#10 - Aging Gracefully {Reflections}

What is up everybody?

My name is Ryan and welcome to our Reflections podcast.

What's up, mike?

How much, dude?

This is episode number 10.

Look at us, man.

We should have like a celebration or something.

Man, let's do a party.

Hey, you know what I realized the other day?

I heard this Back to the future One of the greatest sci-fi films of all time.

Yes, it is a sci-fi film.

It will come at me, but it is.

But it's one of the greatest films.

It's one of my favorite top 10 movies of all time.

That film was set in 1985 and they travel back in time 30 years to 1955.

Which means this I realized the other day, thanks to the internet, that if they went, if that movie was filmed today in 2023, they would go back all the way back to the year 1993.

Which, for me, feels like yesterday.

I can think back.

I would have been 13 years old.

I was at the height of my teenage years.

Nirvana was coming out of the scene.

Pirtle Jam, vanilla Ice was still pretty hot.

You know, I had.

I think I had a mullet at that point.

That was the first go around of mullets.

But, mike, you're younger than me, though.

How old were you?

I would have been 2 years old.

Mike the young Mike would have been 2 years old and I, man, I gotta just tell you it made me feel old.

Also, this year, my son Logan, is going to be a sophomore in college at Gustavus Go Gusty's.

My second son, gavin's going to be a senior in high school, which is wild Another milestone.

My daughter Addison is going to be a freshman at the Elk River High School.

Scarlett is going to be a seventh grader.

But all these milestones, you know.

A freshman in high school, a senior in high school, and it just reminded me yet again, I'm getting older.

My birthday's coming up October 3rd should be a national holiday, but I'm getting older.

And listen, I've noticed as I've gotten older I'm not, you know, I'm 40, I'll be 44, I think, on October 3rd and I've noticed that as people age and around me, I've noticed that people generally tend to fall into one of sort of two ruts on either side of the road as they age.

One type of person and I'm going to just characterize here and maybe just generalize but there's like one set of people that as they age they just like desperately, almost try to hold on to their youth as long as possible, you know.

So they do all the things to like look young, to feel young, to speak young and I don't just mean like eating avocados and doing yoga, those are fine, but like all the extra things, like you know and I'm not trying to bag on anybody but they even try to wear the hip clothes that young people are wearing or like use a hip language or whatever.

Right, we all know the things.

But it's almost like they want to just deny their age or the fact that they're aging.

And, let's be honest, it sort of feels weird.

When you watch it from the outside.

You're like, what are you doing?

You know, on the other side of the road there's this group of people that almost seem to, as they age, they just almost sort of like give up and they're like actually not that old, but they just talk so much about how old they are I'm too old to do this, I'm too old for that and they like stop doing all the things and they kind of fall under the rut on the other side and they got me thinking like I mean, I just, as I'm getting older, I just, I, just I want to be sort of somewhere in the middle, like I want to be one of those people and I hope to be this and I want to invite all of us to be something more like this, where we just be people who age gracefully, that as we age, whatever age we are because, look, we're all aging, like there's no denying that fact.

We're all getting older, no matter how old we are currently.

Tomorrow we're gonna be one day older, and I want to be the kind of guy who embraces whatever age I am, but also I keep going and just keep on living my life.

I don't want to have delusions of how it all works.

I know how this works.

We're all kind of heading towards that direction and I can't go backwards.

But I also know that until I'm in the grave, I have more to give, more to do, more to offer, and that, even though I look in the mirror and I've got one more wrinkle probably than I did yesterday and, like, I acknowledge that the wrinkles are there, but I don't want to mind them anyway, because the wrinkles sort of tell the story of my life, you know what I'm saying.

And so I want to be a kind of guy who embraces even the wrinkles, because I know they're part of my life and a part of my journey, and you know people that do that, because I have friends who've done this.

They've aged gracefully, they've embraced who they are, where they are, where they're headed, the age that they are, and they know they have lots more to give still.

But those are the kind of people I love to talk with when I'm out at parties or at dinner and I call them, of course, maybe infamously or famously I call them the old wizards, and I want to be as I get older.

I want to be an old wizard in life who can just be comfortable in my own skin, whether it's 44-year-old skin or 84-year-old skin, knowing that I've sort of given it all, that I can, on most days anyway, embrace my sort of downfalls or pitfalls or the ways I've missed it as well, the wrinkles, the aging, all of it and just am comfortable where I am and what I have to give.

And one of my favorite passages from the scriptures is it comes from Genesis.

It says remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

This is one of the mantras we have during the Lenten season and we rub ashes on people's foreheads on Ash Wednesday and we tell them this as a reminder.

Look, you came from the dust and you're not going to live forever.

You will return to the dust.

You are mortal and, of course, you're more than just that you're this beloved son or daughter of God.

But never forget that you came from the dust and to the dust you shall return.

So today, as I am trying to wrap my brain around the fact that if Marty McFly traveled back in time and back to the future, 2023, he'd go back all the way back to 1993 and visit Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder and the likes.

But as I wrap my brain around that, I wanna be the kind of person that knows that someday I will also join those who've gone before me and die.

It's just the way this thing is headed.

But every day until then, mike, before we die, may we be people who live.

Amen.

So as you age, may you age gracefully.

Peace.

Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends.

And don't forget, you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River, at 830, which is our local gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering, or you can check us out online at clclcreverorg.

Peace.