Fight                                   Or flight?

Remember when 40 sounded old? Remember when you weren’t sure if your mother was 38 or 83 (because, hey, what was the difference?) Remember when you hoped you’d live long enough not to have to do homework? Or wait for summer to have some fun?

Okay, kids, here we are. We made it!

NOW WHAT?!?

Truth is that it kind of creeped up on me. The 40’s were great years. And then the 50’s? Even better. And then came…THE SIXTIES.

I breezed past my 60th birthday. We had a big birthday to mark the accomplishment. But, really, I just liked having all those people in the same room – the people I love and like and some I hadn’t seen in awhile. I didn’t really think of being 60 as a big deal.

The rest of that year began what I like to think of as my period of enlightenment.

Awakening to the reality of small aches and pains becoming larger and not so easy to ignore. Awakening to an EVEN SLOWER metabolism. (how was that even possible?)

And as the 60’s progressed I couldn’t deny that I  had less energy, less ambition and less cartilage in my knees.

                                                                       =   

A new stage in life began the day I closed  my company.

Stage One

>>>>>>  

Another stage of life began when I stopped agreeing to meet with people who just “have a couple of questions”.

Stage Two

Then another stage when the answer to “So, what do you do?” began without disclaimers.

Followed by a blissful couple of years when I:

1. wrote a book and published it.  http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Detectives-Lesson-A-E-Prero/dp/1512109371

                   

2. created a yoga studio

and 3. filled it with classes

4. got into a regular habit of spending quality time with my grandchildren

  (maybe the most fun of all)    

And now? Now I seem to have arrived at Stage Four.

Partially I’ve arrived here on my own, in a natural kind of way, and partially I’m being dragged into it and, I admit, initially with a bit of kicking and whining, by my friends. 

This is a Stage of wondering a lot about how to best do this thing called “Old Age”. Give into it? Okay, THAT sounds bad. Fight it? Hmm. That sounds tiring.

 And I haven’t found a good guide book yet. Not on Lonely Planet or Footprint or even Google.

Oh, there are plenty of books out there on the topic. I’ve read a bunch of them. Probably the one I liked the best was From Age-ing to Sage-ing http://www.amazon.com/Age-Ing-Sage-Ing-Revolutionary-Approach-Growing/dp/1455530603/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1449132020&sr=1-1&keywords=from+age-ing+to+sage-ing+a+revolutionary+approach+to+growing+older   But I don’t seem to have many people in my life who are looking for a sage. And, truth be told, it sounds a teeny big presumptuous.

Coach?  Yuck! Gives me a rash thinking of that title. Mentor? Better but headed toward ‘sage’.

And, anyway, is this Stage about what I am for others or for myself!?

When I taught aerobics and hip hop it was all about pushing to your limit and going one step beyond.

When I teach yoga it’s more about investigating your limits and taking one step back.

But in this evolving life of mine, where old age has creeped up on me? A step forward? A step back? What does that even MEAN?

Many of us loved what Dylan Thomas had to say about it:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rage at close of day,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

But, you know what?, now it just makes me roll my eyes. And, hey, he was in his mid-40’s when he wrote that. I might have agreed more when I was in MY mid-40’s.

Raging and burning? Unh unh. No raging and burning for me. I have a feeling that road leads to frustration and grumpiness.

For the past 2-3 months I’ve been feeling like I’ve over-scheduled my life; like there’s not enough time to sit and write or sit and read or just sit. But facts must be faced…right?…and the fact is that I’m still teaching the same amount of classes and private lessons a week and I’m still traveling each week to visit the same number of homes to which I’ve lent my grandchildren.

It’s that bogeyman of all bogeymen…old age. I just have less energy for it all. So when I’ve finished teaching all the classes and private lessons and finished driving and playing with my amazing grandkids and finished shopping and cooking and cleaning, I’m POOPED.

Now there are some who make fun of us older people and our running out of energy mid-afternoon

  but there can be some nice things about napping.    And maybe, just maybe, that’s part of it all.

No, no, not napping. But pedaling down some of those things we love to more manageable bites.

     

And maybe we can sage our way into some nourishing and gratifying volunteering    

Okay, so we tend to freak about forgetting a couple of details

But young people forget stuff, too, they just don’t worry about it.

And there are some great things about long term memory.

I think I DO want to fight the tendency to decrease the size of one’s world to the boundaries of what’s familiar to me; to what’s easy and comfy. I want to fight to keep my boundaries open to new ideas and new activities, new places and new people.

But, at the same time, I want to accept gracefully my decreasing physical energy and re-direct my time to the ever-changing physical reality of old age. And, yep, I want to accept that my mind isn’t quite so quick, quite so sharp and, at times, quite so reliable.

Ultimately, I know that ‘old age’ is NOT the enemy. It’s my own fears that I need to remain mindful of and face with compassion, kindness and awareness.

    

I can hear you saying, “Yeah, right. Blah blah blah.” So here’s what I have to say to you…

Well, maybe.

Let’s hope so!