Musing on the train…
I find people fascinating, on public transport you get your fair share of diversity and it is never boring. Sometimes it is not for the faint-hearted, but boring? Never. Like a few weeks ago when I shared on Facebook, my story of the woman who got on the train with her pram and the rain cover over it and when I looked down, no baby, just a cat…the cat looked quite pleased to be on the Alamein Line at 5:30pm on a Friday night.
It is often on these journeys that thoughts and insights hit me between the eyes and make me ponder. Like today, I came home earlier to do some conference calls and then head out to a charity I am thinking of getting involved in. It was that time of day when there is a mish mash of people on the train, most people probably not working, retired, students whose lectures have finished for the day and mums with young kiddies who aren’t at school yet. I was sitting opposite an old guy who looked like my dad, but had obviously eaten less pasta as he was less “jolly.” It struck me that as my father ages, the essence of him becomes more and more obvious and pronounced. He has always been family oriented and fanatical about learning and eating. It seems the older he gets and the more he strips off other layers of himself like work, friends, social activity, the more concentrated who he is becomes. It got me wondering if that is what aging is? Is it, the stripping away of the layers of responsibility, losing the roles we have had to play that were necessary for our and our families’ survival, the loss of identity in a working sense, the loss of friends who leave the planet before us and just ditching the social airs and graces that older people eventually poo-poo. When all of that is stripped away, we are really just the person who was covered in the veneer of all of that.
If that is what it is, my goal will be to laugh hard and long everyday, do “stand up” in the old age home (even if it is holding onto my Zimmer Frame), see the funny side of everything, especially my own foibles, have long, deep conversations with the people I love in my scratchy granny voice and refuse to do anything that is remotely against what I feel like doing on the day. It will be to see beauty in whatever is around me, hold others without judgement and still learn, learn, learn and learn some more. I am grateful for who I am and if it does mean that getting wrinkles means confidence and juiciness and wisdom. Bring it on! But first I am off to enjoy today, so that when I distill the essence of me, I like what I get 🙂
Happy Friday Peeps!
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