Today is my birthday. 51.
Shocked. Literally shocked. So old and yet, in my head I’m still the same guy. My dad told me that was his feeling too, though much later in life he realized the body was definitely changed. I’m not there yet, but its coming.
It’s been a tough year, quite honestly. My two oldest girls are both about to move away from college. That’s a very normal thing, of course, and something to celebrate. They’ve been with me for the normal 18 years, and we got the joy of two extra years with the eldest as she completed her AA at my College, Valencia. It’s now time for them to enter “adulthood with training wheels,” College (or University). Higher ed is, if nothing else, that moment when the young adult now takes on almost full responsibility for their lives. There’s downsides (hello “freshman 15”) and upsides (the only curfew is what one chooses) and everything in between.
And yet, it all makes me sad. I don’t like this change coming in my life. Not only does turning 50, er…51, tell me that my children are not really little children, instead moving on in life as adults away from my house, it also means my parents are aging. So far, with God’s grace, they are still with me. They are both so precious to me. I can’t imagine life without them…but I will experience it at some point. All I can think of is that I wish I had far more time with them.
I know something of how the little blue emotion of Sadness feels looking at the moments in the movie Inside Out.
And yet…tomorrow is my 26th wedding anniversary. Hello Joy! If I’ve learned anything over these past 26 years, it is this beautiful mysterious woman with whom I have journeyed in life is the best thing in my life. I cannot imagine life without her, and my own existence would be greatly diminished without her.
Thus, at the same time that I feel a melancholy over the experience of years that seem to lead only to loss of both children and parents, those same years have given me a greater depth of joy in walking through life with this wonderful woman.
Life is like that, I think…sadness and joy. A glass both half empty and half full. Its important then as you go through life to not get too trapped in either emotion. You must keep a perspective that uncovers the more that is always in every moment.
So go, go live life fully. Life is this journey of moments of exhilaration, of fear, of happiness, dread, confusion, confidence and on and on. Don’t hold back. As Mark Twain wrote “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
If God gives me 20 more years, I want to have the same sense of exploration, same confidence in the face of the wind, bow cutting through the wake, as I had 20 years ago. I want those years to also be ones of exploration, dreaming and discovery. I hope do too.
Live well!