Celebrate Every Age

Dia de Los Muertos

On this Day of the Dead (aka All Souls Day), I celebrate another birthday.

I love my birthday.

I often marvel when people lament their birthdays. It’s not that I don’t understand where they might be coming from. I don’t romanticize growing older. I know that birthdays can remind us that we’re drawing closer to our death. But that’s true of every moment, and you don’t hear people complaining every 5 minutes that they’re closing in on death.

Reflecting on why I might have a somewhat unusual context about aging, I recall my Grandma Dori’s frequent saying about birthdays: “It sure beats the alternative.”

My context is influenced not just by my family, by my own health history which has a bit of a Benjamin Button quality about it so far. I began life needing to have my hip rebuilt. At age 6 my vision got bad enough to warrant thick glasses. At 22, I was in an car accident and broke my back, which led to over a decade of pain and sciatica. At 27, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

So, while my contemporaries were thriving physically in their 20s, I was trying to heal physical conditions often associated with old age.*

Seeking treatment for these conditions led me to a world I would have never sought had I been pain free. As a result, I discovered healers and treatments–Western, Eastern, Ancient, and High Tech–that many people don’t know exist. And I discovered this truth:

Your thoughts about what’s possible will greatly affect your health.

That is, if you believe that you can get better, you will look with fervor. And with this tenacious seeking, you’re likely to find something that helps. And conversely, if you believe you’re stuck with what you’ve got, you’re unlikely to seek and find.

Sure, I have aches and pains. In fact, as I write this I’m nursing a knee injury and trying to get over a nasty cold and adrenal fatigue. But in the big picture, I have perfect vision, a strong hip, no auto-immune disease, and no sciatic pain.

Check your beliefs about pain, suffering, and aging. Then square them against this fact:

Science has found no biological markers for determining an individual’s age.