By Mark Harvey
Today is Aug. 10, 2019, and I’m in the mood for musings.
That’s not to say that I have suddenly — after all these years! — been given access to a Muse. It just means I’m going to muse. So if you’re not in the mood for a muse, I completely understand.
And what puts me in a musing mood? Well, my birthday is a few days away. Now, that doesn’t mean you should all rise up in a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Actually, it doesn’t really mean anything to anybody — including, I think, me.
Which is how this musing begins.
Why do we count birthdays? Many of us just find it depressing. In fact, unless you’re on the brink of a driver’s license, a ballot or a bar tab, it doesn’t really matter — does it?
We’ve learned to make it matter. In some carefully prescribed situations, “How old are you?” is a perfectly logical question. Doctors have learned to care. Social Security cares — deeply. Medicare cares. And lots of agencies, institutions and businesses act like they care, but all they really want is to use our D.O.B. to make sure we’re not somebody else. Fair enough.
So, from zero to 21, we care. At 65, we care. But from 22 to 64, who cares? And after 65, we are well past caring.
So why do we count birthdays? Frankly, it seems a bit … counterproductive.
Are we measuring how much closer we’ve come to being dead? Well, since we don’t generally know exactly when we’re going to morph to the next phase, that can’t be right. But it feels like we’re measuring … something.
That we’re still alive? OK, congratulations!
Maturity? … Really? Is that a guaranteed fringe benefit of bunches of birthdays? You and I both know it isn’t.
Wisdom? … Maybe. Sometimes. We’re wiser than we were, hopefully. Does it help to put a number on it? After all, what we often seem to learn from is…
Experience! And we have the scars to prove it! Is that what we’re measuring — scars?
No, it seems like we’re measuring something that feels like some sort of “achievement”: a milestone, a goal accomplished, usher-out-the-old, ring-in-the-new … another chance.
Another chance — oh, that talks to me! And “chance” be damned: It’s another opportunity! A gift from a generous and forgiving Universe, along with short-term memory loss.
Another chance. Wow! And you’d darken this blessing with black balloons? Yet another chance to try to get it right? After all the silly, egotistical, self-centered, it’s-all-about-me screw-ups over all these years, I’m being given another opportunity?
Wow! I’m just beginning to get it: Who I might be, how I might be, who I don’t have to be, how I could be…
How I want to be.
After all these opportunities, I think I know who I’m not, and who I’ll never be, because I made all those choices a long time ago, in past opportunities. So is that something lost, or something gained?
I’ve noticed that when I spend too much time looking back, I have a nasty tendency to run into things. If I don’t have to be anything that ends in “-est,” I could just be …
“Mark” — with another opportunity.
Some years back I started saying something that I thought was very catchy: Aging is not an affliction, it’s an achievement. But I don’t think I really understood it then. I think I’m just now beginning to get why we always get the same thing for our birthdays, year after year: another opportunity.
Because God wouldn’t have it any other way.
Mark Harvey is the director of information and assistance for the Olympic Area Agency on Aging. He can be reached by email at harvemb@dshs.wa.gov; by phone at 360-532-0520 in Aberdeen, 360-942-2177 in Raymond, or 360-642-3634; or through Facebook at Olympic Area Agency on Aging-Information & Assistance.
