Ive recently spent a lot of time reading about why life appears to move more rapidly as we get older.
I remember my grandmother remarking to me decades ago how, as she aged, years seemed to pass like weekends.
I understood what she meant.
I’ve only begun to experience it for myself the past five years or so.
Turning 47? Running out of fucks to give? It all feels like yesterday around here.
Three hundred and sixty five similar days strung together one after the other.
The year passed like a weekend.
The rapid rate at which 47 progressed is backed up by research I’ve found.
As we age, experts assert, years appear to pass in a blink because most of us cease having (as many) new/unique experiences.
When we’re kids every damn thing (for good and for bad) is a new experience.
Learning to walk, making friends, starting school, launching a new school year, beginning a new “level” of schooling, first summer camp, first love, first job–and on and on and on.
When we’re big-people not only are novel experiences challenging to find there appears to exist limited time/resources to go out and look for them.
Here, if I’m being honest with myself as I strive to be, the important word is appear.
There exist myriad opportunities around me to try new things and seize novel experiences. This seizing may be as simple as committing to be The Child’s cheer coach (coming this fall to a football field near you!) or as $complicated$ as completing a first marathon.
47’s NOVEL mini-obstacle course race.
When I began writing this post I planned for it to be about launching a 50×50 Bucket List.
I love bucket list and have followed along as friends completed 50×50’s and thoroughly enjoyed the vicarious experience.
Spoiler alert: There will be no list.
I brainstormed. I wrote. I grew idea-stumped around item #15…which triggered reflection…which brought me to the conclusions above.
I don’t want my life to “pass like a weekend” due to a dearth of novel experiences.
As I struggled to generate bucket list items it became clear, far more than another list in my life (and another “thing” to trigger MUSTurbation), I needed to change the way I walk through the world.
In honor of 48 I need *not* to saddle myself with 50 additional to-do’s, but appropriate a new attitude which will become (<—power of positive thinking!) the backdrop of all I do.
For the next 365 days I shall consciously choose to greet each 24 hour cycle by scrutinizing it for opportunities to have novel experiences. From the seemingly small to the properly planned out big.
For the next 365 days I wont have assignments of experiences to check off a list, but an overarching mission to ‘Stretch this shit out by collecting all the new experiences I can and not giving a damn if I look crazy while doing so.‘
This is 48.
