This week's quote is going to be somewhat unusual for me, my friends. I typically do not like to give such significant placement to a quote, but as I contemplated the theme of this week's post, it sort of just came together, a step at a time, and felt right. So, here's what you get, like it or not! ;)
I was thinking about the shift in the focus I make around September in the PB Project, turning toward gratitude as Thanksgiving holidays begin taking shape in October and November, in North America. Realizing that this Project extends far, beyond that region, I must admit that since I am North American, I must go with what I know. But that is also part of why I begin a bit early, when I can: gratitude is not for one day, week nor month a year! (More info about that attitude here.)
As I pondered gratitude, and began to think about how I could incorporate it into the blog a bit more, naturally my thoughts turned to the growing collection of gratitude links I've been Pinning, and I began to search for things I might find resonate with me. One of these ideas happened to be gratitude for my current age, and it made my mind leap into a strange sort of action. Actually, the word that sort of summarizes the mental and emotional response was:
"Ugh."
Not that I have a significant issue with my age. I remember my mother teaching me to celebrate my age, as she danced through the house singing about her first, gray hair! She told me wrinkles were a wonderful gift, and I should celebrate every, single one! Part of that was her mother being killed on her 40th birthday, by a drunk driver, when my mother was 16; my mother was terrified of her own 40th, and once she passed that threshold, she celebrated living beyond her fears. Gray hairs, wrinkles and other signs of aging were true badges of honor, to her, and she was grateful to have the opportunity to have them. Because my mother was 34 when she had me, I was very young when she reached that huge milestone, and the opportunity to see her daughter grow to adulthood, even from afar, was a precious gift.
Of course, I have conflicting feelings about getting older. I'm sneaking closer to that milestone, myself, and I think it is one thing to mentally celebrate with her memory... and a whole, other thing to look in the mirror or crawl out of bed and see and feel what I am, at my age! There is a messy sort of chaos in realizing how far I've come, and how the future for me looks. It is a very surreal sort of thing, to contemplate this place in a lifetime! No one could offer me enough to relive anything I've lived to this point, and I'm unsure about the future; I'm content staying in Now, and letting things go as they will.
So I decided to search for "gratitude for age quotes", or something like that. And this is what I found. Possibly more conflicting feelings, but as it goes on, there is more hope, depending on your age. I think it's kind of interesting, too:
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.”
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President (of South Africa)
~ Pablo
There will invariably be those who get at least halfway down the list and think or feel something negative. The idea is not to point out what you haven't done yet, but to acknowledge what you haven't yet done, and the potential you still hold! My body doesn't seem set on extending me into "a ripe, old age", but that's okay; I'll do what I can, while I can, and hopefully some degree of substantial good will have been left when I'm gone, and will remain. I'm unlikely to phenomenally land a plane, become President of a country, or whatever else, but I will hopefully leave some kind of imprint that will help the world be a somewhat better place.
To be honest, I respect my age, for the most part. My life has been as it has been, and the place I now am has a lot to do with situations wherein I was making the choices I thought were best at the time, and I have to honor those choices. Some of the choices were mostly passive, allowing life to happen around me without my input nor active force, but some were well-thought and wholeheartedly sought. I've only been able to do what I could do in the situations I've been living, and I have to respect that I did the best I could, even if my best was not enough to get the results I wanted, or wish I could have had.
But those things also taught me a lot about life. They taught me how consequences work, and how emotions play into things. They taught me a great deal about why people do, act, and think how they do. They taught me what it means to live, to act, and to choose. So many things I've learned, including how it feels to want to do more than it seems I can do. I live in this Now, but each choice I make herein allows me to take a step toward a goal, leading to a dream, hoping to send me to an accomplishment for which I can be pleased. I don't have to go down in history; I just need to feel that when all is said and done, I respect and appreciate where I ended up, what I did, and the long-term effects of what I'll have done, after I'm gone.
Whether I live another year, five years, ten, or thirty, I try to remember to be mindful of the wonderful opportunity it is to live now, and I try to let go of the connections to my pride or fear or whatever it is that tries to drain my energy from doing the best I can in this very moment. I'm not always good at it; I'll admit, there are times when I am so worn out and overwhelmed I fall into tears, wondering all the questions I've said I try not to ask, and feeling all the feelings I've just said I try to let go. Perhaps these times are also opportunities for learning understanding and empathy, so that others might feel that they are more connected to something bigger, because they are understood, too.
So I guess, if all it does is make me more human, more connected, and more able to care effectively, then I guess it's worth every gasp and every tear. And that is going to be enough, somehow. We'll make it so, for all of us.
Better days ahead, my friends.
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