promise to get a little better as i get older

I’ve been thinking a lot about what getting older feels like lately.

I recently moved into a new apartment and started a new job. It’s a lot of change that’s happening at once and naturally, that means that I’m learning a lot of new things. Like… how much furniture costs (a lot) or how to adjust to a work schedule that isn’t a typical 9 to 5 (by drinking coffee.)

At some point as I was going through all these changes, I realized that there’s a lot I don’t know about and I wondered if that is just what life is… continually learning about stuff we don’t know. These thoughts pondered in my head for a few weeks until a few days ago, I brought it up in therapy. It’s tough to recall exactly what my therapist said (she never really gives me straight answers..) but it spurred enough in me that I decided to consult my college professor, Larry Jordan. I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing his words with the internet but I thought they were too wise to keep to myself.

He said, “When you are young, you think you know everything. Once you get out into the world you begin to see how big a place this really is. There’s so much you don’t know. Wisdom, I think, is discovering that you don’t know everything, have the humility to accept that you will never know everything and have the grace to spend the rest of your life learning what you don’t know.”

It was refreshing and calming to hear this from someone who has lived a lot more life than I have. To reassure me that yes, in fact, what I’m experiencing is exactly what getting older feels like. It’s like a video game with infinite level ups and side quests to complete.

Whenever I can remember that I get to choose what I want to accomplish in this life, I get really excited because there’s so many things that I’m interested in doing. There’s just so much to learn about. This is really just a reminder to myself, to give myself the space to explore and to keep the process in sight. To quote my professor, “Growing old is all about learning and doing and becoming - without ever really arriving. Life is a process, not a goal. The goal creates the direction. The steps we take to get there creates the life.”