Gratitude for My Fellow Travelers on the Aging Journey
Unsplash
We’ve just finished our Thanksgiving celebrations for another year. Although I try to practice gratitude every day, I’m not always successful. So at least annually, I take the time to be still for a bit…to be grateful for so much. I am struck by the long lists of gratitudes that have come to light in my retirement life. When I was working, things I was thankful for were often a result of my career: affording to travel, buying the things we needed without stressing too much, having a large circle of people in my life, etc. But now my list is different. I’m grateful for slow mornings that include hot coffee, my journal, and relaxing music. I am grateful for swirling yellow leaves, catching a sunrise as I walk the dog, and glimpsing golden sunsets. I am grateful for my husband and the quiet rhythm we have found in our days. I am grateful for a few close friends that I can get together with, laugh with, cry with.
And as I continue to move through these years in my late sixties, I am especially grateful to the women who I walk along with in this journey, my fellow travelers.
Along with some close friends, some slightly younger, some older, I am in the company of legions of women who I have come to think of as my fellow travelers. Together, we’re on the “just-past-midlife” aging journey. Regardless of whether we are already friends, have yet to meet, or may never lay eyes on each other, we are known to each other. Society conspires to keep us largely invisible to the general public. There are many ways to go unnoticed, and and its not always a liability. But too often we are simply dismissed with an, “Okay, Boomer” by younger generations who don’t take the time to understand our hard-fought path to women’s rights, our collective wisdom, and our inherent value. Perhaps that may be changing with the chorus of our voices as we age together. We are getting louder about the aging process in the later decades, and we are getting real. This aging journey is a big, important thing to a generation of us.
I seek out these fellow travelers in books, in TV media, on social media, through podcasts, and in the everyday. Boomers and Silent Genners stand out to me in a crowd like the peddler in Caps for Sale, towering above the glow of Gen X skin and the clipped pace of millennials in a hurry. I find myself looking at the women in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties the same way I used to look at thirty-something women’s outfits, hairstyles, and accessories. “How would I look in that age?” I wonder. This curiosity seems like a safe way to “try-on” the coming years. We smile at each other, these elder women, my role models and I, in grocery stores, in libraries, in restaurants. They, too, recognize a fellow traveler. Their acknowledgment co-signs my own journey.
Could my own curiosity actually propel me through the journey of the coming years? Could a sense of wonder keep me from settling for answers that serve society’s view of what I should be experiencing only to rob me of my own unique discoveries on the aging journey? Could curiosity and wonder amplify my inner voice and drown out the chorus of “don’t bother, it’s too late”? Could loving the questions make this journey a happier, more fulfilling one?
Two psychologist acquaintances of mine started a podcast last year called “Stance of Curiosity.” The purpose is to illustrate how curiosity is a powerful tool to address fear and overwhelm, helping to discover both the meaning of behaviors and better responses to them. Although their context is school-centric, the content has still increased my awareness. I’ve learned that I need to listen to myself as I age and to gently question myself with genuine curiosity, an act of self-love, rather than harshly interrogating myself, an act of judgment. This opportunity for even deeper reflection helps to get me “unstuck” from the sense of overwhelm I sometimes feel due to the conflict between my former younger self and my present, much older self. I’m curious not so much about the “why” of my thoughts and actions like I was in my formative years, but about the “how.” How will I show up in my elder woman years? An older woman friend of mine used the mantra, “It’s all invented.” Recalling this, I can imagine what it might be like living, really living, my remaining years. Once again I find my thoughts turning to the women who have gone there before, who walk beside me, who will be joining me soon, as I come of age.
Coming of age – another phrase for a journey into a new part of your life. In her classic coming of age novel, The Outsiders, S.E Hinton told generations of teenagers to “stay gold.” I feel like the message from fellow travelers of my generation and beyond should be “stay curious.” My gold is tarnishing fast in the elements, and staying curious may be the best way to experience the avalanche of changes that aging brings on. So, I imagine us journeying together; other aging women are my traveling companions. They instruct me, they inspire me, they steady me.
Sometimes the journey takes a little detour. One day you’re enjoying limitless energy, and the next day you’re trying to figure out why a morning appointment has left you exhausted for the rest of the day. “Yes, that’s just how it is,” the trail blazers and your fellow travelers say in refrain. So, I learn to plan for things that I used to never give a thought to and be patient with myself, taking some breaks to rest and reflect and perhaps applying some gentle pressure here and there until things click into place.
In this journey, this big, important aging journey, I am aware that no matter which pathways I take, the endpoint is the same. The destination is irreversible. There will be no recalculating the route, like I had done so many times in my younger years. I know that staying curious about each day may be the key to persevering into the next. I’ve learned from my fellow travelers that the pathways are varied: some are filled with active adventure and some are more quietly fulfilling. I’ve read all their postcards, and I believe them when they say that although some of the journey may be frustrating and downright disappointing at times. I’ll find my way if I stay curious. Because along with the disappointments, small happinesses and unexpected delights may be just around the corner.
How is your aging journey going? Are you helped along by fellow women travelers? Let me know in the Comments.
