It's taken 50 years of hard work to realize and overcome the seeds planted during years of being a teenager in high school. Why do we call it "going through" high school like it's the paddle wheel of growing up? A giant dunk tank of emotional ups and downs -- near drownings -- and momentary lifts into the light and then plunged again into uncertainty, self doubt, broken hearts and dreams. We usually say we 'attend' college, or go 'to' university and have a career in a certain fiels and the very detachment of the words help me breathe more freely. Secondary education is more of a buffet for the curious and hungry and while no less challenging and growth producing, somehow less battering to the soul.
Continuing education is my greatest indulgence since leaving High School. Once I stopped giving others (almost ANY other) the authority to tell me who I am, what I should be doing with my life, how disappointed they are in what I have or haven't become -- life has been a convertible ride through the countryside on a beautiful spring day. Well almost. There are times I've had to put the top up despite my Doris Day image of the 50's that sunshine and gentle breezes and an adoring person to love at your side were to be expected -- or even deserved.
Why did I PANIC when anticipating a return to a turning point in my life's journey? Because I dumped all the progress I have made in my thinking. It wasn't my anticipation that others would judge/condemn what I have or have not become. (you know, successful career, financially stable, fatter and uglier than THEN, children who won the Nobel Peace Prize or went to the moon and found the secret to life. That stuff.) My biggest panic was that I have let myself down and now I would return to the community who knew me then, wearing a blinking neon sign saying LOSER -- my self imposed reflection.
That was THEN
This is NOW.
YOu know I REALLY like who I've become. I am honest, genuine, loving and compassionate and have a healthy sense of humor. I am a good teacher, mother, grandmother, friend and co-worker. I look at my warts and see opportunities for change. I embrace what I have done and been to those sharing my journey, and pronounce it good because of what I have learned from the experience. I know that expectation is the brick wall I hit causing depression, anxiety and stress. So I have learned to build doors in that wall to allow myself to move through unscathed. Expectations? Necessary measures and values to build on when I allow them to balance with mid-course corrections during those times when life invites me or shoves me to a different path. I love the words of Michelangelo in his eighty-seventh year, Ancora Imparo, Still I am learning.
I have just purchased a college level course in Understanding the Human Body. Why do I want to have the insight of a doctor when my years left in my body are fewer than 30? Because I want to know what has been at the center of my ability to share fully in human experiences. I want to look at injuries, illness and disease and understand their part in my path of learning during this lifetime. I want to build compassion for others' physical journey and KNOW what they have endured. I want to appreciate my body for exactly what it was and is. Not my expectation of how I wished I looked on the outside. I will NOT work desperately to lose weight by next September. I will NOT color my silver hair to feel as if I haven't changed from the jet black that used to define me. (Those choices have been constantly nagging me for several months now.) I HAVE changed. OH, my how I have changed. Thank GOD. I have NO judgment about those who choose either of the above. It's just not my choice and I feel freer for having made it while of sound mind.
Time moves so quickly that This is Now will be That was Then before I end this sentence. Blessings on all of it. The gift and journey of a lifetime.
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