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.
