Not Dead, Not Done

What is it about these ages that end in zero? It’s just another year, but they feel bigger somehow. The stepping into a new decade, ticking over into a brand new set of numbers. That’s happening to me this month, one of those big turnovers into an age that ends in zero.

The last time I had one of these big, transitional birthdays, I had a really hard time with it. To be fair, I wasn’t in a very good place back then. I would have to spend that upcoming decade navigating many endings. I didn’t appreciate at the time that endings are also beginnings. I didn’t know that those endings would actually end up ushering in the beginnings of so many better things in my life.

As I’m again facing another turnover into a new decade, I’m pleased to realize I’m actually not having a hard time with it this time. Unlike a decade ago, I’m in a way better place. And I’m no longer in battle with change and aging as I once was.

As a result, this year I finally made the choice to stop coloring the roots of my hair. Now, for some people maybe that’s not such a big deal. But I wasn’t one of those people. It was a big decision for me to finally make as I began to accept I was in a losing battle with nature.

Actually, nature was just naturing. It never was really a battle. I was just playing a little game of smoke and mirrors with myself for a time. And underneath that illusion was a truth I hadn't fully accepted, that I'm not young anymore, not by the numbers anyway. I don’t feel like what I consider old, but the numbers suggest I can soon be eligible for some discounts, so there's that.

Letting the gray grow in wasn't just about hair. It was about no longer hiding from that truth. I’m not a young person anymore.

This choice to allow my natural gray to grow out has had some really positive, unexpected results for me. For one, it has saved me a tremendous amount of frustration. I was in a pattern of getting my hair professionally colored and 2 weeks later or less seeing the gray roots peaking out, mocking me. And I had attached my very own special meaning to those gray roots, that they made me look old and tired. So every time I would see those roots I would feel, guess what? Old and tired.

And that's a story I had absorbed from somewhere, it wasn’t an original. Women, in particular, are told in a thousand quiet and not so quiet ways that gray hair means we're past our prime. That getting older means we’re done.

To free myself from that monthly pseudo-battle with my hair has truly been liberating. It’s amazing the freedom that exists in just letting go and letting be.

But I think the most unexpected and positive result for me has been that I feel way more authentic. I had believed I was living pretty authentically already, but I’m now experiencing a new level of realness that I hadn’t a clue I was lacking. And just allowing myself to be my authentic aging self has made me feel calmer in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

It reminds me of the Five Remembrances from the oldest record of the Buddha’s teachings, the Pali Canon. The Five Remembrances are contemplations on the facts of our existence. Here they are as translated by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh:

At first read, these may seem depressing. But why must they be? They’re just stating facts of living in these temporary bodies.

Rather than creating more suffering, these contemplations offer a liberation. When we can accept the inevitability of these changes, there’s no need to get into battle with the nature of our existence. Aging isn’t really a problem. Change isn’t really a problem. Death isn’t really even a problem. In this context, all are just how it is being a living being.

The problem lies in living in denial and resistance to the ever flowing change that is occurring around us and within us. When we can see the dominant age-defying and death-defying messages we’re saturated in in our youth-obsessed culture as nothing but a sham, we can discover the great gifts of growing older. And there are many great things about growing older.

When we can have acceptance for how things truly are, we can be deeply grateful for what we have in the here and now. In fact, perhaps we can more deeply appreciate the here and now as we realize the preciousness of it. And perhaps we can also have more compassion for ourselves and others because we are all truly floating in this same boat. We are all of this same nature.

So, this simple act of allowing my hair to follow its natural course has been an early birthday gift to myself, offering me more freedom and alignment with my genuine self that I hadn’t even clocked was off. This small ending, like those bigger ones a decade ago, is turning out to be the beginning of something too, a deeper alignment with who I actually am, and maybe a little more wisdom along the way. Because doesn’t growing older mean growing wiser? I sure hope so!

Being born in the prior Chinese Fire Horse year of 1966, I’m a soon-to-be 60-year-old woman with hair that’s turning gray and skin that’s getting more wrinkled. I’m deeply grateful to still be here and to have good health and still feel great. These things will change one day, but for now, I’m living into the spirit of the words of a fellow Fire Horse woman, Shirley Manson from Garbage, who sings on the song ‘Chinese Fire Horse,’ “I’m not dead. I’m not done.”