Very young indeed
I don’t know about the rest of you–but I get younger each year.
Do you?
Now of course we could quibble. Obviously, these bodies get older. You can tell by the gray hair and wrinkles and other strange qualities which present themselves at the physical level as these birthdays pass.
And when we start feeling challenged with health-issues, those are definitely not fun.
Getting old.
However, I am not talking about that. The body shall age. We will experience–how many birthdays? 54? 65? 76? 84? 97? 102?–and then our bodies will perhaps simply decide they’ve had enough of this earthly existence and we shall drop away into our next existence. (Whatever that may be!)
No. I am talking about the inner zest. You see, the outer body ages. Everyone knows that. But the inner body–if you’re aware of it–is doing the exact opposite. It grows younger every year. Especially if we’ve been following our inner promptings, our deepest heart. Moving in the direction it beckons.
Possibility
Younger and younger and younger…
What do you mean? you might ask.
What I mean is this: if you’re aging in a conscious way, growing and stretching and learning from this life experience, you will notice an inner “lighten-ing”. An inner softening. An inner growing younger.
You will find yourself less attached to physical things and emotional dramas. You will find yourself growing younger. More alive, less rigid. More expansive, less confined.
Less of a tendency to label the world in boxes of understanding.
More adventuresome. More wild & crazy! More flexible. More understanding. More wide open spaces. More of an ability to sit with pain and feel compassion for others who are suffering.
Exquisite inner world
The inner self gets younger and younger, lighter and lighter. It grows more loving, more allowing. It stretches. It sings. It dives into Infinite Possibility.
It loves getting older, because it knows the secret: as the body shows its age, the inner self gets younger. It’s the law of opposites. Some of you know this, right?
Today, dear reader, is my birthday! I love birthdays. I adore birthdays. I have adored each birthday more than the last.
Blossoming to the fullest
Last year’s birthday was the most spectacular ever–and this year I feel the promise of so much. I can remember when I turned 35 years old and thought I had died and gone to heaven. Thirty five! Who could reach 35 and be so happy? So much better than 18! So much better than 27! Thirty five was nirvana.
And fifty-three? Fifty three is exquisite! I am so excited about the upcoming year. Life is teaching its lessons so intensely now. The learning is exquisite. It is good to be on this planet and growing. I like the way everything is expanding and growing…younger…every day.
Lake Superior Spirit 
HAPPIEST OF BIRTHDAYS SO FAR!
I love your words — they suit you to a tee:
You will find yourself less attached to physical things and emotional dramas. You will find yourself growing younger. More alive, less rigid. More expansive, less confined.
Less of a tendency to label the world in boxes of understanding.
More adventuresome. More wild & crazy! More flexible. More understanding. More wide open spaces. More of an ability to sit with pain and feel compassion for others who are suffering.
I truly believe it, Laurie! The body ages…the spirit grows younger. That is—if we follow our heart and spirit where it longs to go. If we simply listen to the logical mind we may end up confusing things. Thanks again for the lovely birthday card.
Happy birthday!!
I always looked forward to my fifties. I felt that things would be better for me. Unlike you I haven’t enjoyed birthdays since childhood. Not sure why, just haven’t. BUT… since finally shrugging off that M thing (m e n o p a u s e) I’ve been connecting in to the inner wise woman quite a bit more than in the past!
Have a good day and enjoy!
Val
Dear Val, thank you for your birthday wishes. It was a lovely day…and is still stretching on toward tonight when my daughter (who is visiting from New York City) makes a surprise dinner. She’s baking in the kitchen now while Pocahontas plays on the stereo. As for menopause…oh yes…been there, done that. Hope it’s done! The inner wise woman is such a gift to get to know. She’s just as precious as the young one was…
Happy Birthday to you .. my birthday is on Thursday and I will be 50…. why is that so hard for me to even type … but reading your words today made me sit back and think .. maybe just maybe I am begining to see birthdays in a whole new light… Thank You!!!
Tim, Happy Happy Birthday to you! Today is your big day! I hope you have been able to “see the light” and now you’re celebrating wildly and joyfully! You are at the cusp of getting to know your inner Wise Fellow who will guide you through the next decades. (If I have helped anyone see birthdays in a new light, it is so worth it.) Enjoy your big day!
Isn’t it nice that as we age, we lose a little drama (hopefully), and learn what is important(like coloring and naps)? I just wish the saggy skin wouldn’t come with it.
