Why Age Gratefully?
“Gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues but the parent of all the others.”
We begin ageing the moment we leave our mother’s womb and take our first breath. As children we looked to our older siblings and peers, longing to be an age that allowed us to be more ‘grown up’. We moved through our teenage years looking forward to being old enough to get our driver’s license, and then that momentous 21st birthday when we can classify ourselves as adults, that melting pot of varying maturity within the human species.
But then a crazy shift happens.
By the time we reach our mid 30s, approaching 40 years old, we want to be mistaken for younger than our years. We begin to dread each decade, fearing we will become seen as decrepit or senile. Suddenly a small error of judgement or forgetfulness is put down to a ‘senior moment’.
I believe we must change this false perception!
Time is a human construct, one that allows us to number our hours, days and years, a very good thing. Unfortunately, we have taken it to an extreme. We’ve given time an abusive power by allowing it to dominate our thoughts and thereby control our attitudes. For ageing is very much an attitude! And because it is an attitude we can take what is naturally a very negative attitude and transform it into a very positive one. It’s our choice—we can choose to regret our passing years or appreciate our numerous experiences.
There is a timelessness about time that we are unable to fully unravel. Whenever we think back to an occasion, particularly if it is a momentous one, it can feel like it happened yesterday and also can feel as if it took place a lifetime ago. I feel this every year when the anniversary of my husband’s death comes around. Because of the date, I really stop to think about it and can feel the timelessness of it. Simultaneously it feels like yesterday and it can feel like a lifetime ago.
For the Christian, there is an understanding that God is timeless so if we wish to experience His miracles, we must be in the present moment. Even Albert Einstein, an agnostic, agreed that time is beyond our comprehension when he said: “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubborn persistent illusion.”
Gratitude sets us free from regret and can take much of the sting out of the power and influence we have given time. It allows us to see all our experiences, both positive and negative, as blessings because gratitude also allows us to accept ourselves as we are right here right now. We begin to live in the present moment, which is the best way to live. The present moment is all we have. It doesn’t matter how many years have already been, or how many we have yet to live, we only have now, this very moment.
Be grateful for it and feel the expansion in your heart and the way joy skips in on gratitude’s heels.
To age well is a privilege and a blessing. How we age is a choice. I have discovered that the most joyful way to age is to age gratefully.
