Day 107
Today I turned another highway speed limit.
Of course, 20 years ago this age sounded ancient. 20 years from now it’ll sound young. Once again, perspective.
I spent the day with some of the people I love most on the planet – which was really nice. Others I missed terribly. Such is life.
I remember turning 25 … 2 days afterwards I got married. A busy, exciting time.
I remember turning 35 … thinking that my metabolism had stopped cold and I’d never see my thinner pre-baby self. (So far, I’m right with that!)
I don’t remember turning 45 … what was I doing 10 years ago?
And here I am … not where I thought I’d be so many birthdays ago. Life is funny where it takes you sometimes. Just when you think you have it all planned out you are taken, by circumstances more than choice, on a different path.
And sometimes it’s not that it’s better or worse, that path, it’s just different … it takes more time than you think to get used to the road underfoot … those roots that catch your feet, the gravel that is hard on your soles, the dips and hollows that jar your backbone, the overgrowth on the sides that make your imagination run wild and your heart skip a beat. Kind of like walking along a forest path at twilight … one mis-step can leave you tumbling and scraped up … but the setting sun plays on the forest floor and makes the moss and ferns almost glow. The filtered sunbeams shine through the trees and it is breathtakingly beautiful.
Other areas of the path are easy and smooth and you glide along without any bumps or roadblocks or obstacles. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the butterflies flit but there is not much of a view.
Both paths get you where you need to go and each has it’s negative and positive components … and truly, who is to say which is better? I think that is a personal judgement. I think they are just different.
Like people. Like birthdays. Like life.
We have a friend in the “old” neighborhood who has had a rough path – he and his family – for too many years now. He won’t see his 55th and it makes me immensely sad that their life’s journey has been so incredibly difficult.
It also makes me incredibly grateful for the journey I have been on … and though I’ve had “glitches” and heartache … here I am … celebrating a birthday that Tim never made and that our friend won’t see either.
Along the way as I go forward I don’t have much control over where the path leads me but I’d like to slow down the speed of aging and the speed at which life flies by.
Hopefully the years will increase and I will make another speed limit age in another 5 years. I also hope it seems like 10 years between now and then. I’d like to savor more of what I have and to take life more in the slow lane and slow down my speed limit of life.