You're Too Old to Let The Thief of Always Steal Your Life

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Jaqueline Fritz on Unsplash

We’re all infected in some way. Ready for a cure?

A kind reminder. Everything I write is directed at this author as much as it is to Dear Reader. I battle with all these things; sometimes I make headway, sometimes not.

It was finally made into a joke item that you could purchase at places like those silly Spencer’s stores at malls. You know, where you could purchase fake vomit and seat cushions that farted? That place. They’ve traded the fake dog poop for “adult novelties,” although you could argue that fake dog poop qualifies.

That thing?

Of course this is the round tuit, which has a history and life of its own.

That joke item, which sticks around like a burr in your sock, is still a great reminder that putting things off can kill today, right here, right now. I’ll get a round tuit, we say. Until we don’t. Sometimes ever.

You and I are Way Too Old to believe that there will always be a tomorrow.

That’s The Thief of Always, for the sake of this article.

The dreams, delights and living-in-the-right-now moments which are shoved aside by hustle culture, productivity hacks and “this is more important than spending time with my kid” look to this author like those too-gorgeous-to-be- true photographs that the Hubble telescope sent us.

Is that where our dreams go? To hang like gorgeous artwork out in space, unlived and unrealized? Is space where dreams go to die?

Let’s talk.

How often is this you?

I’ll get it done eventually.

We’ll do it at some point.

Maybe next year.

Oh, I’m gonna.

All these phrases assume that there will always and forever be a tomorrow. A next week, next month, next year, next decade. Until there isn’t.

In the USA, we appear to hold fast to a combination of fear and denial of our demise combined with the baseless belief that Someone Somewhere is making a magical potion to allow us to live forever.

So instead of learning to live fully here and now, we focus on folks whose snake oil promises fascinate us, whose products we buy like the fools we are, rather than giving ourselves the gift of now.

Hence the general fascination with billionaire bro boy I’ma-gonna-live-forever-by-not-having-a-life Bryan Johnson. This is a guy who complains nobody wants to date him….and then admits he sleeps with a power pack attached to his penis to record his nighttime erections.

No, really.

Photo by Peter Abu on Unsplash

Unless said power pack is also attached to a buzzer designed to give his date the satisfaction he most certainly isn’t offering or able to proffer, why the hell would anyone date this guy anyway? But I digress.

Billionaire bro Bryan appears to be so obsessed with all the medical machinations of living forever, spending four mil and counting on achieving that goal, that his obsession means he isn’t living at all right here and now.

In many ways, Johnson is us. We all dance with The Thief of Always any time we’re running the future or reliving the past. Not sucking the marrow out of life as best we can, no matter the circumstances, the pain, the joy.

All of it is life, not just the juicy stuff.

I wasted years with my face in a toilet bowl to try to be thin, so I don’t get to dance sideways from this one. When I get thin I’ll (be perfect find love be worthy blah blah). Way too close to home.

My LinkedIn feed recently reported the loss of two prominent, immensely talented Black women who quite literally died in their traces. They worked themselves to death, which far too many of us do.

We work so hard to get to that Someday I’ll be Happy that happy just passed us by, always available all along the way. Happiness doesn’t come of doing as much as being in a moment and being grateful.

We value what we do far above who we are, what we can be, simply as humans given paradise.

A paradise we say we’re going to go see someday but right now I’ve got this report, I gotta finish this chore, there’s this thing I have to complete and then we’ll…

It’s not necessarily procrastination per se. Well, maybe. Perfectionists are great at that, using the need to be perfect to put off a project, at least until said project is assigned to someone else or falls off the to-do list.

I once spent several years writing a smallish book only to finally dump the damned thing in frustration. I’m glad it never got published; it was a horrid piece of writing. It was also a fine lesson in how tomorrow and next month and next year end up being…

never.

There’s always going to be time.

You believe that? I find myself making that argument. It becomes a specious argument the older we get, for not only do we begin to see the results of a changing body (which isn’t all bad news but for some, well….), but then there’s the loss of people close to us.

