Today I Celebrate Life

First I have to tell you that this hasn’t been one of my most honorable transitions into a new year. I had a major pity party about becoming 62 years old (there I said it out loud and in print.) I had a similar fit when I turned 31 and obviously it didn’t change a damn thing, so why I thought wasting valuable time on another fit would do any good, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a cycle thing – so all of you who plan to be here when I turn 93, watch out! I will be really good at this by then. But enough of that, like most of my pity parties, I’ve grown tired of the whining. I don’t tolerate whiners very well and most of all myself playing that role.

Today I celebrate being 62 and bring alone. It took another trip to the backyard and another visit with nature to get my head on straight and my thoughts in order with what my heart already knew. I had to put a stop to the constant chatter in my head –“You are 62 and you are alone,” so that I could hear my heart singing, “You are 62 and you are alone!”

For the first time in my life I am free. Free to just be me. I can sit on my patio alone -- breathe in the breath of life and commune with nature without fear of displeasing anyone. Now this is a place of joy -- not sadness and loneliness. It is a place where all the universe comes together – where I can celebrate the knowledge that I am at one with the universal whole – that in some way although I am an individual alone on my own human journey, in reality I am never alone. I, a small piece of humanity, am part of something so great and so whole that there are no words to explain it. Now what could be grander than that!

…But it wasn’t so much being alone that bothered me about this birthday --this turning 62. It was about turning 62 as a single, divorced woman. It was about other people’s perception of what the age 62 means. I have always believed that age is just a number that humans assign to have a marker for where they are. I have also always believed that I am every age that I have ever been – so I could just pick one of those ages and be that for the moment. So what was my problem? Why couldn’t I pick 52 and stay there until this crisis was over. I have always felt years younger than my age – still a girl in my heart. What changed with 62?

Another thing I have never been much concerned about is doing or being something or someone just because of what other people think or say. I have always been very much a woman in my own right. Why now? Why was I so concerned about how others perceive my age? Then this morning as I studied the trees in all their magnificence, I began to understand. It isn’t really about other people and their thoughts. It is about how I perceive myself. How I perceive myself will manifest in the thoughts of others. If I feel young, I will be young, and others will mirror that image back to me. Like the trees that will soon be changing their leaves from the green of youth to the splendor of fall colors and shortly after stand naked for all the world to observe, I, too, am only changing form. No, I no longer exude the youthful appearance of 31. I am 62 – in the glorious fall of my life. Standing alone and tall (well, maybe not tall) and magnificent in my own right. And when I am 93, I will stand naked before you all -- the beauty of my youth will have long since disappeared, the magnificence of my fall will have faded, but I will not be ashamed. Because like the tree whose bare truck is exposed to all the elements during the harsh winter weather – yet lives on to bloom again, my soul is ageless and priceless and I will live again and once more experience the bloom of youth – perhaps in another form – in another time where numbers have no meaning –at one with all things.

But for this moment, I celebrate the number 62, I celebrate my freedom, I celebrate being alone and independent, I celebrate life in all its forms, and I celebrate being at one with the Universal Whole.

Today, I Celebrate Life.

©2005 Ilene Madrigal