Friday, August 23, 2013

Coming Out Older: Today's Revelation About Aging


Turns out the physical features of aging are nothing when compared to other delightful aspects of getting older, such as what comes out of my mouth and the management thereof.

I was never a patient person [shut up], but with every passing year/month/day my tolerance for just about everything is majorly minimal. Merely getting irked by bullshit is but a pleasant memory. I now get overtly cranky in the presence of certain behaviors and don't bother keeping many opinions to myself these days. Did I ever? Well, yes.

Probably hard to imagine this about me, but during my forties and well into my fifties, I kept plenty of opinions to myself. This was, in part, because I often served in environments where obedience was viewed as a valuable spiritual attribute rather than a tool for identity-eradication and soul-annihilation.

During the mid-1950's, Quakers coined the expression, “speaking truth to power.” Sixty years later, "speaking truth to stupid" seems a more compelling call to action. With age, I've become more comfy with trotting out my observations in the blunt terms I'd renounced at one point. With age, I rarely give a crap about cleaning up my language and have returned to dropping f-bombs like a Millennial.

Two years ago, I bemoaned this situation -- my impatience, my intolerance, my potty mouth -- to one of my favorite septuagenarians. "It only gets worse with age," she assured me with a girlish giggle. She was right, although I'm beginning to believe that in my case, getting "worse" might actually be evidence of getting better.