Letting Go
Getting older seems, to me, to be the process of learning to let go.
Whether I like it or not, there are boundaries upon my life that are not of my own choosing, and aging is one of those boundaries. There are white hairs amid the few brown that remain, there are pains in my body that I did not use to have, my energy is no longer drawn from a bottomless pool.
When I hike, I can no longer skip from rock to rock and not feel it later in my ankles. When I exercise, I must stretch first, or risk pulling something that will not immediately heal. The body just doesn’t repair itself as quickly as used to. I actually have to use my head, figure out a better way to do something, not just rely on brute force, determination, and limitless energy.
Yes, I can still move, still do the things I want to do, these are only hints of mortality flashing through my mind like the dappled shadows of branches dancing in a descending wind, but they are still palpable and present, ground into my bones.
Not yet. Not yet, they whisper, but one day. One day… Eventually, a man’s strength fails. Age makes this clear.
It can be depressing to feel as if something were slipping from your grasp. That sense of impending physical loss, of being trapped in a slowly disintegrating prison, can be overpowering. I look at my grandfather, who expressed his life through sports, through bodily activity; it’s hard to imagine what he must go through today, with that body almost immobile.
But age brings other things with it. The boundaries I did not acknowledge as a youth still existed, whether or not I acknowledged them. Now those boundaries and their ramifications are coming into focus.
Knowing that time and energy is limited gives me the impetus to spend my resources more usefully. A child will drink all of his water for the day’s journey in the first hour, running to and fro, and then go thirsty. But when you know that you only have half a canteen, you conserve what you can and stop wasting resources on things that do not matter as much. You learn to evaluate your life, determine what is important. You learn to prioritize your activities.
And you learn to let some things go.
It’s another great paradox of life that productivity and purpose are not increased by possessing limitless resources but by perceiving and accepting one’s inherent limitations. The more limits we possess, the more we discover what really matters to us and what is worth doing.
Age brings our lives into focus.
Whether I like it or not, there are boundaries upon my life that are not of my own choosing, and aging is one of those boundaries. There are white hairs amid the few brown that remain, there are pains in my body that I did not use to have, my energy is no longer drawn from a bottomless pool.
When I hike, I can no longer skip from rock to rock and not feel it later in my ankles. When I exercise, I must stretch first, or risk pulling something that will not immediately heal. The body just doesn’t repair itself as quickly as used to. I actually have to use my head, figure out a better way to do something, not just rely on brute force, determination, and limitless energy.
Yes, I can still move, still do the things I want to do, these are only hints of mortality flashing through my mind like the dappled shadows of branches dancing in a descending wind, but they are still palpable and present, ground into my bones.
Not yet. Not yet, they whisper, but one day. One day… Eventually, a man’s strength fails. Age makes this clear.
It can be depressing to feel as if something were slipping from your grasp. That sense of impending physical loss, of being trapped in a slowly disintegrating prison, can be overpowering. I look at my grandfather, who expressed his life through sports, through bodily activity; it’s hard to imagine what he must go through today, with that body almost immobile.
But age brings other things with it. The boundaries I did not acknowledge as a youth still existed, whether or not I acknowledged them. Now those boundaries and their ramifications are coming into focus.
Knowing that time and energy is limited gives me the impetus to spend my resources more usefully. A child will drink all of his water for the day’s journey in the first hour, running to and fro, and then go thirsty. But when you know that you only have half a canteen, you conserve what you can and stop wasting resources on things that do not matter as much. You learn to evaluate your life, determine what is important. You learn to prioritize your activities.
And you learn to let some things go.
It’s another great paradox of life that productivity and purpose are not increased by possessing limitless resources but by perceiving and accepting one’s inherent limitations. The more limits we possess, the more we discover what really matters to us and what is worth doing.
Age brings our lives into focus.
posted by Fortunato at 12:47 PM
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