I'm Having One of Those Moments. What About You?
Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Some days it just hits me
I was about to get up and replenish my coffee when it came over me, unbidden.
A deep, powerful wash of gratitude.
Just to be alive.
Yah, lotta shit going on, ya know?
But there was that feeling again. Happens a few times each year, no warning.
Suddenly I am so full of warmth and happiness just to be alive.
Doesn’t matter that America is being dismantled (of course it does, you get it, this isn’t about that).
Doesn’t matter that I am dealing with daily, constant pain. Have been for years now.
I am so full of gratitude just to be alive.
When I woke up today, Mika had burrowed next to my feet, as she is wont to do. When I felt for her head it was too warm around her muzzle. I threw the covers back and she angled her head to breathe in the cool room air.
Groaned her happy I WUV YOU groan. When Mom wakes up, the massage begins. Lucky dawg.
I’m a lucky dawg to be alive. With my medical history, the things that have happened to me, the things I’ve done to myself, I am very lucky to be alive.
Yesterday, I took my Hump Day on the Oregon Coast. Now almost five years into the habit, as I consider my options as to whether I remain in America or move overseas, stay in my house or find something smaller, whatever the world throws at me, I am just so grateful to be alive.
To be able to drive to such a beautiful place and spend a few hours marveling at Nature.
Yes. These are rough times for many. The VA, upon whom I count for my income and medical care, faces vast cuts. I expect rough times ahead for all of us especially those of us who are older, vulnerable, dependent upon what’s left of the Federal government.
Those of us who juggle disabilities, well, we know how the Administration feels about disabled veterans. And about those who died protecting our privileges, what some euphemistically call rights, but which are temporary hall passes swiftly removed.
Are removed already and more to follow.
Life is changing. Can we be grateful for life no matter how it shows up?
Last night I was out on the Oregon sand dunes as the sun began its descent.
and I were out walking our dogs, the sun was sparkling silver on the waves, the wind had whipped up and was sending all kinds of things skittering over the sand as Mika hurtled after them.I was dead tired after a long day. We’d had a great talk, I bundled Mika into the car. Then, loaded up with enough of Rebecca’s hot coffee to get me home safely, I drove back with Mika’s head on my hand.
What a life.
Might I have really appreciated having found love?
Sure. But I didn’t.
Might I like being able to ease into my later years without being faced with existential threats from a hostile country, my own, for whom I wore a uniform to protect?
Sure. That’s not our reality.
Might I have opted for some different outcomes at this age? Sure.
But I didn’t. This is where I am.
Those of you like
who subscribe to might have seen her quote James Baldwin for her mid-week break. This was worth sharing:Paradoxically, to say Yes to life is to assent that you have no say — that life makes the crucial choices for you, and you narrate them with the illusion of choice, and you call that narrative freedom. He (James Baldwin) writes:
People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all — a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named — but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.
I am at the mercy of all things, and beholden to none but those I love with all my heart.
Yet I sat in my office for a moment, bathed in deep appreciation for the life I have been given.
The sun touched my face.
Once you hit a certain age, that song has a completely different meaning. If it doesn’t cause you to tear up a little, well.
Nothing was promised me. Love wasn’t promised me. A good life (whatever that means) wasn’t promised me.
I was given a life. What I do with it is up to me. I’m grateful for the chance to do just that.
Let’s play.
Thank you for reading this. At a time when many of us are facing wobbly futures, there is such a powerful choice to be bitter or to get better at handling what we’re handed. I vote for gratitude. I’ve no clue where I’m headed or where I will end up. For now, however, I do know that the grace of gratitude is a power statement in a world full of angry, bitter, resentful folks.
We notice the small things that make life so very worthwhile. Let’s do more of that.
Please consider supporting what I do, and sharing my publication.
That feeling is so good and can be so fleeting.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life, death and the in between. How life can and has changed dramatically for me many times for better and for worse. When I look back I can remember moments of being happy and grateful and loving life no matter where I was situated and others where I did not appreciate any of it.
I’ve had many conversations with my Mom about life since my Dad passed in 2023. She constantly sprinkles into our conversations the fact of who knows how long she’ll be here anymore. Talks about when she’s dead. Ha! It’s a fact. She just turned 90 at the end of January this year. Still in the matrimonial home, still driving and well too, still taking care of herself no real problems. But who knows right? No one.
It’s her matter of fact way of including this into conversations that’s made me think about being grateful, truly feeling that gratitude and expressing same for others. We’re all going and have no idea when even as we plan for the future.
The world may be at war any time or it may not. Some of what I enjoy now may have to go.
The way my Mom faces the world has made a difference in my anxiety/worries about how the world is right now. I’m noticing that warm glowing feeling more often inside. I’ll take it.
I needed this today! This also helps me cope with the useless litany in my head that I could have made better decisions. But hindsight isn't truly 20/20. The quote about our decisions being at the mercy of things far beyond our control is reassuring to me. I so appreciate your clear-eyed perspective. There's a price to pay for having it--but there is always tuition to be paid for knowledge. Sigue adelante!