Age is Just a Number

August 15, 2013.  Today, I turn a year older.  When I was a little girl, I could not imagine what it would be like turning a day over thirty.  Now that I’ve far exceeded that age, do I feel any different?  Actually… surprisingly…I don’t!

Image taken the year I was born

I feel 25; sometimes, I feel like I’m 18.  The age I have depends on the mindset I have for the day.  At other times, when I feel weighed down by a lot of stuff, that’s when I feel my age.  Okay, I admit I feel some aches and pains here and there (back pain and creaky joints are normal signs of aging, I know.  At least I know I’m normal…hahaha...).  I can’t really run too quickly nor can I rush up the stairs when I feel like it.  The occasional strand of grey hair (which I have extirpated* the moment I spot one) and a faint line or two are a give-away.  But other than that, I feel the age I choose to feel.

Some people act surprised when I reveal how old I am.  (If they feign surprise or actually ARE surprised, I’ll never know…hahaha…).  That’s when I realized that being tiny isn’t so bad after all.  From behind, I guess I’ll always look like a high-school kid.  (Up front…well, that’s a different matter, of course).   I’m just lucky that the women on both sides of the family are young-looking and I hope that I keep things that way for as long as I can.

When asked what I do, I honestly tell them that I don’t do much.  Of course, the cleanse-tone-moisturize-sunblock products, courtesy of Dr. Neil Oropeza’s Oroderm Clinic help a lot.  Other than that, I do nothing special coz I can be sooo lazy to keep up with any other type of beauty regimen.  I’ve tried other much-hyped beauty products before, but I never got to find out if they were effective coz I was never consistent in maintaining the routine.  As they say, consistency is key.  Unfortunately, the products evaporate, “shrink” or change colors before I have the chance to use them up.  Even facials take up time, so I’d have them, like, once in two years maybe?  So, I just stick to Doc Neil's basics.

Exercise?  I know…considering my age and cholesterol levels, I should insert it somehow into my schedule.  But then again, nakakatamad.  My husband Greg and I availed of the annual membership at Metro Lifestyle coz his doctors insisted that he has to have some sort of exercise to relieve the pain in his knee and back.  We were good at it for say…two months.  That was a little over a year ago.  We haven’t been back since.  But I’m now persuading him to go back coz my midsection isn’t exactly what it used to be when I was 20 years younger than I am today…I bought a Zumba pack for Wii U but the box remains in its same unopened state as on the day it was purchased about 3 months ago.  I’ve promised myself (with fingers crossed behind my back (?)) to open it and start using it…NOW NA…not pag may time lang…Now, whether or not I regain my old waistline remains to be seen…

But really, I guess what works best for me is how I view life and the burdens that come along with it.  I’m not saying that I run away from my problems. I don’t!  I just don’t dwell on them, dissect them or rant about them. I have various ways of dealing with stress, but that in itself would be long enough to be another blog that I shall be posting in the future.  Anyway, I just identify the problem, figure out how to solve it, carry out the solution and wait for end-results.  If I can’t come up with anything brilliant, I pray for enlightenment.  If things don’t turn out the way I want them to, again, I turn to prayer.  IT ALWAYS WORKS!!!  Believe me!  I may not get what I want, but things always turn out for the best.  I may yet have some unresolved problems but I choose not to wallow in the depths of despair.  As long as I know I’ve done what I can, as long as I’ve whispered my heartaches to God, I know these trials soon shall pass and hopefully, I emerge a better person. 

And that, I believe is how I’ve been growing older.  Gracefully, I hope.  Yes, hopefully with God’s grace…

I honestly believe that the fountain of youth is not in some obscenely-priced miracle-in-a-jar sourced from the heights of Mt. Everest or the depths of the world’s deepest trench. 

Youth is not necessarily associated with the young.  It lies in everyone’s hearts…It stays forever recorded deep in the recesses of our minds.  Age?  It’s just a number.  We sometimes forget the feeling of being young because we focus on the number.  But, no matter how old we get, the moment we re-live our cherished memories, we are transported back to another place and time and we become the young, giggling, carefree kids we once were.  And maybe, just for a moment, we forget about the crosses we carry and shift back to a time when all that mattered was our youth.

Getting older is a fact of life.  No one can escape it.  It’s just how we choose to live our lives that makes all the difference between feeling older and staying young-at-heart.

May 2013

How old am I?  I was born the year the Aswan Dam was completed, the year the Beatles broke up, the year the first Earth Day was celebrated.  Sirit na ?  Okay, I was born one year after Neil Alden Armstrong conquered the moon, the year after Gloria Diaz conquered the Universe.  You do the math. ;)

Glossary:

*Extirpate – a term familiar to my Room 211 roommates (Trisha, Chin-Chin and Leng) at Eliazo which means to pull up by the root