K, I love how you put that! Coloring and naps, very important! My daughter and I have been drawing things with pencils and colored pencils. The drawings look–how did my husband put it?–basic–but they are so much fun. As for that saggy skin…we must keep praising it and telling it how much we still love it and how we appreciate its elasticity and flexibility. LOL!
I love your photography! Great shots! Great narrative.
Why thank you, dear photographer! Thank you so much. Your words were a birthday present. 🙂
Your photos with your birthday post were a present to me. I agree with you, Kathy. As I get older and older, I feel my inner self expanding and my emotional self quieting. I am grateful for Life. I want to live it to its fullest. Happy Birthday to you, Kathy – and many more!
Hi Barb! Thank you so much. (That’s what happens with birthdays: you end up saying thank you a hundred times and feeling so much gratitude.) I am glad you are feeling that inner expansion and emotional quieting and full living. What a gift it all is! As long as we stay healthy, as my mother would say.
I’m glad some people look at birthdays like this still 🙂 Being the young age of 25, I constantly listen to my older, wiser friends who say it only gets better with age, and I look forward to it! From your writing it really seems like you know who you are, and as you know, the 20s are all about finding out just that (because we still think we can control everything).
Although, I’m starting to get the hunch that no one ever really finds out who they are exactly, but as they get older they just give up, let go and feel much happier for it. While us youngins wonder “How did they get there?” 😉
Kim
http://photo-salsa.com
Hi Kim! Hey, you are about the same age as my beloved daughter. Well, she isn’t quite 25. Oh you must look forward to aging! You sound very wise, like Kiah is.
I think the shadows of wisdom come sooner to some of us at younger ages these days. I didn’t know ANYTHING until I was 30.
Then…the older I get….the less I know. By next year I may know nothing. And that’s a good thing! It’s like we have to learn and learn and control and control until suddenly…it all goes backwards. Or something.
I adore what you said!
Happy happy happy birthday!
I hope to be like you when I grow younger x
Zara, thank you thank you thank you!!! I hope you’ll be so much of a Zara when you grow younger that you’ll weep with the joy of realizing yourself!
Yes, you said it perfectly. However, I’m still waiting for the really good birthdays (in themselves) to start! (: I feel younger every year and more vibrant and appreciative! Thanks for this post. It’s great!
This will be the year, Amy! This year your birthday will be so good that you’ll wonder how you can believe it. That is, of course, if you’re old enough and you have learned where the rivers and mountains and lakes of your heart open and flow into the heavens and down to the fiercy core of the incredible revolving planet.) I suspect you’re learning. Thank you for YOUR vibrancy and beauty!
Just because our bodies age doesn’t mean our spirits have to. I am much more mellow, more settled, more relaxed, happier now than I was when I was much younger. I no longer need the drama. I no longer require outside validation of my value. Now I enjoy my life. Join me or not. Your choice.
Lovely photos, lovely post!
Carol, you sound like you are another Advocate for spirit-aging! Excellent! We should start a club, or something. 🙂 Yes, isn’t that true? We start needing so much exterior validation. And then, if we’re lucky or vigilant or listening deeply, we fall in love with ourselves and don’t need the outer world to tell us so. (Of course it’s nice when the outer world tells us so. But it’s not so vital, is it?)
I agree whole-heartedly with everything that you and all the wise-ones here have said…..I’ve let go of many of the things that I worried about and had no control over, I’m content in my own skin (saggy, baggy, achy and all), I truly enjoy the small miracles of everyday life, I continue to love learning new things, I don’t really care anymore whether others like me or don’t because I just am who I am and that’s OK….oh, I could go on and on. Life is good and I am blessed no matter how many years young I am!
Cindy, what a gift it is when we realize what you have just said! In our teens and 20’s and 30’s we so often don’t have these realizations. To be content in our own skin…that is the gift each birthday potentially brings us!
It sounds like you had a wonderful birthday, so even though I am a day late, happy birthday!
I think how you feel about birthdays may have to do with where you are in life, if you are at a crossroads, etc. Turning 30 was difficult for me. I was at a crossroads; should we have another baby, where are we going, what are we doing. Turning 40 last year, however, was enjoyable and peaceful. Not that I have “arrived” in any great way, but life seems to be on a comfortable course. It will be interesting to see what 50 brings in 9 years!
Well, Karma, if you were a day late in birthday wishes…I am TWO days late in responding! 🙂 You are so right about the crossroad places being the most challenging. When we don’t know what to do next. Or maybe, in aging, we relax a little into the “not knowing” and allow that to be a little more OK. Loving knowing you at 40, and thrilled with the possibility that we might still be blogging back & forth when you turn 50!
