I am also beginning to understand some of the sentiments expressed through writing, film and other media that all hint or rather bluntly point out the fact that life feels heavier with increasing age. It's not that life suddenly turns into a series of horrible events. Rather, it's an accumulation of life events, memories and foreboding thoughts that begins casting a shadow that can become excrutiatingly overwhelming, if not acknowledged and made peace with.
It was only this week that I finally went through the motion of looking through the pictures with Spike and deciding on which of his pictures would end up in our frames. With Tigger, it was something that I needed to perform almost immediately but in Spike's case, it became something that I procrastinated often and with little thought. It was as if addressing it meant having to open up a place in my memory that would automatically cross reference with the death of our other cat and then, if it was one of those days, the thought of other passings and future ones to come. Death and in only a slightly lesser sense, loss, is such an unavoidable event in human life that I doubt that there is anyone over 30 who does not consider mortality a constant part of awareness.
Mind you, I don't want anyone to get the impression that I am constantly occupied by it or that it impacts my life greatly. I have accepted it as part of my life and try to deal with it in a way a lot of my yoga instructors have coached us into and through the phase of shivasana, aka when we lie down to relax completely (you may think it to be the easiest thing to do in the world when the truth is that it isn't. Trust me). Accept, acknowledge and let go. Sometimes, it works better than other times. What I like about Yoga is that even when it doesn't work well, there is guidance: in this case, I try to remember to not be so hard on myself but just to keep trying patiently.
My personal twist to this approach comes in the form of dwelling in the emotion and trying to find the positive in it - after all, without the lows, how could we enjoy the moment, and more importantly, how could we appreciate all the good we have experienced? So today, as i was looking through those pictures of Spike and Murphy when they were only a few months old, I was sad as always, but I was also enjoying the memory of the crazy shenanigans of those kittens. Or the peculiar touches in their personalities, like Spike obsession with chicken.
Life isn't perfect but we can make it better if we take everything in as best as we can. And as we get older, how we approach and think about our lives becomes more and more important - because we have more and more memories to absorb, process and rediscover.
It was only this week that I finally went through the motion of looking through the pictures with Spike and deciding on which of his pictures would end up in our frames. With Tigger, it was something that I needed to perform almost immediately but in Spike's case, it became something that I procrastinated often and with little thought. It was as if addressing it meant having to open up a place in my memory that would automatically cross reference with the death of our other cat and then, if it was one of those days, the thought of other passings and future ones to come. Death and in only a slightly lesser sense, loss, is such an unavoidable event in human life that I doubt that there is anyone over 30 who does not consider mortality a constant part of awareness.
Mind you, I don't want anyone to get the impression that I am constantly occupied by it or that it impacts my life greatly. I have accepted it as part of my life and try to deal with it in a way a lot of my yoga instructors have coached us into and through the phase of shivasana, aka when we lie down to relax completely (you may think it to be the easiest thing to do in the world when the truth is that it isn't. Trust me). Accept, acknowledge and let go. Sometimes, it works better than other times. What I like about Yoga is that even when it doesn't work well, there is guidance: in this case, I try to remember to not be so hard on myself but just to keep trying patiently.
My personal twist to this approach comes in the form of dwelling in the emotion and trying to find the positive in it - after all, without the lows, how could we enjoy the moment, and more importantly, how could we appreciate all the good we have experienced? So today, as i was looking through those pictures of Spike and Murphy when they were only a few months old, I was sad as always, but I was also enjoying the memory of the crazy shenanigans of those kittens. Or the peculiar touches in their personalities, like Spike obsession with chicken.
Life isn't perfect but we can make it better if we take everything in as best as we can. And as we get older, how we approach and think about our lives becomes more and more important - because we have more and more memories to absorb, process and rediscover.
Comment
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Comment by Jane on May 6, 2009 at 9:07pm - heh, that is putting it rather mildly :)
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Comment by Carole Noble on May 5, 2009 at 4:36pm - Hmm - that might be putting it a bit strongly - but sometimes I think to myself - been there, done that - probably not a good idea.
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Comment by Jane on May 4, 2009 at 11:22pm
- Do you find it frustrating though to see us younger ones making life mistakes that you can spot from a mile away?
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Comment by Carole Noble on May 4, 2009 at 3:14pm
- I see on my body and sometimes feel the effects of age - and that's not thrilling - however, I can honestly say that the years have brought an ease of moving through life that I didn't have when I was younger. I think that, somehow, if you can keep growing through each stage of life, you come to a place where dealing with life and it's complications gets easier. It's not that life gets easier but time teaches you ways to deal with what life brings.
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