“Age is not a downwards sloping hill; it is an upwards ascending spiral to wisdom”
Jane Fonda.
I read this quote by Jane Fonda a few years ago, and have repeated it so many times since, it feels more and more true.
It is my birthday this month, and I´m 50, halfway to one hundred! It doesn’t really feel like me. Inside I´m the same, though I have some aches and pains I didn’t have before.
Am I wise? Probably not, I think I must be on the very beginning of Jane Fonda´s spiral.
I was just talking to my brother Nicolas the other day; he has taught philosophy at a university in Denmark for many years and we talked about age.
“Are you really 50 sis?” he said, “oh so very grown up you are now!”
We laughed; we have always found it easy to laugh together.
Well, he said “do you know that according to Plato, you are now entering the ideal age, he said that 50 is the optimal age for a human”.
That really makes me happy because when I turned 40 someone told me that the next 10 years would be the best years of my life. And now I learn from my brother that it is in fact now at 50, which gives me hope for 60, 70, 80, 90 , 100 and so forth.
I’m sure there will someone by then who will say that the age I have at a given point is the best one if not I will be that much older and therefore wiser and can just make up my own quotes.
You may ask: What has this got to do with my normal blogs about a healthy lifestyle or NLP Coaching? I guess I´m hoping that together we make new rules about ageing.
There is so much ageism around.
First of all, could all cream and beauty product producers stop using the term anti-age. Why would anyone be anti-age? I´m definitely pro-age, aren’t you? Just think of the alternative!
So, what is different? I have to work harder at being healthy and fit.
I have more wrinkles, especially when I laugh and the skin under my chin is having some challenges in fighting gravity.
I get easier moved to tears, I have more empathy and I prioritize to be with the people who truly add to my life, whom I love, and they love me back. I no longer aim to please all the time or win over the people who are not so keen on my person.
I have acknowledged that there is no ideal way to live my life, there is no destination. Life is a journey with its unnegotiable challenges, love, loss, laughter, tears of sadness and of happiness. Emotions are life, and when it is too simple and easy, I find it a little bit boring. Hence, I got a new puppy, rebuilt my kitchen and co-created a jewellry company, with my wonderful friend Maria, in the same month.
Yes I´m 50 and I have just begun a new adventure with a new business in a sector where I have no previous experience and I have finally begun to apply some of my sense for colour and space, I´m now also designing jewelry.
The truth is I don’t want to do any of it alone. Close relationships to my loved ones is the single most important part of a happy and healthy life.
As I write this my door bell rings and the post lady brings me a packet from my sister Louise at home in Denmark, I open it and find that not only has she put the Danish Christmas sweets I had asked her to send, because this year I have not been able to travel home because of Covid. She has filled it with danish licorice and a finely wrapped birthday present. She has moved me to tears, oh how I miss you all.
I hope you are all as happy as you would like to be and remember it is free to be kind.
Ivalo