Being Only, Being Old

When I was young and foolish, I was sure that I’d never want to live past 80. I didn’t want to be the only − the only one. I didn’t want to be left behind, missing people who were gone, missing those who were only part of the memories of my life.

Now I am older − still not wise − still so foolish, but I know . . . a few things. I know that I have always been the only Sometimes I have reveled in it. Sometimes I have been too aware of how it sounds and feels like lonely. Yet, I must have gained some thoughtful insights, for I look around me and see that I am less only now than I have ever been in my life.

If I could have, if life could promise, if on my birthday candle I could make and get one wish. I would wish that I could grow old, knowing certain people were still somewhere on the planet. They are people who have given and taught me, held and brought to places I could never have gone or gotten, left or forgotten on my own.

One is of those certain people is my friend, Shining Silver. How she makes everyone who’s near her better, taller, bright, more generous. How that shining glows inside her. It’s the gentle way her giving makes everyone better without making her less. It’s the unconditional love that drives her and the wisdom of the life that rides beside it.

Shining Silver polishes my world view, my understanding, and reveals something my cellular intuition knows, but I have not yet discovered with a simple silver observation.

I say I think I am a closet creative. “I think that’s how I got to be stuck with unemotional concepts living inside my head. Folks understand smart, but they fear creative playing. I've learned to hide the joy I feel for fear they'll hear me.”

She simply answered, “People aren’t afraid of someone who is freely creative and eccentric − much more creative than they are − but they really don’t like it when someone is smarter.”

It wasn't other people who had feared my creativity. It was me. Somehow they had read that in the way I dressed my ideas up in smart and thoughtful clothing, trying to look less like me and more like them, without really knowing.

In one lovely, light Shining Silver sentence, she had told me to get out of my head, to be real and to be me, in such a way that I could hear her − both her words and the love she wishes.

If the ones like Shining Silver would be on the planet with me, I never be only.

Old would only be a word.

−me strauss Letting me be