Aging Gracefully?

Thinking one is dying and then she lives, creates an entirely new environment in which she lives, at least for a while! Feeling a little better today yet still caught in some wierd maisma. Is it the aging, the very terminalness of that? Perhaps that is part of it.

I have been voraciously reading journal material (that which was not destroyed because it was such drivel), collected poems and notes on books read. Clutching my pearls!

Allegra Taylor wrote a spelendid book Older Than Time. Way back when I first read it, I took copious notes. Of course, I was young then. Yet, they still speak to me.

"We imagine that somehow another person will COMPLETE us and we search for a mirror to see our own loveableness reflected back. It's a hopelessly addictive drug and, by its very nature eternally unfulfilling..."

"A large part of my wisdim quest and the chellenge of ageing, I think, is to learn to be at peace with aloneness 0 to find inner contentment when I am on my own and not need to fill up the space with people or constantly justify my existence in terms of some kind of relationship. I love my partner, my friends, adore my children and grandchildren. What they have given me is there, whether I'm with them or not. Nothing can ever take it away. But who am I? Who lives in this aging body sitting in the sun on a mountain top? "

"One day you're an attractive alluring woman and the next day you become one of the faceless group of old ladies who sit alone in cafes and on park benches. One of the wrinklies, shrinklies, crumblies, old bags, old bats - bewildered at the speed of the decent - dismissed as irrelevant, dying of lonleliness. With no recognized rites of passage, we grope uneasily in the frightening tunnel or transition, unsure of what lies ahead, afraind to relinquish what has gone before."

Interesting. Relinquishing what has gone before...is that where I am? Reappraising and reinventing myself? Enjoying time...whatever there is left of this life...celebrating? Thoughts, ideas, feelings...aging...content to be a member of my "age group" whatever that is...plodding along...am I striving to age gracefully - or perhaps just enjoy the hell out of it!