Unshackled Echo ~ January 19, 2019 ~ Growing Old

I know logically that I am middle aged, but I am starting to realize that I am old. It's a roller coaster, this understanding and coming to a place of acceptance with my deterioration. Some days I feel it and believe that I am getting old, other days I am in denial. I'm not old. I'm middle aged. I'm only 44. I still feel young at heart. And then I do something like I did the other day in a conversation with someone who was getting a puppy from Leah and me. I said, "We're not on twitter, but we're on the Facebook."

The couple never showed any reaction. Neither did my wife, but inwardly I did a face palm. I am so old. I used to make fun of old people who said things like, "I don't understand why you young people watch THE MTV." There's no THE, it was just MTV!! And now I am one of them. It just slipped out from the ancient old man living inside me, evidently wanting to get out. And now, as of yesterday, I am on the twitter, excuse me I have a Twitter account, and I feel a bit like a fish out of water with it. I understand the rhythms, purpose and techniques of Facebook, but I don't get Twitter. Maybe I never will, and I'll be the Twitter version of people on Facebook that just don't understand that telling Facebook in a public post that your thoughts and photos are private just isn't going to work.

A few days ago, Leah and I were playing Rock Band, and one of the loading screens had something about how it can't get too loud, and Leah and I said together that it could be too loud because we're old. I lived by that anthem of if it's too loud, you're too old for years. Now it's often too loud, and if it is, it probably means you can hear, because I set the volume where it is because I can't hear thank you very much.

I am getting, old. There is gray in my beard. Things my twentyish friends do, watch and like make no sense to me, or just seem stupid most of the time. I'm getting old, and I'm OK with that. In fact, I am grateful for it. I enjoy my life, despite the aches and pains and the embarrassing too old to relate moments. Growing old is the number one side effect of not dying.

I should be dead. I can count numerous times I should have died. There have been wrecks and overdoses and risks taken and far too much living like a rock star. I may only be 44, but I'm like 88 in rock star years, and it's a miracle I'm alive. It's a miracle I'm happy that I'm alive. I don't remember feeling that way much for a few years or decades. Today I have a life worth living. I'm a few months away from six years clean and sober. I'm five days away from celebrating five years of marriage that is as precious and as wonderful to me today as it was on day one. I am grateful to be growing old and to be doing it with Leah.

I never thought I would be so grateful to be alive that I would be happy about turning into an old man. I never thought I would become someone my teen self would have mocked and ridiculed. It's because I found a life worth living, where the good can be enjoyed and doesn't need to be enhanced, and where the bad can be endured and doesn't have to be blotted out and obliterated. I found the truth in the enigma that hedonistic living for pleasure and self really does lead to suicidal misery and self loathing, while caring for others and service to God and man really do bring joy. Giving up your life really is the way to find and achieve a life worth living, as long as your giving it up to the God who is able to take it, transform it into what your soul always wanted to be but didn't know it, and give it back.

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

January 19, 2016.
*Three years later this is still  true only more so.

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