As wicked as she was, you may feel a bit sorry for the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz, when she cried, “I’m melting,” into a green and black puddle. It’s sad to become nothing, from something.
Melting, shrinking, disappearing, aging, all have a tinge of farewell to them. Sometimes you just don’t want to bid adieu to what was. Then reality hits and the best way to say goodbye to what was is to celebrate what is. This may take the shape of a pity party.
“Pity me, I’m shrinking.” Mind you, I was never tall and that was just a fact that I accepted. For years, as an adult, I measured five foot four inches at the doctor’s office. Then, all of a sudden my height was undoubtedly five foot one. What?
The thing is, I feel shorter, even diminutive, at times. Standing next to my grown daughter who is also not tall, I feel shorter than before. My husband feels taller than he used to, when we stand side-by-side; although he’s shorter as well.
Feeling shorter and feeling older are not exactly synonymous, but me thinks they’re related. Compared to someone younger and taller, I somehow feel less than, rather than equal to, if you get my drift.
Don’t get me started on the BMI index and what that dastardly number makes of my shrinking stature. Oh, and the maddening occasional message from my fitness tracker, “you’ve been at risk of undertraining recently, are you ready to get back on track?”
“It’s called rest,” I scream at that animated device on my wrist! I can’t win with that thing. One day I will do an insane amount of yard work and it yells at me for overtraining So the next day I simply take a long walk and call it a day. It chastises me for not doing enough.
Having studied human development, I’m comforted by the fact that we’re aging from the moment we’re born. However, aging takes on a life of its own when one passes a certain double digit number in age, the exact number which of course differs for individuals.
Some people feel “senior” at 60, others at 70, 80, or not until 90. But I wonder when exactly one feels shorter? Science documents that it may begin at 40 and accelerates at 70.
Many a shrinking spine has bellowed at a toddler’s plea to “play with me on the floor.” When any X-ray interpretation of your torso includes, “degenerative disc,” in your spine, you know you’re shrinking.
I digress, egress or in some way divert my thoughts for a moment, to the concept of sin. Not sins, as in personal shortcomings from a divine standard, but universal sin.
From the Adam and Eve narrative, marking the beginning of time, sin entered the world and it remains our battle for all time. Sin is in the world and we either recognize it and deal with it or we ignore it and deal with it.
However, “love covers sin.” From I Peter, my favorite scripture says we’re covered. We can overcome all that’s amiss in the world if we can but harness love.
So many of the negative aspects of aging are associated with an inherited state of brokenness present in the world. It’s not our fault.
It’s my opinion that it’s not wrong to complain about those aspects of aging that are hard to accept. I mean, people have been complaining about just about every life stage since we emerged from the womb.
Toddlers complain that they want to “do it myself.” Children can’t wait to be teenagers. Teenagers just want to be left alone to do their thing. Young adults have discovered that “adulting” is hard. Middle aged folks have the “spread,” and “midlife crises” to complain about. It’s all part of the human development pity party.
Older adults have aches and pains that seemed to have just started sometime yesterday, we don’t know exactly when. And the disappearing fluid that our joints used to swim in, irritates the heck out of our knees, hips, and spine. Adding insult to injury, our skin, nails and hair are dry, and we’re shorter.
Please don’t rub it in by telling me that you’re the one in a million who is “growing old gracefully.” I concur with you that it’s true and valid that growing old even with all of its challenges is so very much better than the alternative.
Socially, however, we try to counter our natural aging process with hair color, lotions and potions, hip clothes, young-slang, fillers and shots to counter wrinkles and the thickening of our bodies.
So, complain away. But please don’t get bogged down by your complaints or use them as excuses for entitlement or a free pass to whatever you want out of life. We’re conflicted about whether we like or don’t like aging. Maybe it’s just not an either/or situation.
I think it’s okay to have a blooming pity party, celebrating getting older. And please don’t let nary a whisper of the word, “senior” be uttered at my pity party. It seems condescending, like calling a toddler, an infant – “no thank you,” to borrow a phrase from my toddler friends.
I have a pet peeve when a full-fledged older person is treated like a child, talked to like a child, or made to feel childish. We’ve all earned our age. We should be treated with respect for having gotten to this stage, no matter which one it is.
As it turns out, aging is kind of cool when your body, or your fitness tracker, isn’t screaming some sort of new and crazy obscenity at you or accusing you that you’re doing something, or not doing enough, to cause this mess. I guess the mantra of we aged persons, should be to “embrace the mess.” Go ahead and have a fabulous pity party.
We might be living in a world of sin, but we can live in it without living of it. We’re overcomers, each and every one of us who have aged a little bit and been covered again and again, with love.