It happens to everyone, and if it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. You’re out on the dance floor, shaking a little sauce all over that marley tile (move those hips!), cuttin’ that proverbial carpet (I know, I know, it’s rug…but I like the alliteration here…poetic license, I guess), when someone says, “can I take your picture for our social media page?”
“Sure!” you say lighting up with the quickness of a bioluminescent insect during summer time because foresight is shortsighted, especially when you’re feeling good.
You dance the night away. You get down, get down, get down, get down…
Then it happens, your 39 year old self sees it, and it’s scary. That photo you were so all right with posing for yesterday is not so much what you’re alright with today. Your bioluminescence has faded much like your hair color. You ask yourself, “when did I get so gray?” You reason with yourself, “I must have suddenly stumbled into some bad lighting that evening. It had to be the flash and all those fluorescent lights accentuating ANYTHING WHITE!” as you shake your head in disbelief.
The you is me I’m writing about here. The reality is I’ve enjoyed getting older. I like myself more. I know myself more. I care less about things that don’t matter. I laugh more. I connect more. I experience joy like I never have before. I feel more youthful than I did in my youth. I worry less. I eat less pizza (God, that one’s hard). I try to like tea.
You get it, there are absolute upsides to aging. Just tell my hair it needs to get it together.
This summer I got interested in positive psychology, so I took a class on Coursera taught by Martin Seligman, who is considered the originator of the field. In one of the classes he acknowledges that while age brings decline in physical and mental abilities, particularly around speed, there is at least one area where people excel as they age (due to several factors I won’t mention here): originality, also known as creativity. For someone who consumes creative works and aspires to make them, aging might just be what I should’ve wished for after all.
Seligman goes on to tell a story about a musician named Itzhak Perlman, a famous violinist, who once broke a string while playing Beethoven. He apparently played the piece so beautifully with only three strings that he was given a standing ovation. Perlman stopped the applause to say, “sometimes the job of the artist is to see how much music we can make with what we have left.”
I’m not an artist, but I do believe that our lives are a piece of artwork we make our own. So, I plan to keep on dancing, (and being photographed), creating, and getting old with all the hair (gray or otherwise) and vitality I have left. In the end, I will have created and owned a masterpiece that I hope influences those I love (nieces and nephews…are you reading this?). To all of you: Brian, Stacey, Rebecca, Eddie, Shayne, Victoria, Cassondra, Alex, and Ashley, Crue, Lena, and Everleigh: never be afraid to…back it up, move it forward, and shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it until you soul is full and your hair is grayer than mine, bad lighting be damned! Craft that work of art we call life with all the good, love, passion, compassion, hope, faith, and humility you have in you. Leave nothing on that marley tiled floor. I LOVE YOU!
the daily periphery 