What a wonderful enthusiastic blog! Like a child had written it! What fun! Bless you for Being you! Bless you for being the example of how being grateful for each moment, each gift is so freeing and beautiful.
I kept thinking this blog is like the blogs that you once wrote on Gaia. Full of
juice, full of joy, living in the abundance of what is! Yummy!
Love “getting old” “Exquisite”, and “Blossoming”!!!
Happy Birthday!
I am Love, Jeff
Smiling, Jeff! Did this blog get juicier than usual? My goodness I always get such birthday “bounce” going! Guess what happened when I went into yoga on Tuesday? I started jumping up and down like a child. Shanel (my teacher) laughed and laughed. It’s funny–what sides we show to different people. Other people might never guess that I have a Silly Goose side.
Loving you for YOUR response to enthusiasm. For your gratitude, for your being, for You being Jeff, who is Love.
happy birthday to ya kath!
i always felt that age is just a number.even though my wife feels on some days she is living with a 13 yr old 🙂
sure,at 56 i get my usual stiffness when i get up in the morning but life is too precious(not sure if i spelled that right) to worry about getting older.
enjoy what you have….
have a great day…aj
AJ, I was utterly thrilled to see your comment! My dad says the same thing as you. He says that he has no age consciousness whatsoever. (Did Cheri tell you we ran into her last night in Marquette after Kiah’s plane landed? It was sooo good to see her; I couldn’t believe that we bumped into each other in the “big city”.) Hope you enjoyed your day by yourself. Thanks again for your birthday wishes!
Welcome to fifty-three, Kathy, it IS exquisite! SO much less attached to physical things and emotional dramas… The flexibility is long in coming, but I’m starting to notice bits of it more often. 🙂 And at fifty-three you can make an aging echinacea plant look lovely.
Possibilities? In the words of Agatha Christie: “I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly you find – at the age of fifty, say – that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about. … It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.” (As in risingnow.wordpress.com)
Barbara, finally I’ve caught up with you! Didn’t that echinacea plant look so wonderful? I loved how it drooped and yet retained exquisite beauty. Both you and Agatha are very wise, indeed. So much opening up! Thank you so much.
Kathy, you are indeed blossoming to the fullest in the here and now. Hope you had a wonderful day.
Amy-Lynn, you’re long & delightful email helped make my birthday very special. Thank you so much. It has been a wonderful three days, and won’t be over until after Kiah’s special dinner tonight.
Kathy, I hope you had a wonderful day and did something extraordinary to celebrate! Your thoughts on growing younger are beautiful. I’m not sure what it is that happens in our fifties. Time changes in some way….it seems to move in a different manner. Nothing to do with faster or slower or backward or forward. There just seems to be a different quality to it. A depth and a certain quality of grace. As if it is expanding all around us but we aren’t moving at all. These words are inadequate but……
I love that you are so excited about the years to come. I am 61 this year and realized a while ago that this next decade is going to be an entirely new adventure. Just when we think that maybe, just maybe we have it all figured out the universe seems to take great delight in proclaiming…Let the adventures begin!!
First of all, Colleen, I can NOT believe you are 61. From the youthful tone and flexibility and grace of your writing I would have thought you were in your 40’s. Goes to show that you can’t tell a person’s age by what they write…LOL! Unless, of course, they are being rigid and inflexible, because then you know they are very old (or else too young to have yet learned to flutter their wings and take to the skies of Infinite Possibility.)
Please, please, please share any bits of wisdom from the 60’s decade so those of us who are aiming in that direction might know how to lean into the wind a little easier. I was hoping that no one reading this blog would think I have anything against aging. (Since it might look like it was advocating youth.) But it looks like you all caught the gist of where this was headed!
Kathy, sometimes, looking at the number it’s self, I’m a little startled. The first time I’ve ever really felt that. There are so many stereotypes about growing older, so many expectations and projections. Conscious and unconsious. A good many of them seem to come from within our own families….mostly unwritten and quite powerful until we become aware of them. At least this has been my own personal experience. I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by women who personify what you so beautifully described in your post. As they grew (and grow) older in years they became progressively younger and lighter in spirit. They may not have understood your words and way of knowing this but they seemed to know it in their own way. For the most part, delightful women. There were some notable exceptions, one of my grandmothers in particular. The men in our families…..unfortunately, not so much.
