I don’t feel like I am sixty something, I feel like I am forty something. Except for one thing: the cumulative weight of all the people I have lost. I have lost so many friends in the past several years. In all the awful ways. To horrific diseases, suicide, and unexpected things like car accidents.
Accepting they are gone is very difficult. So is the fact that I am actually their age. At a certain point, you have to face it, because all the evidence is staring literally in your face!
Americans are so youth oriented, that even when we know our age, we are convinced that our actual physical age is twenty years younger. We’ve taken good care of ourselves and eaten healthy and did all of our yoga and ran all our miles so that is our reward!
But the truth is most of our friends did that too. One friend had been in recovery from alcoholism for over thirty years! He inherited some blood disease and passed away from it in only fifteen months.
I must admit to myself that I am living on borrowed time. And every day it gets shorter and shorter so I need to stop pretending that I am twenty years younger than I am, as I think many of us do. We need to therefore be who we are and live in the moment the way that we need to so there are no regrets. No dreams not realized.
Perhaps you can take a moment or an hour and make a list of dreams not realized and start taking the steps to realize them. I have taken my own advice on this front during this entire pandemic. I self published my book, something I never thought I could complete or do so I urge all of you to challenge yourself to get that project done. Whether it’s a dream trip somewhere or writing something or taking lessons. Violin, painting, whatever.
I urge you to do that. To stop putting it off. Tomorrow may not happen for us. . The recent shootings have taught us that.