The Art of Getting Older

I normally consider myself to be a fairly reflective person.  I enjoy looking back over life and gluing the jumbled-up pieces of living back together to more clearly discover the full picture of how exactly I got to where I am now.  I know that the past is done.  I am not a fan of trying to rediscover that which made me happy at one moment in time, only to drag it kicking and screaming into the now.  That always feels cheap to me and more than that, it never works anyway.  But for the sake of this little post, with my 48th birthday staring me in the face and not having written on this blog for nearly a year, I have deemed it as good a time as any to lightly retrace the paper trail of how I got to this place in my journey.

I vividly remember what I was doing last March 18th to celebrate my 47th revolution around the sun.  COVID lockdown had just started in the Bay Area, where I was living at the time.  I don’t have to tell anyone how frightening and unnerving that particular period of time was.   Life was completely turned upside down, with all future plans forced to be shelved till a later date (and which in many cases, those dates are still not known).  I adapted to my first day of lockdown—my birthday—by taking a solo walk around Lake Merritt in Oakland and then returning home to settle in with a bottle of wine and the support of some good friends.  Little did I realize, we would all be settling in for much longer than anticipated.   

As pandemic time marched on, things were coming and going with alarming rapidity.  One day I was jobless, and the next I was returning to the ice cream shop on Fillmore Street in San Francisco that I had managed for nearly two years, cleaning out the moldy freezers that were left unplugged for five weeks while the company determined whether it could proceed forward during the severely scaled-back times of early COVID.   It ultimately did, and so did I.  

I don’t think I was back at work for even a few days when I realized that I could not see myself doing that job for much longer.  It had run its course.  Two years spent in the SF Bay Area working and commuting long days had taken a huge toll on my spirit.  The BART train felt like a daily punishment for some unknown bad deed from a past life, and the traffic-choked roads and bridges were nearly as hellish.  Getting around anywhere was difficult and required much planning, triggering a feeling of being trapped like a rat in a cage.

I hated the perpetual fog and chilly mid-summer days that everyone else seemed to think made that area of the country so unique and special.  The city of San Francisco itself was dirty and largely uninviting.  There was plenty of feces-spotting on trains and sidewalks, along with used needles and more trash strewn about than I ever recalled seeing during any of my earlier visits to the City by the Bay.  I saw people shooting up drugs along the street on more occasions than I care to remember, although I am sure I will never forget the day I reported an overdosed man sporting the color of death to the BART police.   Such experiences were par for the course during my stay in the Bay Area, along with inexplicably jacked up prices on everything from rent to a basic sandwich.  

I still know many people who absolutely love living in the Bay Area, and I surely don’t begrudge them anything.  We all have our place.  For me, I just didn’t get it.  My morning commute took me past the Painted Ladies, a series of Victorian houses perched alongside one of San Francisco’s many steep hills and which includes the house featured in the opening credits of the 80s sitcom “Full House”.  Almost daily I strode by the Full House-house being adored and excitedly photographed by throngs of tourists from the hilly park across Steiner Street.  I could never understand what all the fuss was about.  

More than anything, I think that non-plussed reaction typified my two years in the Bay Area.  A city I once considered my favorite in all the United States quickly devolved into a place I longed to escape from.  That whole impetus to move there in July 2018 was centered around two significant life events: moving closer to a significant other, and accepting a job promotion.  The first part of that equation disappeared before I even set foot there, as the relationship I was involved in came to its inevitable demise about a month ahead of the big move.  That left me driving the U-Haul from San Diego to San Francisco, alone and very unsure about why exactly I was on my way to this new home that I had never truly wanted in the first place.

If anything was a constant during all of this, it was the brilliant idea that I would someday return to Hawaii.  That notion had evolved into the beaming flashlight piercing through the interminable fog of my life in the Bay.  I can still remember the exact moment when I knew I was finished with life up there.  Such lightning bolts of clarity seem to come from a secret well of knowledge way down deep, and when they strike they do so with unmistakeable authority that cannot help but grab your attention.  This particular one hit during one of my morning walks to work, immediately after passing those Painted Ladies for the umpteenth time.  I can recall laughing hard and saying out loud to nobody in particular that I was DONE.  I knew it.  I couldn’t understand what I was doing there anymore, or why.  It took me about a full calendar year from that point to eventually make the move, but I am quite sure that was the day the whole thing was set in motion.  

So where does that leave me now?  In Hawaii, that’s where.   Full circle.  No more plotting and daydreaming about a grand return.  As expected, it feels terrific. 

There are some things in life that just seem to get your soul singing.  My own soul sings at the sight of palm trees swaying in the trade wind breezes, and the gloriously complex skies which often look like they were painted by someone in the midst of an island fever dream.  It sings every single time I hit the warm Pacific waters. It sings when I hike to the top of a mountain or ridge and look out at spectacular greens and blues in all directions.  It definitely sings each and every time my toes touch the soft sand of the beach.  Being surrounded in all directions by water is a thrill that is hard for me to describe.  It catches something in me, something that feels like home.

Beyond that, I don’t know much for sure.  I do know that my 48th birthday is being greeted with more open space and unknowns than I can ever remember.  I don’t want the same old, same old anymore.  What’s done is done.  No need to go backwards.

Getting older is scary and strange and exhilarating and bewildering.  It is also a gift, and a great privilege.  

How or where to spend our time is not nearly as vital as who we are being as we travel through life.   Birthdays are a great time to take personal inventory.  There are a few things I intend to value above all others for this upcoming year.  I want to spend more time loving, smiling, laughing, adventuring.  I can always trust more.  I surely can forgive more.  I absolutely want to let go more.  The other details—jobs, places, material things—don’t seem nearly as important.  Letting them fill in is part of the trusting.

Maybe there is an art to getting older.  What is crystal clear to me is that there is certainly no right or wrong way to move through your days on Earth.   I have been told by more than one person during my lifetime that I do not follow the rules, whatever they seem to be, and that I never should.  I like that.  Something about that feels very right and yes, I would say it even gets my soul singing a little.