Kathy, the ripples that you are creating by being who you are….so beautiful. Your family is very blessed. You are an inspiration, my friend.
Colleen, to bring the unconscious conscious…good work that we do. You are blessed to have known so many women who are personifying this. Love your words, as always. I feel them resonate at such a spirit level.
oh!
Happy Birthday Dear One!
Many hugs and a kiss, on the cheek. 🙂
Elisa, I sat quietly and let all the hugs and the kiss sink in. What a delightful birthday present from you! Delight!
I enjoyed reading your descriptions! I am starting to meet most of them, some are to come…I am a young whipper snapper at 48.
Have a marvelous Birthday and many many many more….
Kim
Yep, you are such a young whipper-snapper, Kim! Just think how young you’ll be growing (inward, at least) in the next few years. Smiling and grateful for your companionship along the way!
A day late but happy it was a good day for you.
You must be getting younger, as I thought we were the same age; but you’ve dropped 3 years on me, since the last one.
I think I need lessons . . .
Many happy returns of this date, celebrating the specialness of your existence.
Hugs.
Gosh, Deborah, it’s so interesting if I’ve lost three years without knowing it! That must be what happens when your inner youngness really starts accelerating. (LOL! You want lessons? I don’t think you need them, though. We just keep letting all the emotional drama come to the surface and then allowing it to resolve, keeping our heart soft and open and allowing. Then we magically start growing younger. Or our karma grows lighter, anyway.) By the way, excuse me for being an absolute Contradiction. You must be absolutely puzzled by me. How I can write you an email and tell you of everything that’s wrong…and in the next instance be writing a blog and telling how everything is wonderful beyond belief.
I think what happens is this–as we get older we can live in those contradictions a bit better. That must be it.
Loved your thoughts, and the pictures are perfect illustrations!
Martha, thank you so much! I was so happy that those pictures existed just waiting for the perfect moment to illustrate–something! Glad you liked these thoughts, and I know you are another one who is internally growing younger every year.
Happy Birthday! My brother, sister and I went to the Georgia Aquarium yesterday and we all felt like crawling through the kids’ tunnels…until we realized we might not physically fit…other than that we are still kids at heart!
Dawn, excellent! It’s the thought that counts…that your spirit was crawling through the tunnels with all the kids. And you were internally giggling and shouting and playing, as well, I’m sure. Excited to hear you were at the Georgia Aquarium. Barry and I went with his brother-in-law a few years ago and had a magnificient time. What a place! I remember all the big fish swimming around in those huge aquariums. Glad to hear YOU had a good time.
A belated Happy Birthday to you! May you continue to grow younger and younger with each birthday. 🙂
I discovered the same thing but it took me a little longer. I was around 42 (which is, of course, “the answer to life, the universe, and everything) when it hit me that life was reversing in a way, bringing me back to a beginner’s mind where there is room for everything: learning, love, life (the universe, and everything). Occasionally I revert back to an older-younger self, but mostly I’m enjoying the de-aging process.
Robin, yes indeed, I remember that the 42 birthday was a signficant one as well. Beginner’s mind is such a gift…that is a perfect way of describing this “younger” phenomonen. I know about that reverting-process, too. Sometimes it creeps back up on us, doesn’t it? Thanks for the birthday wishes, dear friend!
Happy belated birthday!
I blogged recently about my decision to embrace the fact that I am a late bloomer and that my best years are still ahead of me.
Your post only reinforces my conviction!
Thanks!
Judson
Thank you, Judson! And good for you…your best years ARE ahead of you! I can pretty much guarantee that. Yep. Just you wait and see what happens…
Kathy, I am late wishing you the “bestest” Birthday so far ! But… this is very sincere and with all my heart. I share each word you wrote about every birthday being the best one. About staying young inside and more relaxed about so much happening around. Experience teaching you how to appreciate little things and rejoice over the unknown. Letting go. Expressing gratitude. Just feeling happy with yourself and knowing there is more to come. Joyeux anniversaire 🙂 wonderful pictures for your special day.
Isa, the best part of growing older is when we’re growing and stretching on the inside, too. Just what you said. Appreciating the little things. Being happy with ourselves. What a gift if we can come to this point in our life! And still keep reaching for the stars with our bare feet deep in the precious earth.
I loved this post. You’re so right. Thanks for sharing this beautiful truth.
I am so glad you liked this, milkfever! Don’t know about you…but I keep feeling younger every single day! Even went and played in the waves today. And talked with frogs. 🙂 It was a good day…