Live Your Light

The fifties promise to be an intriguing balance of living in an aging body while possessing a certain ineffable wisdom and spirit we hadn't accessed in our younger years. Although the 20-somethings and teens I meet today often seem wise far beyond where my generation was at their age, undoubtedly because of the rapid evolution of humanity as a whole, there is much to be said for the joie de vivre that accrues with vintage. Wrinkles signify ripeness. There's a reason the honorific sage is usually conferred on an elder.

Reconciling body image with spiritual awareness is, paradoxically, an issue only if one chooses to focus on the physical. When the body becomes background - as it often is de facto in youth, with parts that are well oiled, shapely, firm, and thus, easier to "ignore" - our essence shines forth, and that's what people see when they read the story in our eyes.

Fifty is a time to harvest our joy - and acknowledge evidence of our mortality. While several of my contemporaries have already matched wits with serious illness, and a few have transitioned to the other side of life, I've also watched three dear friends meet and marry their life partners in their fifties. As I've been casting my "soul mate" net for nearly a decade, this is heartening news indeed.

Life in the middle ages can be bountiful, as Oprah Winfrey, our ultimate generational role model for accomplished aging, said of her 50th birthday: "All these years I've been taking lessons from life experiences and feeling like I was growing into myself. Finally, I feel grown. More like myself than I've ever been. If it's true what Maya Angelou says, that the fifties represent everything you were meant to be, all I can say is, watch out."

Riley Mackenzie (name changed to honor her privacy) embodies Angelou's decree. In her fifties, she studied the subtleties of Argentine tango, became a serious collage artist, and swung from a high trapeze. Now 68, she's just back from a nine-week road trip around the periphery of the United States with her husband of almost, yes, 50 years. She's also reinventing her consulting business with a partner, another vital woman in her late fifties. Mackenzie says emphatically, "It's the most fun I could ever imagine having!"

Age, like everything else in life, is a matter of perspective. Six months before my milestone birthday, I fell into conversation with a lively older gentleman as we waited to cross the street. He was searching his pockets for his glasses, and, after I helped him locate them, we walked together for a few minutes. He told me he was 100 years old and regaled me with tales of his life. As we reached a parting of the ways, he turned and asked, quite seriously, "So tell me, young lady, have you graduated from college yet?"

Now, that's the ultimate tonic for the "chronologically gifted!"

As I sit in a local teahouse, sipping rooibos and savoring my feminine cycle along with some exquisite chocolate mousse, I'm tickled by these words from the Reconnections Web site, on meeting the beloved: "I saw a license plate the other day, on a car belonging to a woman aged 50 plus: 'Give me chocolate, and no one gets hurt.' I thought that one was pretty neat until I saw a better one: 'I'm over 50 and I'm still hot - except now, it comes in flashes.'"

How true. Flashes of insight. Flashes of inspiration. Flashes of unmitigated delight at just how extraordinary life on this beautiful blue-green planet can be. One author refers to the second half-century as "Jubilee Time."

I'm ready to party. Considering how many playmates I'll have in the galactic sandbox, it's destined to be an unsurpassed blast. Bring it on: fifty, fifty, fifty!!