It just occurred to me that I do not have a best if used by date.
This has been a year filled with doctors, tests, medical procedures, and surgeries. And it isn’t over yet. The “big one” has yet to occur. Many people around me have interpreted these physical happenings as a bi-product of my advancing age.
Really?
Alright, there may be some truth to that. The pervasive tribal belief is that the older we get the more ailments we endure. But it is for sure a relative truth. If there has ever been a person that has aged with a minimum of physical maladies then the potential is there for us all. Yes, I know about genetics and all of that. And I repeat that the potential is there for all of us. And despite current appearances that potential is here for me.
I do not view this year of repetitive challenge as a necessary effect of age or as some kind of metaphysical punishment. I am grateful to dwell for the most part in a peaceful internal relationship to what has been going on. It has awakened me to a more vital awareness of what I still feel compelled to accomplish during this particular sojourn in time and space reality. I have gotten a clearer glimpse of an impending expiration date, and that has proven to be a blessing and not a curse. Procrastination takes on a different tenor when viewed against a life threatening diagnosis. I actually feel more vitality and aliveness as a result of cancer, not less. If I viewed something such as a bucket list with incredulity before I find it far more appealing and relatable now. In my youth I couldn’t conceive of time as a limitation. I never entertained the possibility that my body wouldn’t keep up with what my inner-adventurer wanted to pursue. And now a different side of my humanity is presenting itself, and I am forced by circumstance to review and reframe my former and less inclusive paradigm.
I guess I am indeed aging. I have no need to deny that. I cannot physically do everything I was once able to do. Gravity has rearranged things, and things that once did one thing, now do something quite differently, if they are doing anything at all. Hmm.
And, I do not have a best if used by date.
I sometimes find my mind drifting to what I haven’t achieved or accomplished, and I ponder listlessly if many of my dreams have passed me by. It is a rich and revealing inquiry when I have the courage to face it and not shut it down in self preservation and defense. It is fairly certain at this point that I will never dance on Broadway or win an Academy Award. I will not naturally father a child, and will most likely not parent at all. My twenty-eight inch waist is probably history, and I have made friends with the spectacles that now sit upon my nose. Gray is the new brown, and craggy is the new smooth. I no longer grab opportunities to check myself in reflective surfaces, and am far less concerned with physical appearance and the current fashion trends.
But for everything lost there are multiples to be gained. I am more patient, compassionate, expansive, and tender than at any time during my lean and more flexible years. Though my eyesight is waning, my insight is sharpening and my vision is ever more spacious and clear. I have moments when true wisdom seems to be replacing my once urgent ingenuity, and when maturity is trumping my past eagerness and ambition.
And yet I know I am far from over. I realize that I have much more to offer life than I ever have before. My hunger to be of authentic service is stronger and more passionate than when I was in a more self-fulfilling career. While I thought I would be at a certain stature by this point in my incarnation, I am certain that I am in the flow of a far greater Intelligence that is moving me forward and setting me free to truly be what I came to this earth to be.
It’s not too late. It really is never too late. I am not out to pasture, and I have no best if used by date. My current medical challenges are proving to be great spiritual opportunities. They have temporarily slowed me down, and I am allowing that loss of velocity to center and to ground me. To clarify what is most essential and authentic to me. I am opening and flowering, even at this ripe old age. There are still dreams to be dreamed and to be fulfilled, and they are now more germane to who I am and to what I came here to express. They are different dreams for sure. They are less self-centered and much more Soulful in their origin. And they are mostly dreams that are fulfilled within my now awakened moments. They are not time or physically dependent. They are states of being that synch with my purpose and vibrate with my passion.
I have no best if used by date. In fact, I am best used when I detach from time and mind and expectation and evaluation all together. I really am at my best now. Slower, wiser, scarred, be-speckled, gray haired and all.
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