We see all kinds of “life’s too short, live in the now” memes from folks who lost a friend, mother, a child too soon. Grief has a way of waking us up, most particularly when the loss is intimate, a loss which forces introspection.

Then too often we get swept up in our doingness.

Sometimes that’s how we deal with our grief. Sitting with the grief is in so many ways a much better way of allowing it to move us and move through us. Then perhaps in time, the wisdom born of grief finally finds a quiet place inside our souls, and there informs us daily how to appreciate right now.

Not everyone has such courage.

This visual of a gorgeous beach brought that to mind. The beach was gorgeous before the wreck. Now the wreck is part of the scenery, and it informs the beauty as a counterpoint to it. Grief is like that.

Photo by Lloyd Dirks on Unsplash

Some shimmering dream is always out there just on the distance, so close but yet, we’ll get there. Just give it some time.

Then they’re shipwrecked by time or a wrecked body, or both.

What’s your dream? I have quite a few, being peripatetic. Bhutan, which I have to earn my way back to with serious PT and workouts so that I can hike. That will take some time, so that’s legit.

My other thing? I miss having a dog. How many more doggo vids am I going to watch and how many excuses am I going to make before I get one?

Meanwhile I starve myself of the one thing I love best, furball company. What are you starving yourself of? What’s waiting “until I have time?”

The Thief of Always starves us of soul nourishment. I can have excuses for not having a dog, or get a dog and deal with all that comes with it.

This isn’t to be confused with Fear of Missing Out. That’s an equally ridiculous compulsion to fill every single day with every single thing possible in case one tiny experience might pass us by.

This isn’t living either. It’s an OCD wearing a different face, for the abject fear that drives it is also what robs it of any kind of joy. I’ve done it. Got the T-shirt and matching leggings.

More than a few of us had our asses handed to us recently, whether via Covid -when my company tanked- or through loss of life, or loss of job or home or mobility or any one of a thousand versions of life being life.

Others, whose lives may not have been affected by the same kinds of mind-numbing grief, may just make endless excuses to push off That Thing they dream about. Things we genuinely yearn for- like owning another dog.

Photo by Sdf Rahbar on Unsplash

I’ll get a round tuit.

Thief of Always.

Yearnings are a conversation with the soul. Very like hunger pangs.

I promised a cure.

Is there a cure? Sure there is. What I do won’t work for everyone, but I’ve learned that telegraphing our intentions by taking small actions goes a long way towards making the shimmering dream on the horizon into a living reality.

I began the slow, gentle walk towards adoption. I visit adoption websites. Spend time with potential matches. Every so often when I’m at a TJ Maxx store, I buy a bag of good doggie treats. Then a package of poop bags.

I interview my friends about where they adopted their furballs. Go to Goodwill in search of a crate. Check out dog toys.

The doggie dream pile is growing slowly.

Every single action informs the Universe of my intention.

Since I have travel coming up soon, the actual adoption needs to happen afterwards so that I can devote time to somebody who will be further terrified by strange sounds, noises, smells and routines.

It will happen. No longer if. Just when. I’m tired of starving myself of what I miss most.

To be fair, I tried this with Match.com and Tinder. The Universe convulsed in laughter. Not all dreams are the right dreams. So there’s that.

The Thief of Always is a sneak and a cheat. You and I can convince ourselves that we’re not ready for love yet, not ready for a dog yet, not ready for that vacay yet. That we don’t deserve what we want so badly.

Yet becomes months then years then…never.

You and I are Way Too Old to let the Thief of Always starve us of life’s shimmering moments.

Take yours back. What is that thing you keep putting off?

Are you willing to take it back from the Always Thief and make it yours?

If you can, move towards it now.

Action is a prayer,

and the Universe is listening.

Photo by Sandra Gabriel on Unsplash

I hope you received succor from spending a few moments with me here. If so, please consider

If hopeful thoughts and musings work for you, and someone else might be able to benefit, kindly please also consider

Either way I hope you move towards what feeds your hungry soul.