Getting Older

(photo by Dawson Productions)

This past Friday (December 2) was my birthday.

It arrived rather suddenly, I wasn't really expecting to get any older! I had a conversation with my sister recently about how I will sometimes get this strange feeling that I am going to die young. It's not really a grim or foreboding sentiment, I think it's just that I cannot imagine myself as an old lady. Wrinkled skin, gray hair - I could never look like that! But we all age, and I understand why people would want plastic surgery- because it's really difficult to see ourselves change, like we aren't even the same person anymore. But maybe we aren't?

Thinking back upon my past selves, as a child, a teenage, or even just a year or two ago, I do not feel the same. I think differently, I like different things, I do different things, yet there are still characteristics that I have retained since childhood. So who am I now?

Perhaps the value is in allowing ourselves to change and honoring that change, but remaining true to our eternal core being that is forever with us, and more real than any metamorphosis our physical selves can undergo.