It was March 12 last year when we realized life was going to be different. I remember thinking that changes might go on for a few months. We stopped going to the Fitness Center for exercise classes three times a week. We stopped hosting people for Pepper games or going to our friends’ houses. We stopped going to India Star and Waterfront to eat. Visits from our children and grandchildren were cancelled. As we all know, it was an entire year of different.
While there is hope that we will be able to see our friends and family again now that the vaccine is becoming more available to everyone, it does not seem that things are going to evolve as rapidly as I would want.
Justin Stone* writes that evolution is continually going on but at a snail’s pace and usually we are not mindful enough to recognize evolutionary changes. He says this is much like the slow, inexorable toll that age takes on us. Because of learning about reality in psychoanalysis and having my 75th birthday, I could read his statement and know it to be truth.
Mason, my youngest son, sent photos to our new Skylight frame that Anna, my bonus daughter, gifted us with for Christmas. I do not know if he did it on purpose or not but most of the pictures he sent for display, showed my teeth – body parts I try to hide because I think they are too big and stick out too much. Many of my closed lipped smiles look fakey but in the pictures he sent showing my open-mouth smile, I looked happy and relaxed. The first time the picture I am using for an image for this post flashed across the screen , I was shocked to see how young I looked. I was 65 when we traveled to Brazil and enjoyed this boat ride.
When the big day comes that we reunite with family and friends, I hope everyone will note the love in my eyes, and not be too surprised that I look older than the last time we met and that because of my more than a decade in psychoanalysis that I described in Fear, Folly & Freud, I am smiling widely, more comfortable with all my body parts. I am so grateful to be alive. What a privilege it is to continue to evolve.
Do you notice the fact you evolve mentally or physically? Please let me know your thoughts on evolution and aging.
*Justin Stone was the originator of Tai Chi Chih.
