One thing I love about getting older is the capacity of your tastes to change, evolve and circle back. 20 years ago, you may have said, “I will never enjoy sitting at home the whole weekend” and then, just like that, you are enraptured by the sound of the dryer while watching tv and lounging on the couch in all your comfy layers of clothes….the WHOLE weekend.
The longer you live, the more you have the opportunity to go back to passions of the past like listening to new music, and simultaneously finding new loves in this life. Food or a hobby you were previously not interested in, you recently have become intrigued by.
If you really want to get creative -think of a vampires lifetime. They have the opportunity of hundreds of years to learn new languages, travel the world and take on new skills. Ours is merely a novella in comparison, but that short time can be just as appetizing, if not more so. So many people feel it’s a burden to get older and yes, there are negative aspects we could focus on but hopefully you can get excited about something new or seeing something familiar in a different light.
They say your tastebuds change every seven years. I’m not sure if this is true or if it’s a ploy to get me to keep trying tomatoes but it is an excellent practice in reflection. Every seven years we can consider what we relish in this life, what we stand for, what we enjoy and even more notably, how it all has the capacity to transform.
Creativity can flourish as we get older too. Perhaps it’s our increased confidence and flagrant disregard for others opinions, that ignites and weaves it. I used to love discovering obscure music. I haven’t really spent time doing that in a long while and then I did, seemingly, out of nowhere. I’ve always loved to write and I spent years not doing it but I’m currently giving it yet another chance.
Your past is always within you, waiting to surface, or deciding to lie dormant. You get to choose and either is justified. You know yourself more as you get older so it’s fun to make more finalized choices about what you really care about. I’ve dabbled in so many things in my life: sports, painting, writing, charcoal, personal shopping, interior design, poetry writing, line drawing, card making, journaling, reading, tv, snack blogging, calligraphy, product instagramming, mental health advocacy, architecture…just trying out so many things to figure out what I like best. Writing, line drawing, mental health advocacy, counseling and communication are pretty much the winners. None of the others lasted too long, although sometimes I try them again anyway.
Your way of life may change and you are able to see how one way of life could seemingly give you breath, and then how that SAME way of life you so loved, can take the breath out of you, 10 years later.
More than anything, I feel we are on a mental adventure, navigating new ways of thinking about things that have happened for centuries. We haven’t quite questioned them in every possible way and we are here to fulfill that necessary path and that is pretty neat.
Whereas we used to hunt, scavenge, and forage for food physically for survival, we now seem to be exploring the mind to cultivate progress. Mentally, I probably couldn’t have been born at a greater time.
I also thoroughly enjoy that people still find art, music and anything creative to be compelling enough to compose it. I’m glad there are those that carry on the continuity of some of the only good things our worlds people have produced.
Basic thoughts, seen in a different light, perpetuated by your now vast experiences, is another reason that getting older is rad. Gaining multiple perspectives on the same experience if you were to talk to yourself at different points in your life, is eye-opening. This idea really accentuates the saying “never say never.” I love when people say, “If you would have asked me 10 years ago…” and brace you for a much different reply than the one they just stated. That is proof of our own personal evolutions.
What boggles my mind is people who have no desire to evolve, but that’s for another blog post. Willpower, understanding, self-esteem, and boundaries are just a few human endeavors that can all evolve over time. Of course, this relies on our willingness to continue diving into ourselves to understand the mental gymnastics we have to do to be better in these areas. I don’t think everyone is interested in being a gymnast though. I think some people would rather be a judge.
Flourish, learn, be better. Start to understand language and thinking in its cyclical form like in the movie Arrival and you will travel far without physically going anywhere.
The journey into the mind is a complicated, intriguing, sometimes dismal and melancholic path but ultimately revelatory in its wake.
I am personally thankful for every dumb feeling I’ve ever felt because I feel very settled in my knowledge about this life and how it works here on Earth, (unfortunate, in so many ways….really) but let’s do this in the best way we can anyway. Growing mentally, being understanding and accepting that age is just a measurement of your potential mental growth is a good goal. Try living in the moment but also try to grow a bit in each. 😉
onthecontrarykelly 