I mean, like, who really cares about my personal stance on a lot of things in life. I'm not a celebrity or a public figure. I haven't achieved any level of accomplishment which would hold my opinions up as the newest paradigm. I'm exceptionally average or sub-average, in fact. But, I am a woman and I am over the age of seventy. And that, in itself, is significant.
Recently, while luxuriating in a scented bath, I listened to a podcast as I often allow myself to do. Honestly, it took me almost all of those seventy one years to "allow" myself this sublime experience a few times a week. I have never had a great memory for things I have heard, a limited recall of those I have seen, and practically zero recall of things read but once in a while, something grabs me tight enough to seep and stay in. The title of the talk naturally eludes me but the one bit that I recall is the meeting between the speaker and a woman who gave her age this way...."I'm 92 and i'm just beginning!!" For the next thirty minutes, as I soaked and listened, the benefits of aging were laid out before me in ravishing beauty and truth. The key point was precise. The speaker was confident and eloquent as she told of her own desire to represent herself as an older woman with rights and benefits. High on her list of those was the realization that she did not have to do what she didn't want to do, that she didn't have to associate with those who she chose not to, and that she was able to choose the who's, what's and when's in her life.....now that she was, herself, in her seventies.
After my mother's death, when looking in on my father who was 90 at the time, I often would ask him if he wanted to do various things outside his home. Lunch or dinner? A ride in the car? A visit here or there? The answer was always "no". Why, why, how can he not be bored, I thought. What's with this refusal to participate? When I pressed, he filled me in on his thoughts. "I only do what I want to do and I don't do what I don't want to do" was the lifestyle he had chosen and the guns to which he stuck. He summarized the life of a person his age quite perfectly. Damn the torpedos.
I have a new dictionary. It's not Webster. I am the author. As the author, I have taken liberties.
In taking liberties, words have been added and subtracted from the "standard" dictionary. One by one, year by year, the dictionary becomes edited. Words that used to have meaning have been deleted or edited, in some cases, replaced by better words. The Me-of-My-Younger-Life would never have been so bold. That woman stuck to the definitions, lived the words and lacked the courage to do otherwise, especially when it came to family, friends, and home. The Now-me is so much more courageous, sees the world through an entirely different set of eyes, hears the sounds, smells the smells and digs the heels in with resolve.
I used to use the old dictionary word "obligation". I no longer subscribe to anything that comes close.
There isn't another word that I can bring to mind as quickly when asked about how I define my personal world nowadays. "Obligation" is one of those that I have stricken from the dictionary. It has such a negative ring to it as in "Holy Day of Obligation". Or, "Family Obligation". Come on, think with me about it. I don't do either. Ever. Not now. I did, but that was before I only started my own life....at age 70. That was before I realized that so many times, as we go through life, we do what we do, to make other people happy or comfortable. Mothers have a keen way of accomplishing that. So much, I mean so sickeningly much, time is wasted on pleasing everyone else. I am soothed by not only bath waters. I am soothed and comforted by the comfort I derive from the saying of "no", the acting purely on my own volition. The beauty of sailing my own ship, steering away from choppy waters, gliding along on seas of lavender-scented warm epsom salted baths instead as I plot each point and contemplate a future that is in my hands because I've earned it.
Oh, about that "obligation" word. You may wonder what I have replaced it with. "Desire".
Recently, while luxuriating in a scented bath, I listened to a podcast as I often allow myself to do. Honestly, it took me almost all of those seventy one years to "allow" myself this sublime experience a few times a week. I have never had a great memory for things I have heard, a limited recall of those I have seen, and practically zero recall of things read but once in a while, something grabs me tight enough to seep and stay in. The title of the talk naturally eludes me but the one bit that I recall is the meeting between the speaker and a woman who gave her age this way...."I'm 92 and i'm just beginning!!" For the next thirty minutes, as I soaked and listened, the benefits of aging were laid out before me in ravishing beauty and truth. The key point was precise. The speaker was confident and eloquent as she told of her own desire to represent herself as an older woman with rights and benefits. High on her list of those was the realization that she did not have to do what she didn't want to do, that she didn't have to associate with those who she chose not to, and that she was able to choose the who's, what's and when's in her life.....now that she was, herself, in her seventies.
After my mother's death, when looking in on my father who was 90 at the time, I often would ask him if he wanted to do various things outside his home. Lunch or dinner? A ride in the car? A visit here or there? The answer was always "no". Why, why, how can he not be bored, I thought. What's with this refusal to participate? When I pressed, he filled me in on his thoughts. "I only do what I want to do and I don't do what I don't want to do" was the lifestyle he had chosen and the guns to which he stuck. He summarized the life of a person his age quite perfectly. Damn the torpedos.
I have a new dictionary. It's not Webster. I am the author. As the author, I have taken liberties.
In taking liberties, words have been added and subtracted from the "standard" dictionary. One by one, year by year, the dictionary becomes edited. Words that used to have meaning have been deleted or edited, in some cases, replaced by better words. The Me-of-My-Younger-Life would never have been so bold. That woman stuck to the definitions, lived the words and lacked the courage to do otherwise, especially when it came to family, friends, and home. The Now-me is so much more courageous, sees the world through an entirely different set of eyes, hears the sounds, smells the smells and digs the heels in with resolve.
I used to use the old dictionary word "obligation". I no longer subscribe to anything that comes close.
There isn't another word that I can bring to mind as quickly when asked about how I define my personal world nowadays. "Obligation" is one of those that I have stricken from the dictionary. It has such a negative ring to it as in "Holy Day of Obligation". Or, "Family Obligation". Come on, think with me about it. I don't do either. Ever. Not now. I did, but that was before I only started my own life....at age 70. That was before I realized that so many times, as we go through life, we do what we do, to make other people happy or comfortable. Mothers have a keen way of accomplishing that. So much, I mean so sickeningly much, time is wasted on pleasing everyone else. I am soothed by not only bath waters. I am soothed and comforted by the comfort I derive from the saying of "no", the acting purely on my own volition. The beauty of sailing my own ship, steering away from choppy waters, gliding along on seas of lavender-scented warm epsom salted baths instead as I plot each point and contemplate a future that is in my hands because I've earned it.
Oh, about that "obligation" word. You may wonder what I have replaced it with. "Desire".
