aging

During a bit of cogitation, the thought of aging stomped across one of the main avenues of my thought processes. In fact, the steps were so heavy that it probably left dents in the pavement, considering peradventure that these mental passages are actually paved and not just muddy pig paths. Then I wandered off, wondering about the substance with which these rumination roadways could possibly be paved. Perhaps it could be done with ground up elements of the hard-headedness already on site.

Striving for absolute accuracy in my aging study I looked up the simple, yet so very complex word – age. As suspected I found that it meant the length of time during which a being or thing has existed. Then mentioned further along in the definitions were some of the periods in a human life, the age of consent, over or under the age of military service, middle age and then the one that many dread – old age. Also mentioned was advanced age and I’m not sure which one between this and old age is the oldest and/or leaves one feeling the most antiquated.

Ignoring many of the other definitions with their descriptive phrases and sentences, I arrived at the phrase – aging gracefully. Speaking of myself, how could one possibly age gracefully when they haven’t shown any particular gracefulness in any other facet of their life? It did make me feel better just to think that I had facets in my life, considering that one of the definitions of this word would be the small polished plane surface of a cut gem. But it brought me back to earth when I noticed that a similar surface cut on a fragment of rock is called the same thing.

Getting back to the graceful thing – I almost have to believe that someone invented dance just to make me feel ungraceful. My only effort at dance even in my younger years, other than the slow shuffling of feet in a darkened room, was the ‘twist’. This happened in the early 60’s and I thought I had this one down until it got back to me that I was just deluding myself. What really stung was that it was not one of my friends that told me I was an ungraceful klutz – it had to come from a stranger. But I guess that was better than just suspecting and not really knowing for sure.

Another element of aging is to mature. This part should be fairly easy since even wine, cheese or wood can do that – they can mature, ripen, mellow, season and develop. Expanding on these five maturations - to me part of maturing is the gaining of wisdom. But I have read that sometimes wisdom comes with age, other times age comes alone. The ripening part of aging really has to be watched carefully because just beyond ripe comes rotten. Then some folks mellow out and get sweeter with age and others just get grumpy.

When I think of seasoning, it comes to me in two parts and the first comes in the phrase, a seasoned veteran. This is a person that has been there and done that and no longer panics over the least little thing. The second part is along the idea of seasonings like salt and pepper. And as seasonings do to food, the properly seasoned person seems to make better any situation in which they find themselves. Then with age, will we develop into a grumpy someone with bad habits or will we develop into a beautiful picture that folks would be glad to have ‘hanging’ around?

This is going beyond my self-imposed allowed length so I will have to continue the aging process tomorrow. Keep in mind that God can and will help us with any part of our lives – even aging. ec