Aging is a wonderful gift. Yeah, the knees start to hurt, the memory imperceptibly but irrevocably fades, your doctor starts making you get colonoscopies (if you’re over 40, ask your doctor whether you should get one – they give you Cheez Its afterward at MNGI!), and realizing you may have less years to live than you’ve been alive is quite the trip; but, man, the wisdom and perspective you gain really slap.
Individual things and events become less urgently chaotic
with dichotomous outcomes and more open to nuanced appreciation. There’s a pause
between input and emotional response that wasn’t there before (I’m certain that’s
due to geriatric synapses rather than any mastery of mindfulness, but give me
this cope). And the world starts to narrow just enough that it’s a bit easier
to see what matters most and where you should spend your next minute of life.
The wildest thing, though, is the massive collection of lived
experiences we accumulate through the years. On the sheer basis of continuing to
stay awake and marginally aware, moments of unbridled joy, bottomless despair, laughter
with friends, career successes and failures, love, apathy, ennui, hate, and
reconciliation all get turned into a delicious, if sometimes bittersweet, broth
in the Instant Pot of our lives.
