50 at 50: Shades of Grey

Sometime when I was in my late 20s or early 30s (there were a few years that were indistinguishable), I overheard a contemporary say, "The older I get, the more clear everything becomes.... just BAM! there it is, laid out in black and white, right and wrong." She isn't all that much older than me, but boy, she was so incredibly sure of her words.She left, and I turned to my friend who was there and said, "Did I hear her correctly? Because I can guarantee the older I get, nothing is clear. It all gets fuzzier to me." My friend assured me that my view was probably closer to reality for most people.

It's been about 20 years and I am almost proud to say that I am even less sure of anything than I've ever been. There is almost nothing that's black-and-white, and every shade of grey I thought I knew then has mutated into a thousand microshades. Every time I think I am close to an absolute, something comes along to make me see that there is another aspect to the situation and I had best hold off on any pronunciation of surety.

My faith? Still solid in terms that I have faith. Gelatinous in what I know and believe. I've come to believe that the only certainty I have in the world, the only real command I need to follow is to love. Love without reservation, love without condition, love without measure. Love even the people I hate. As I said to someone the other day, even the person I dislike most (so much so that I do not even use his or her actual name) is still as much a child of God as I am, and for that reason alone, I wish them no harm. Anything other than that is dogma, and I will leave it for the theologians to battle. And when my end comes, I'll take a chance that I did the best I could. I still believe in an afterlife and that my loved ones are there ..... but I no longer want to rack up brownie points for some great reward. I'm better off trying to make life better here for people who really need it. I'm not saying I don't care about all the other stuff, it's more that I'm not trying to keep score anymore. I don't care. It's not important. Love is important and it should always win.

My future? I have no expectations. I have hopes and desires and plans, but no expectations. I plan for living as long as possible, but always with the knowledge that nothing is a given. This lyric says so much to me: "It's a fragile thing, this life we lead. If I think too much, I can get overwhelmed by the grace by which we live our lives with death over our shoulders...." And really, that's it. We are chased by that specter our whole lives but we cannot let it keep us from living. So I am enjoying life while I have it to enjoy.

My priorities? Thanks to Facebook, I get a daily dose of walking down memory lane, and where I was five or six years ago feels like a different person. And while I like that person and would like to be back toward that place physically, I also see where I was heading into a very obsessive place too. I see now where some of my anxiety issues came into play, and I don't want to go there again too. I don't care to be hyper-competitive anymore. I'll always have a competitive streak, but I don't want to play the game anymore.

As I mentioned in another post, when I hit 40, I was beginning to think I finally had it all in place, and life said, "Oh you're cute... let me show you something" and suddenly my life was all cattywampus. At 50, I'm laughing with life, saying, "Okay, okay, I get it. I don't know it all. I really don't know sh*t about sh*t. So I'm just going to roll with it."

So maybe it's not that I see a million shades of grey; it's that I see more of the entire spectrum of color that's part of the beauty of the world.