Well here it is again, another day which celebrates the passage of time.
Just like a birthday, New Year’s Eve is a day of celebration and reflection but also a day to promise ourselves renewal. This promise is made in the form of a resolution and each December 31st we resolve to accomplish something worthy like weight loss, fitness, learning a language or finally getting that dream job.
We are optimistic and self disciplined in our resolutions. Few women resolve to eat more chocolate, read more romantic novels soaking in the bath or spend more time in the waffle butt lounge chair by the pool.
I think New Year’s resolutions are a great idea because I am for the most part lazy and lacking in self discipline …so if it were not for December 31st, I would float into the next 12 months of my life without direction or purpose but this year I am going in a different direction.
In 2010 I celebrated the publication of my first book Fifty & Fabulous! The Best Years of a Woman’s Life (Watkins 2010) and I began a new journey into the world of the published author. It was a lot of fun and quite a learning experience. I was supported by my family who cheered me on and by the words of my readers who have found my campaign for fearless and fabulous aging inspiring.
My book shares the voices of women between the ages of 45 -102 from 5 countries who have embraced aging and reaped in this time of “grown up life”, a wondrous assortment of gifts.
I have discovered through my study of the women I call “Women of the Harvest” that role models like these can change your entire perspective on life. They can introduce to you a way of looking at your own aging which is freeing, stress reducing and intellectually stimulating. This perspective makeover, which will lift your spirits, is permanent so there is no need to book another appointment in six months. It is very inexpensive; just find an inspiring older woman and chat (well it might cost you a cup of tea or a martini). It is wrinkle free, meaning that when you find acceptance in aging, your face will relax into a smooth smile.
So today instead of listing my resolutions I am going to take the risk of beginning 2011 without the structure of promises made to myself. Instead, I will share the wisdom which has buoyed my life and lit my path since it was revealed to me because we think that we will make the most of getting older but we never dreamed getting older would make the most of us.
“Life slows us down as we age, not to take the sprint from our last mile but to bring us back to wonder.”
“Finding your way home begins with finally accepting first yourself and then the world around you.”
“The longer we live and the more we experience, the less able we are to fit things into neat packages, so eventually we live more comfortably with ambiguity.”
“I feel this space starting to develop in my life. I find myself driven to arrange things so that there is more time between events, to give this space the room it may need to develop.”
“I have found freedom in the failures of my life.”
“Time makes better use of me.”
“I don’t have to be right all the time anymore . . . life is bigger now.”
“I am old enough and wise enough to do dumb things”
“One does not close down as one gets older; instead aging for me is about the discovery of life that is not the fertile woman.”
“As you lose things, physical things and roles in life, the essential person becomes more apparent.”
“In growing older you grow from limited vision to limitless vision . . . so many boundaries disappear.”
“Life is a journey from and to freedom”
Happy, Fabulous and Fearless 2011
