Can you imagine that there might come a day when you can no longer take the dogs for a walk on the beach, jump in your car and go and buy ice cream? Book a holiday in Italy? Buy a pair of shoes that you really don’t need? Invite friends over for dinner? Spend a day walking in the forest? Go to your favourite restaurant? Listen to your most loved music as loud as you want? Doing silly things on the spur of the moment?
For many people ageing is about slowly losing independence, being beholden to others, letting go of little things that are your simple pleasures. None of us can actually imagine that this would ever happen to us. I think that is part of the reason why many people have very little patience with and understanding for older people – we simply cannot imagine what it would feel like or that it would ever happen to us.
We are all on our way there. Yet, while physically life might be slowing us down, our brain starts developing new neurological pathways around the age of 55 that have not existed before. In a way, this gives us the ability to look inward, to react and contemplate. If we embrace our ageing as a period of growth, rather than of decline, magic happens! We start looking back instead of always chasing ahead. We start “seeing the wood for the trees”. And we become wiser.
Ageing should not be about loss. It is about growth. It is about a new season where we might show callouses, yet we grow softer inside. We cry easier. We are less gullible. And mostly more kind. The sharp edges smooth, the pace slows down. It is perfectly natural, and exquisitely beautiful if we stop fighting ageing. Our brains give us the most extraordinary gift, that if we embrace it, we could have our most creative years between 60 and 80! IF we embrace it…
Stop trying to defy ageing. Let your hair grow grey. Say your say. Stop trying to keep up. Let life shine its mystical light through you like the late afternoon sun through the autumn leaves. Let it breath the sacredness through you. For if you truly open your heart and your mind to the ageing process it will be the best years of life – less of doing and more of being. And in this being, you will become truly you, in tune with the Infinite.