For the longest time, I had never really considered the fact that I’m going to grow old. I’d never really considered the fact that it’s happening every second that I’m alive, either.
Most of the time when people think about growing old, they mainly picture themselves with a slight gray tint to their hair, sitting in a sunshine-lit house and enjoying life after their hard work has paid off. Maybe it’s with the person they love, or maybe it’s by themselves, but the point is that it’s almost always just a glimpse into an idealistic future. Usually, people focus more on the “old” part of growing old, and less on the “growing” aspect.
Taking the time to consider the growing part of life is a bit scarier than just thinking about what life will be like once the “glory days” are a thing of the past. The worst part of it is that you really don’t realize what the glory days were until they’re gone, and that can mean that you didn’t let them live up to their full potential. This is where the phrase “Youth is wasted on the young” comes in.
When you really think about it, most of life is spent planning. It starts out with your parents planning for you to go to elementary school. In elementary school, you start planning to go into middle school, and then before you realize it you’re in high school. In high school is where you start planning for your life to start though, which is ironic in its own way considering by the time your “life” is going to begin, you’ve already been alive for 17 or 18 years.
Notice how I said you’ve been alive instead of saying that you’ve been living?
Life is spent looking forward. It’s never spent living in the moment, not truly. It’s this never-ending discontentment with the present, and always thinking about the next thing that’s going to happen. It’s waking up on Friday wishing it was Saturday, and waking up on Saturday already dreading Monday.
Except there comes the Sunday that you wake up and realize that your planning days are coming to an end. You wake up, and it sinks in that you no longer need to plan for college, or graduation, or even retirement, because you’ve already planned for all of them and gone through each one. On this Sunday is when you realize that you don’t need to dread Mondays anymore, and you don’t need to look forward to Saturdays, because they’re just days now.
I’m terrified to get to this Sunday of my life. I’m afraid that I’m spending too much time planning for this Sunday without even realizing it. I’m afraid that I am neglecting to do all of the things that I promised myself I would. Ignorance being bliss is becoming more of a mantra for life as a youth than it is a simple phrase for awkward situations. Being young is an amazing and beautiful experience, but I’m afraid that I’ll be done with this part of my life before I can even fathom that it’s gone, and where does that leave me? With a head full of regret and the words “What if…” constantly running through my head? Does it leave me with a broken heart and a spilled tear for every random thing I didn’t do that I had wanted to?
I suppose that a better way to phrase this would be that no, I am not terrified to grow old. It’s a part of life, and it’s a part of growing. I get that. What I’m more terrified of is constant planning through life. What I am truly terrified of is getting old, without ever really growing old.
