A beginning

“Listen to the rhythm. Don’t be scared.”

This line, uttered by Ya Ya (the grandmother) from the movie Strictly Ballroom, came to me all day yesterday— like the recurring reminder that states I have ten minutes to get some steps. Now, sitting with my journal poised open faced on my lap, I tried to capture the thought. My journal pages are blank and staring back at me if you didn’t catch that little factoid. It was now the Saturday morning before my 53rd birthday. This birthday would arrive the next morning no matter how I felt about it. But for the moment I was trying to be reflective and capture what had been stirring in my belly on this topic for weeks. 

If you have never seen the film, I highly recommend this quirky little award winner. A major theme in the film is how fear keeps us small and careful. It creates a universe of ‘shoulds’ that often surround us and keep us from risking something greater because we might fail. Shoulds that promise to keep us safe and relevant, but cost us the joy and fullness we often seek in life. 

Image by Eric from Santorini

The line came to me on this particular birthday eve as I sought to put into words what it meant to me to step into the reality of being fifty three and only seven years until sixty. I kept thinking about my internal desire to live life to the fullest through important moments. Yet, another part of me keeps reminding me that the fragility of aging, justifiably, create patterns of caution. A pattern of caution I find myself adopting more and more. 

The ‘data’ suggests we grow more cognitively rigid, less comfortable with change, more cautious, grumpier, and so on as we age. Is this everyone? No, of course not. However, there is a greater probability of contraction than expansion in the years to come. A massive percentage of our biology is tuned towards survival and self-preservation. Aging begets a natural increase in our vulnerability. It only makes sense that our thinking and actions would naturally tend towards caution. The natural gravity of contraction becomes increasingly challenging. It becomes increasingly easier to “turtle” and move inward than to throw open our arms and legs wide into a star pose while wildly welcoming in the adventure of one’s remaining years. The latter is likely to pull a muscle or throw out our backs. 

The simple fact that I can already see the gravity of these patterns transforming me, even while seeking to be somewhat intentional about expanding over contracting, startled me. In the last few weeks I suddenly, quite whimsically, threw out an unplanned afternoon bookstore and explore idea to my wife. A place we’d never been. We had a great time and found a little hole in the wall place to eat. It was magical—adventuring without a plan. It was a big win and not the norm. The amount of shock and awe it created in my spouse pointed to the fact that she is used to the greater amount of caution and repetition in the familiar that is my norm. There is nothing wrong with favorite places, but it was the stark contrast from my behavior that created a mirror I found myself staring into over the last week. 

So now what? I already have a pattern of contracting that’s making my world smaller. Sitting on the couch with a blank journal page, I wonder what would the unchecked biological pull do with the next seven years to sixty? I wonder what the push to live a life of expansion against this gravitational force will entail? And then I hear Ya Ya again. “Listen to the rhythm. Don’t be scared”. 

I can feel the rhythm of life inviting me to dance through the years ahead. At the same time, I can sense the gravity of caution (out of rational, self-preservation, fear) pulling me back. The internal pressure is to stay safe and relevant (or maybe viable). But when I listen to the rhythm, I hear Ya Ya’s response to it all, “Don’t be scared.”