The Age of Miracles Read Free Page B

tell me that they wish I would lecture “like in the old days.” And I know what they mean. I was flip. I was funny. I was telling it like it is. But it was the ’80s, for God’s sake! It’s easy enough to be light and breezy when you’ve never seen anything but light and never felt anything but breeze. Later, when that’s no longer true—when decades more have been added to your personal repertoire of both pain and pleasure—your voice cannot not change. The question is, will you then lose your true voice or find it?
    Seasons change, but all of them are spectacular. Winter is as beautiful as summer, in nature and in us. We needn’t be less compelling with age; we’re simply compelling in a different way. Being where we are, with neither shame nor apology, is what matters most. The beauty of personal authenticity can compensate for the lost beauty of our youth. My arms aren’t as shapely as they used to be, but I know so much more now about what I should be doing with them.
    W HEN I WAS IN MY 20s I WAS ERY INTO “YES” : Yes, I will go here; yes, I will do that. But as I got older, I got used to saying “no”: No, I can’t do that because my daughter is at home and I have to get back to her; no, I can’t go there because I don’t have the time. It seems that I stopped thinking about why I was saying it and just got into “no” as a kind of automatic response to anything outside my comfort zone. And my comfort zone began to shrink. Finally I realized that at a certain age, too much “no” becomes poisonous. If we’re not careful, we start to say “no” to life itself. And it’s the “no” that ages us.
    The responsibilities of a mature life often force us to focus on things that are immediately in front of us, and in that sense,
“settling down” can be a good thing. But such focus doesn’t have to translate into a constricted state of mind. No one can age well who lets go of their sense of wonder. You might find yourself thinking things like, Oh, that museum. Been there, done that. But if you make the visit anyway, you’ll realize that what you saw at the museum in your younger years was only a fraction of what your eyes can see now.
    If you don’t exercise your body, then your muscles begin to constrict. And if you don’t exercise your mind, then your attitudes begin to constrict.
    And nothing constricts your life experience like the constriction of your thoughts. It limits your possibilities, and it limits your joy.
    All of us have seen people who’ve aged with sorrow; we’ve seen others as well who’ve aged with joy. It’s time to intend to age with joy, deciding that the joy of youth is a good kind of joy, but it’s not the only kind. In fact, there is a joy in knowing that after all these years, we’ve finally grown up.
    A wave of new possibility is upon us, as a huge and formerly quite cocky generation has reached the years of thinning hair and less easy knee bends. What we will do now is not predetermined but rather remains to be seen, as each of us will see according to what we choose to. We can acquiesce to the downward pull of age and chaos, or we can fearlessly forge new ground—wielding the power of what life has taught us so far, laying claim to the possibility of redemption not only for ourselves but for the entire world.
    Our generation has a lot to answer for, having partied so long and matured so late. Yet now that there is less life left, we’re ready at last to show up for it. We have the knowledge, and hopefully the courage now, to stand up for what we know to be true. We realize one chapter of the book of our lives has closed, but perhaps the next one doesn’t have to be worse. In fact, it could be infinitely better. These years can be something to celebrate and cherish, if we have the courage to take the reins of consciousness and create something new for ourselves and for the world.
    Each of us has gone through our own private dramas, taken our own individual