Beginning My Next Half Decade:

Knowing Youth Is Something To Practice

Someone in my class asked me my secret last week.

We were between classes and talking about the projects everyone’s working on, and life could bleed into the work the magical ways it does when we let it.

Formal teaching gave way to real conversations about my work and freelance life as a creative pro.

I mentioned a milestone birthday coming up in March. And naturally, they wanted the number...

When I admitted, “fifty”, the room was SHOOK.

Fifty?!!

Their disbelief was generous, for sure (but I think it was also, genuine).

“What's you’re secret??”

I laughed and said, "Well... probably, NOT having kids," which got the LOLs I expected. But I also, kinda, sorta meant it.

I didn’t intend it a dig at parenthood at all.

But I suppose, I DID intend it as an honest observation about how I’ve felt free to structure my life around my own creative impulses rather than any conventional expectations (especially around *THOSE, other “creative impulses”) ;)

That freedom has certainly shaped me. And it's let me stay in close relationship with an inner sense of creative play, curiosity and wonder, and leverage a sort of self-directed creative purpose that demands something more than punching a clock or collecting a paycheck.

But I also think, ALL of that's just part of it...

Another student started to say something else...
"I just heard someone say they HAAATE..." — and I actually interrupted him. (Which I would NEVER, normally). But I felt compelled to add something important...

I honestly think that is part of it too!
Hate doesn’t help ANY of us look or feel younger.

It came out before I could stop myself, because I believe it so sincerely (and completely). Bitterness has a way of aging us, physically and mentally.
Resentment settles into the body and mind, into the face, and into the way we move and see and act and laugh. I’ve seen it. And I’ve felt it trying to take root in me, especially when I’ve let anger or grief or fear harden my heart instead of move through me into something more productive or creative or new.

And the work of releasing that mess is just another creative process.

Like a musical practice.
Sports. Yoga.
Like learning to breath with our whole, holy bodies.
And I think that's what I really want to share here..

I don‘t think our sense of youth is something we have to grasp at or hold onto or preserve with creams or injections.

I do think it’s something we can practice. Like art.

I won’t pretend DNA hasn’t played a role in my baby face. I’ve always been blessed with it (even when it felt like a curse). I’m lucky like that.

Good skin, good teeth. Good genes. Look at my beautiful mom and dad!
I won the biological lottery, for sure.

I don’t think genes alone account for all the ways I still feel like a kid most days.
Or that I’m genuinely delighted by the work I get to do everyday (most days).
Still surprised by what new conversations with new people might open up.
Still willing to be a beginner... Still excited to practice. And mess up.

Those are things I have chosen, over and over and over again.

I think about what really ages people, and I don’t think it’s time. Per se.

It must be something more like... Accumulation...

Maybe, the accumulation of resentments held in for too long. Of identities worn thin (though maybe they never fit). Of creative impulses suppressed because someone else said that it’s not practical. Of years spent performing a version of themselves that was designed by committee. Or family. Or old men in suits who didn’t know anything about them.

The most youthful people I know. Of any age. Are those who have done the hard work of becoming MORE of themselves and shed what wasn’t theirs to carry.
They have stayed curious and kind and continued making new things, even when no one was asking them to.

I'm not fifty yet, but I'm close enough to feel its heft. And what I’m realizing lately, is... I don’t dread it!

So, I’m choosing to walk into it the same way I like to walk into a room... Open to the possibilities, a bit amused, and (mostly) excited to see what happens next.

This may be my best work yet.