Everyone is so afraid of getting older. Once we get past 21, we dread birthdays, we lie about our age, and we spend lots of money to appear younger than we are. Why is that? Age = experience, and there is nothing that can make us more interesting and attractive than experience. Age also results in our knowing and understanding ourselves more, and pursuing the things we find important. When I was younger, I was AMBITIOUS! I wanted power. I knew that private schools, and especially boarding schools, were the playing field on which I would make my career, and I was going to be a Headmaster. Why? Because I was young and ambitious. As I aged, I came to realize more and more that being a Headmaster meant putting aside everything else in your life to focus on that one goal. How awful! When I turned 38, I stepped down as the chair of my department because power was no longer my number one goal. Instead of being powerful, I want to make a difference in the lives of my own particular students. Although this has been a very difficult year in a lot of ways (I am teaching one class more than a full load, with four totally different classes when 2 is the norm, and new textbooks in all four classes) it has also been my most enjoyable year in a long time. For the first time in almost a decade, I get to focus on my own kids and what they need, not on what the department needs. I am finally able to recognize what I want out of my professional life and focus on that. I've never been so satisfied with my work!
One of the other benefits of aging is that my children are aging too. I can go on for pages about my son - my running buddy and soccer star, but right now I'm thinking about my daughter - the older child. She's about to become a teenager and is old enough now to share a lot of my interests. We read the same books and talk about them. She now watches "How I Met Your Mother" with me and marvels at Barney's Awesomnity (Layne's word). She laughs when I text her funny pictures on her cell phone. How can aging be bad when it is turning my daughter into my best friend?
Why am I thinking about aging today? It is because today we celebrated my wife's 39th birthday. Yes, the first and real 39th birthday. How did we celebrate it? There were three main parts to the day. First, we took the kids to the community Easter Egg Hunt. We got to hang out with friends and watch our children behave perfectly, even when their friends were not. I wish I could say that happens every day, but they're human too. Then Deb and I biked together to another city IN ANOTHER STATE and had lunch sitting on a bench outside on a beautiful day. After lunch, we biked home, mostly downhill, and had some awesome stretches of pure speed. We've never been able to discover and share this interest in cycling before because the children have been too young, but age has brought this incredible shared interest.
The last thought on the awesomnity of aging is definitely related to the biking. For the first time in years, Deb and I are able to focus some energy on being individuals, and not just on being parents. As a couple, we've lost almost 70 pounds, started exercising more (aka cycling), and had the time to seriously expand our interests in cooking and eating. We've been able to find food that is both healthier and tastier, and have enjoyed the extra time together in the kitchen preparing everything. Best of all, these new interests that have come from aging help make sure that we will have many more years of life to discover more new interests together. Everybody wants to be young, but I just don't get it - aging is AWESOME!
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