I love aging. I don't know if I will still be feeling that way when I hit 40, but right now I am in love with it. I love the way my body changes from time and weathering, and most importantly, I love the way my mind is constantly reshaping like clay on a pottery wheel. With every passing day, year, decade... I drink up the time and revel in the way it changes me, making me better suited to handle the complexities and nuances of this world.
Older folk may chuckle at a freshly new 22 year old talking about how wise they are from all the years that they have lived, but that is not what I am saying here. I am discussing how I have fallen in love with the process of spending more time on this Earth, and the way it molds my soul and adds layer upon layer.
I nanny for two kids ages 7 and 13. Before starting this job, it had been quite some time that I had spent ample time around such young minds. At first, their youth greatly took be aback. You can't have conversations with little kids about things beyond the monsters that lurk under their beds, the special powers of their stuffed animals, or what's for lunch. One time a 6 year old asked me what was my greatest fear in life. I paused, then said it was not living my life to its greatest potential. She stared at me like I was speaking German, then said, "No, I mean a real fear," then proceeded to tell me hers was this monster with the head of an animal that lived in the woods. Most of my conversations with young people go like this. As soon as you delve into an idea outside the current moment, you lose them. It is totally logical that kids act in this way, but in the beginning of being around kids again, I found myself constantly shocked by this. I kept thinking, "I was this way once," and the fact that time had fed my soul so much in these years completely baffles me to this day. These little kids are going to be molded and shaped by life, and I am a witness to the earliest stages of these growing human sculptures. The possibilities of what could come is so incredibly exciting and terrifying, feelings that I now know a mother must feel as they watch the world sculpt their little ones in front of their eyes, many times unable to do a thing about it.
Sometimes I try and picture what my mind was like when I was younger, or what my mind will be like when I am older. How did my mind process certain thoughts, certain events? How has it changed, and how will it change? With every passing year, I feel like I am sinking deeper into this earth, tethered to its core. I suppose it's the same idea as spending more and more time with another person. You feel your body and soul creating invisible spindles in between the both of you. In some cases with some people, you may feel the longer you are with them, the farther you are from them. These are the most soul-crushing relationships, because it goes against what humans want; to connect. I wonder if some people feel that way about the earth. I wonder if the longer they are on it, the more detached they feel. The idea pains me, because the earth is not human, and does not have the capabilities to hurt in the way that we do. The cold might chill our bones, the rivers might try and swallow us whole, and the night may leave us senseless, but in every pained moment there is also beauty, and an undeniable purity that only nature can possess.
As I sit here in my constantly aging body, I feel not like life is running out, but like I am sinking deeper into life and learning how to live in more meaningful ways. Even as the physical body ages, I still find beauty in the lines carved into the skin like canyons running through the earth. I look at my grandmother and don't see a body falling apart, but rather a body so full of life that it is at its greatest state.
So yes, I love aging. Will I think differently when my body begins to sag and shrivel? Maybe, but I hope not. I hope that I will always see the beauty in being weathered by life, and I hope that society develops this same view on aging so that people can stop trying to counteract such a natural and wonderful process with serums, pills, and diets. Let us all allow ourselves to sink deep within the earth, and stop fighting the way the world insists on molding us. At the end of our lives, we will see a finished masterpiece.
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