Vejaa
In January many of us feel the pressure to set some kind of goal or intention for the year.
But in doing so we rarely address the real challenge that’s keeping us pinned where we are—our deeper wiring.
A calendar change isn’t enough to reset old patterns, self-sabotage, and doubt.
What if instead of making a superficial decision around what you wanted to achieve this year, you made a promise to yourself that this would forever be the year you changed the underlying belief systems that have been governing your whole life when it comes to YOUR 3 Relationships—your relationship with yourself, others, and life?
On getting a year older
Never once did I watch the iconic helicopter scene in the film Jurassic park without my mum remarking on the fact that it was shot in Kauai, Hawaii, and that it had always been her dream to go. We resolved this dream be put off no longer, and off we went.
One of the most remarkable moments of our trip so far, aside from seeing two humpback whales leap out of the pacific ocean, took place during a conversation we were having in the swimming pool.
The sun was beating down on what should have been a frosty New Years eve in England, but instead was the bright green and blue coastline of Wailea, Maui. Amidst the faint sound of a ukulele playing somewhere (there’s always a ukelele playing somewhere here), and a warm coconut sunscreen-infused breeze, the subject turned to getting older.
I had read some comments from people for whom the new year had ignited their fears around aging: the possibility of irrelevance; the notion of losing their looks; the gall of being asked their age on a date.
My mum (Pauline), it turns out, had a lot to say on the matter.
What she said was both profound and powerful.
I wish you could have been there. She spoke with the wisdom of someone who was truly done with worrying about such a thing.
First she let us know that she herself had no plans of becoming invisible with age (to know my mum is to understand that such a thing would be impossible). She also reminded us that in certain cultures in the East, age was held with a kind of reverence, not embarrassment—where the accretion of years was something that garnered respect. If you’d reach a certain age you knew a thing or two, and should be listened to.
But there was one particular thing she said that hasn’t left my mind since, and made me want to write to you this week.
She recalled how her own mum passed around the age she is now (mid-60s, which she wouldn’t mind at all me telling you).
She expressed how lucky she feels to have every extra day her own mother never had. When she sees another wrinkle on her own face or body, my mum can’t help but be grateful for what that wrinkle represents: the fact that she’s still here.
This idea struck me precisely because it indicates the profound way in which our insecurities have us getting it totally backwards. We lament the parenthetical lines appearing around our eyes, the hair that frustratingly keeps seems to have better places to be than atop our head, the body that seems to be adding padding as though, unbeknownst to us, we are imminently moving to a colder climate where we will need it.
But what if each of these unwelcome additions or subtractions were simply a reminder of how lucky we are to still be at the party at all?
The writer Christopher Hitchen’s, in his days fighting terminal cancer, comically described what he believed most upset people about the predicament of dying:
“It will happen to all of us, that at some point you get tapped on the shoulder and told, not just that the party’s over, but slightly worse: the party’s going on — but you have to leave. And it’s going on without you.”
I recently heard the Irish poet David Whyte speaking of his own darkly funny meditation on our final days, whereby he remarked:
“[Dying is] the ultimate generosity of giving ourselves completely away at the end of our lives—of getting out of the way. One of the great frontiers of human maturation is where you realize that actually, it might not be a tragedy that you’re going to die, the rest of creation could actually be quite relieved to see you go.”
Both of these reflections made me laugh upon hearing them. Especially David’s. I’d never before thought of death as the ultimate act of generosity in “getting out of the way”, but something about that idea instantly seemed to relieve me of my self-centredness, and act as a pressure valve for my fear of dying.
But the real point for our purposes today, is that if we haven’t been tapped on the shoulder and told we have to leave, nor are we being called upon to perform this act of generosity yet, shouldn’t that be the headline, and not the bodily degradation that is stoking our insecurity?
In other words, we are very much still lucky enough to be at the party.
Through this lens, even physical difficulties can be considered a reminder we are still here.
I’ve been around long enough to need a hip replacement? Hooray!
The next time you bemoan your aging looks, remind yourself how many people would have given anything to live long enough to have etched an extra few grooves on their forehead.
How many people would have loved the chance to walk enough miles that they cannot walk another without the aid of a stick?
My mum’s framing around aging wasn’t a framing at all, but a deep sense of gratitude for her life. This gratitude I saw in her had a secondary effect.
It revealed the superficial and limited nature of being afraid to age in the context of being less attractive to other people—the absurd subtext being: the whole point of living is to remain attractive to those we hope to date.
Now that can’t be right, can it?
As I listened to my mum speaking, I watched in awe of this powerful woman, with a deep gratitude for life, not clinging to anything, certainly not an earlier version of herself, nor the attraction of those she once would have been attractive to. That couldn’t have mattered less. Her mind was on the trees she had seen that morning on our walk along the beach, the breeze she was enjoying, the fact that she had the opportunity at all to be in this majestic place that, as she acknowledged, “so many people will never get to see in their entire lifetime”.
She had captured a fundamental truth:
that the point of getting older was not to obsess to an unhealthy degree about remaining attractive, but to become ever more grateful for the years one was given, and to put that gratitude to work in the living one does.
As I’ve watched my mum moving through Hawaii, I see the exquisite presence with which she approaches everything. I see an enchanted child, in the vessel of a wise, mature woman, and it strikes me that this is the form of staying young we should all aspire to.
Far from a regression, it is a recapturing of wonder.
To say child-like wonder would be to do it a disservice.
When a child looks up at a bird, or a tree, they may experience awe, but not the deep gratitude my mum is feeling. And yet, through that fusion of the fusion of this increasing awe and gratitude a powerful new iteration of my mother is born.
I don’t need to tell you how attractive that makes her. You already know. But that’s not the point.
When the wonder of the world becomes more and more visible to you, there’s no time to waste caring about who you’ve become invisible to.
Key Takeaways
1. If we’re still lucky enough to be at the party, shouldn’t that be the headline, and not the bodily degradation that is stoking our insecurity?
2. The point of getting older is not to obsess to an unhealthy degree about remaining attractive, but to become ever more grateful for the years one was given, and to put that gratitude to work in the living one does.
3. When the wonder of the world becomes more and more visible to you, there’s no time to waste caring about who you’ve become invisible to.
What About You?
What insecurity or complaint could you use as a reminder of how grateful you are that you still get to be at the party at all?
Matthew Hussey
