Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. ~Mark Twain
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
Today I begin my third year of the best decade of my life so far, and one thing I have learned over the last year is that as you age, pride is a trait best left behind with your youth. I am now entering that phase in my life where the words poked and probed will be used far more often than I would care for, but I have come to accept that this is just part of the price of admission to this ride we call life.
I apologize up front for being very open this morning regarding matters of health, and for those of you who would rather not read any further I fully understand, but don’t say I did not warn you, proceed at your own risk.
At the ripe young age of 42, I keep getting told that I am still just a baby. While mentally, spiritually, psychologically I still feel just like a baby, the body is beginning to show signs of wear and tear. I have begun that process of preventitive maintenance on a body that I have used and abused for far too long, and I am now seeing the effects of neglect and age.
According to the doctors my hearing is bad and will get worse over time, but for now it is only really bad in “noisy” conditions, it is just not bad enough for hearing aids. As noise pollution gets worse and infiltrates every aspect of our lives that is like being told that your eyesight is bad only when you are looking, so you don’t need any glasses. However, I may have an auditory processing issue as well as hearing loss, I will know after the conclusion of more tests. Basically I can hear, but my brain may not process the information correctly, this explains why at times when writing names on cups at work, I mistakenly hear Rodd instead of Todd, or Lucille instead of Jack. I also have an enlarged prostate, and pee as frequently as my pregnant co-worker, if not more.
The list could go on if I chose to do a laundry list of ailments, but that is not the point of this post, the point of this post is that while all this may be going on, I have accepted that this is just a part of life and I need to roll with the punches. This realization came to me as my urologist put a glove on his hand and asked me to bend over at the waist. Life once again was teaching me that it is not what happens to me, but how I react to it. I could either fight all of this, tense up and make it as painful as possible, or I could just relax and hum the tune “Old MacDonald” go to a happy place, and as they say, “this too shall pass.” I of course chose the latter.
Another part of growing up is realizing what truly matters in life. Someone famous and succesful said in one of the many books I have read in the past year that “When you are twenty you worry about what others think about you. When you are forty you don’t care what they think about you. When you are sixty, you realize they weren’t even thinking about you at all.” I am definitely in that not caring what people think of me mode at this point in my life. It sounds a bit selfish, but it isn’t. As I have stated here on many occasions, one of the most important lessons I am learning in life is that if I don’t take care of myself first, then I can’t be of any use to the ones I love around me.
I am sorry if it seems I am all over the map on this post, but to sum it all up I am so grateful I have made it this far in life. I am grateful for every day that I am blessed with, so grateful that all of these so called health issues in the grand scheme of things aren’t important. They are just part of the process, each of them bring with them a new lesson to learn, and new opportunities to explore. We can either surrender to the process of life and accept it all with grace and see the guiding force that walks us through it as angels, or take up a cause and fight and see it all as a battle with demons.
In closing I just want to say I Love You to all my friends and family, thank you for sharing this wonderful day with me.
