Celebrating Birthdays Big and Small

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver

It has been exactly one year since I set aside my excuses and my self-consciousness and pushed my little website, Teaching and Being, into the world. Like most personal projects, this one has been a labor of love, something mostly for me, born of my desire to write more regularly and maybe even to share my writing and photos with an audience. The icing on the cake has been that so many of my friends and colleagues have taken the time to visit, to read my blog and to offer words of encouragement. Today, I am feeling a little proud—and very grateful—as I celebrate the official birthday of this humble little enterprise.  

A very small thing in the world, I realize, but a very big thing in my world.

And, that is the profoundly good thing about being a woman of a certain age—a woman about to celebrate her 60th birthday. We finally understand how important we are. How much our work matters. How much our lives matter. If we’re doing it right, we finally know that our own validation is validation enough. Years of striving and pleasing have led us to the time in our lives when we stop caring most about what other people think and more about what we think. You can call it self-possession or wisdom or plain old confidence, but I like to think of it as the sweet reward of a life well-lived. At the exact moment in time when society begins to think less about us, we are fully equipped—and wise enough—to think more of and about ourselves.

Not that it’s easy. As a good friend of mine once said, “Aging, it ain’t for sissies” and he wasn’t kidding. To be healthy and happy in this body, I have had to come to terms with the challenges of middle age: knees that ache after I run, and sometimes for no reason at all, eyes that can’t discern words on a page without reading glasses, a back that feels sore after I load the dishwasher. On a good day, I can still run and hike, do my Saturday stair workout, play tennis and even half-court basketball, but I have made significant adjustments to the cost/benefit equation, meaning that I might never ski down a mountain again or ride a roller coaster or jump on a trampoline. I can—and do—however, move this aging, but strong, body of mine just about every day and I have seen enough of life to understand that I am lucky to be able to say this. 

As if these changes in our bodies aren’t enough, the changes in the mirror can be humbling, to say the least. Even the wisest and most self-assured among us can have our mornings ruined and our confidence shaken when we notice an eyelid that is newly droopy, or the saggy skin on our necks or the deepening lines on our foreheads. Our teeth aren’t as white as they used to be, our hair isn’t as shiny or as thick and who would have known that our eyes—the windows to our souls—actually become less bright after looking at this big fascinating world for six decades. In a society that conflates youth and vitality, flawlessness and beauty, it is an act of radical resistance to look in the mirror and love our imperfect middle-aged faces.

What we don’t hear enough about, I’ve noticed, is the ways that being of a certain age is actually better than being younger. Yes, better. Despite the aches and pains, the wrinkles and the ten pounds that just won’t go away, middle age can be a kind of sweet spot. I see so many of my childhood friends reaping the benefits of their hard work and self-discipline. I see their early retirements, their adventurous travel, their passion projects. Others are still growing in careers they love, getting doctorate degrees, getting their books published, creating podcasts and documentaries or moving to new cities thousands of miles away, just for the adventure of it. I am inspired by how much joy my husband feels doing his weekly radio show and how damn thrilled my musician friends are at the prospect of playing a gig at a local bar. I have a 60-year-old friend who became a competitive weight lifter at age 58 and another who is now training for his first marathon and is in the best shape of his life. Not only are we mostly free from the grindiest parts of the daily grind, but we are also free from other people’s expectations. Our kids are raised, our finances are more stable and, if we are lucky enough to be healthy, we often begin to ask ourselves: What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

And the best part of it all—we finally have the capacity to recognize our own good fortune and grace. The ways that years of raising children, loving our partners, and saying goodbye to our parents has worn our souls smooth and supple. How we bring patience and empathy to our relationships, to our work, and to our interactions with strangers. How we understand deeply that our circumstance are rarely permanent and that there is value in being optimistic about the future, even though we know it isn’t promised. We have seen our children thrive and suffer, our friends battle cancer, and sometimes die, our own mortality staring us in the eye. All of this has increased our ability to feel and to love, to grieve and be grateful. Travel is richer. Music is more moving. Books are more powerful. We cherish our friends and covet our solitude. We have the ability to hold many disparate truths in our hearts and minds and although we are well-versed in being careful, we are learning the joys of being fearless.

So, it is in this spirit that I celebrate the small, but important, birthday of my humble little blog. As luck would have it, it is only a few short weeks before a very big birthday in my wild and precious life. I feel grateful and inspired by a legion of friends, near and far, who are at this exact juncture in their own lives and who have also chosen to trust the tiny voice in their heads that says: Hey, don’t stop now, you still have amazing things to do.