Time

I don't remember mu "natural" hair color, since I have been dying it since I was twenty five. I gain weight easily and lose it not so fast. I am getting "droopy" eyelids, just as the Botox lady on the Upper East Side predicted when I worked for her. "Heredity" she said. I have two age spots that I know of; and these are just the outside visible signs. Visible through the magnifying mirror in the bathroom. There is obviously others..


 You may relate. This is not just "my story". It's our story, us late thirties, early forties folks in transition. I doubt that our cave predecessors worried, or even acknowledged 'aging'. They did not live long enough to be bothered with such trivia. Aging is inevitable I was told and along its less welcoming traits I was to expect a sense of freedom, importance and feel a lot wiser, mature into a 'leader'.


 To a degree I was told the truth. Aging, as in getting older, is inevitable and I do feel more comfortable in my skin, in my head and in my heart. People do listen to me more intently and I am asked more often than usual to be an example, a leader and/or mentor at work and in my social circles.


 There are bits and pieces though missing from the prescribed expectation that I was not that well prepared or clued in to address. Those, like my age spots, are quite visible and just as disconcerting. I have yet to decipher what I am to do with the rest of my life, I feel forced at times having to lead when I am unsure of the direction, or my qualifications and something in me protests when I am required to make my mind up and now when decision making is time sensitive.


There is a kind of poetic reason why there is a zero at the end of every decade, century and millennium. 0 is tricky, full of potential, pregnant with promises and anticipation for the next phase. Also no-man's land, nothingness, non-existence, nothing to report.


Which is it for you?


I am on the fence on this one. Having the unique capacity, being human, to conceive time in terms of past, present and future, I often find myself somewhere in between.
"In between" is a term I find uncomfortable most of the time. I suppose that is partly because of a conditioning ingrained in my conscious mind, urging me to place value on certainty, commitment and clarity. I do find solace occasionally in the teaching of a variety of schools of thought that view 'in-betweeness', the gap, as a promising state of being. In fact they seem to welcome it and train themselves to evoke such a state, and believe that that is were the "good stuff" lies. Perhaps.


As I said I have not as of yet made my mind up, and something inside of me smirks and whispers I may not have to.