Someday I will be too old reinvent myself again. And someday I will be too old to wink and smile and banter and flirt. Someday I will forget things, and be aching and confused. But I hope I will never be too old to be playful with the world.
When young you think at every point of realization or landmark "This is it - I'm done. I am who I will always be, yay, no more trying". But, thus far, it has never been that way. I've been so many things that I thought would forever define me, but year after year they simply accrue - nothing is left behind.
What frightens me most about getting old is that I will be DONE. That there will be no more chances. No more last gasps.
I do not want to live in the past, but rather to create the present as I always imagined it could be.
1 comment:
The "reach a goal and you're done" view of life is fostered by our society, but has never been true. For me it was playing music that forcefully brought that fact home; you can "learn" a piece, then "learn" it again 10 years later, and ten years after that... It is in some sense the same but in another sense completely different each time. I believe that you are never too old to reinvent yourself, that you are (re)inventing yourself every moment of every day and that the important thing is the effect you have on the people around you to be better able to reach their own possibilities.
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