How to Act One's Age

Becoming your age before it's too late

Youth is not an age but a state of mind. I know for I am growing younger each year. As my body slows down my spirit speeds up, running out before me like the little boy I once was, chasing new dreams before the old ones have time to grow tired. The adventure is just beginning. The span of our lives is not measured in numbers, but in the love we have known and given in return.

-Steven Charleston is an Episcopal Bishop, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, and a Native American elder.

Photo by Magda B on Unsplash

I don’t think I know how to be my age.  Does anyone?  How does a four year old know how to be a four year old?  How does a “tween” know how to navigate all the physical, emotional and relational metamorphoses that are happening in their changing body and mind? How does a person act their age?

How does someone really act their age—be their age—live like their age?

I find myself thinking about this a lot, at 69. I’ve written about building my “off-ramp.”  By “off-ramp” I mean a short, little space of time betwixt and between. The “off-ramp” was designed to help me transition from doing my work full time—to something less—like part-time. It is this stage between when I worked so hard and a time I will not work at all.

I may be discovering that my “off-ramp” might need to be extended. I’m not sure, though. This feeling of “not sure” is one of the predictable markers of someone in transition. You think  you know what to do—but you’re holding things loosely to let it all just settle a bit. One day you feel optimistic about the future. The next day, a darker, more complex feeling emerges to navigate with the day’s chores and events.

I don’t feel done. In fact, I am still greening inside. If you’ve been reading what I’ve been writing recently, then you know some of what I’m describing.

It’s sort of like what one might call, a resurgence.  A resurgence is something like a renaissance—a partial resurrection—a burst of new thought and a convergence of thought.  I am discovering new buds inside my heart that are begging to be bloomed. At the same time, I can’t help but notice the calendar in our kitchen.

How I feel about my age is like observing the tides of the ocean. Sometimes, I feel “in” and other times I just now, “I’m out.”

I just led a huge retreat and it felt as if I was hitting on all cylinders in my heart. This particular retreat was the “new me” unleashed. It was the me in all my green and glory. It was the me still in process—still confessing there are things I still don’t know. The retreat had a flow:  Not too much information. Not too much talking. Not too much anything. It finally all felt, just right.  Two weeks later and I want to do it again. That is, until I admit to myself, I just can’t do all that work again.

This is precisely what I mean when I say, I don’t know how to be my age. I mean really—do  you?

As I sat with this during my COVID recovery this past week (yes, we both got “it” and recovered now from “it”), I felt exploring the imagery of the seashore, tidal movements and sandbars would help offer the words I needed and wanted to grasp.  I think in aging, there is indeed, an ebb and flow to finding any grace at all in how to age well.   Sometimes, we are in the flow of aging, well. Other times, I see us fighting , to stay forever young.

So, I put pen to paper and wrote a new poem about this aging phenomenon.

As you read the poem, you’ll see I used the word “compelled”.  That’s exactly how I feel some days. I feel so compelled to walk up these stairs; enter my glass tree house attached to my home in the mountains, and start writing.  The words flow out like a pulling tide within me. At least they did this particular day when i wrote this poem last week.

There is the line in the poem about “the rogue wave of the Lord” that might be disturbing.  Is it? Once while boating off shore in the Atlantic ocean, a massive rogue wave washed over my boat unexpectedly. We nearly sank from taking on so much water all at once. That is precisely what a rogue wave is—an unexpected, ill-timed massive wave that comes from nowhere and can do massive damage.

I have a friend, who is the picture of health and is in his 40’s. Yet he just received the rogue wave news of a terminal cancer within his still young body. He started chemo but his prognosis is dire. Out of the blue! Wham! Devastation. The more I live, it seems there are more and more rouge waves. The news is full of devastating waves washing over Gaza, Israel, Maine and Ukraine as well as folks I love in my little mountain town.

You’ll read and realize, I borrowed Mary Oliver’s line about the “bridegroom being married to amazement.”  Is there a better line ever written in her poem, “When Death Comes.”  I have loved that line ever since I read it—and it read me.  It just so fits—some mornings. While other mornings, as I said, I just want to sleep till it’s all over.

Aging is the realization of a strong and steady current flowing in us and through us that is unrelentless.   I read an interesting article on growing old recently and in it, the author describes the stages of aging. I found out that I am in the “young old” category.  I’m not sure that helped me to know that.  Because, I got Covid the day after I read it and for a week, I have felt dead.

Oh life, what a teacher you are! Oh life, you mentor us for all the stages and phases of our predictable, yet surprising journey. Oh, life, how will we ever learn to act our age?  There is still so much to learn.

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