User Post: Let Me Be Old

I don't want to be young again. I don't mourn my youth. I have earned my years and I don't have the least desire to relive them.

What I want is to be old. I want to live to be really, really old. I want to live to be well over a hundred. And I want to make each of those years as I have made each of these; worth it. Memorable. Different.

So many people fear aging. They fear lines in their faces and the changes that come to their bodies. Sure I wish I looked the same somewhat as when I was eighteen, but if it means that I have to trade the woman I am now simply to look again like the girl I was-I choose not to. I choose to be just who I am-imperfections and all.

Companies spend millions of dollars trying to sell us the thought if we only looked younger, thinner, had more hair on our heads and the libido of a stallion that we would all be happy, happy, happy. So many of us actually believe that and buy into the hype. We try to recapture what we think we may have lost in purchasing beauty products and status symbols and in reliving "the best years of our lives."

Were they really the best? I mean the days before marriage and children, before responsibilities and obligations, those long ago times before we actually knew what the world was truly about? Was it better before we knew what love really was? Was it better before we realized dreams can be dashed as well as come true? Was it better in those days when life seemed so long and unending? Some things were-but not all of it, not even most of it.

I don't feel the best years of my life have been lived yet. I have learned so much through all this living I have been doing and I intend to learn a whole lot more. I am hoping to live long enough still to experience every wonder and extreme, every heartache and mundane moment that life can and will offer.

When we are young we think we have forever. We fail to stop right in the midst of a moment and take a picture of it in our minds. We forget to cherish the small miracles and the large ones. We rush through in our haste to get to the next part.

But now, now as we have grown older and a bit wiser (just a bit mind you) we slow the pace and relish the moments. We take notice of what is going on around us. We realize how precious it all is. How special each moment is-even the boring ones. At least we do so if we learned anything at all in our living.

It comes with age to learn how much a heart can grow and expand. It comes with age to experience grief one tragedy at time. It comes with age to know forgiving someone is easier to live with than holding onto the hurt. It comes with age-the realization that life is too short to not appreciate it with every fiber of our being. It comes with age to know we are not indestructible and our lives, and those we love, can be over at any second. It comes with age to know that there is only now.

I don't need to go back in time to re-do it. I'm still doing it. I'm still out here dreaming the same dreams. I'm still hoping the same hopes. I'm still looking ahead and waiting in eager anticipation to see what life has in store for me. It might be quite terrifying what life will bring but then again it might not.

It all changes in a moment. I only know that now. Good or bad, it changes in a moment. I didn't know it when I was young. I didn't realize that out of every tragedy, roses still shoot up through the cracks and take my breath away in surprise.

Monika M. Basile