My journal: my age-old teacher

July 4, 2009

I've had many, many teachers over the years - books, friends, failures, family, etc. over the years, but my one constant teacher has been my age. It never gives up on me - every second of my life, I grow, grow, grow - and never backwards. After all these years, my reverence for it only grows.

It's funny to me when I see commercials, products, media and society deplore and disrespect age, and instead try to promote getting younger. Advertisers only employ young women and men to sell their products, which promise to make me younger, smooth out my wrinkles, color in my grey. Men and women fall for them, and hanker after a youth that they've already lived through and will never have again. Just because they lie about their age doesn't mean they're younger.

When I talk to people, they always talk about a golden period in the past when they were younger. But for me, I've never had a period in my life I wanted to go back to - not once. Each period, each year, each minute I step into is brand new, and golden - I learn something new everyday. So why would I want to go back to days when I was innocent and ignorant?

Wisdom is a gift my age gives me - I'm wiser today than I was yesterday; wiser now than I was 5 years ago. Wisdom is the hindsight and experience and maturity of learning from my failures, stumbles and missteps. If I knew then what I know now, I'd never have made some of the decisions and choices I made along the way. But the paradox here is that the only way I know now, and am wiser now, is because of making those missteps along the way.

Self confidence is another gift of my age. Gone are the days when I depended on the validation of friends and people around me to make me feel right. Now my confidence comes from within - from my own Self - my own constant companion.

Another golden gift of my age is inner knowledge that's steadily growing. This is not bookish knowledge or a general knowledge about world politics, sciences and trivia, but a quiet confident knowledge about God and what He means to me, His omnipresence and His power. I don't need proofs or prayers to know that He's listening. I just know that He is all there is. There is no world, no universe, no me. He is ALL there is, and I KNOW it.

Sai Ram and Love

sai_sravanthi_999