No More Pain

When I was 10 years old, I loved my riding my bicycle really fast. At that time, our family lived in El Toro Marine Corps Housing near the foothills. One day, I got going way too fast down a steep hill and lost control. By the time I was able to scrape myself off the street, blood was pouring out from both of my knees. I cried the whole way home as I pushed my mangled bicycle back up the hill. Funny thing is, within a week my injuries were a distant memory and my knees were pretty much healed up.

My physical pain was gone, but the emotional trauma was still there. Not the trauma from the fall, the trauma from embarrassment. Apparently, several kids on my street saw me lose control and eat it hard. They thought it was super funny and made sure to tell everyone at school what a lousy bike rider I was. When I think back, I can still hear the kids in the school hallway laughing at me.

However, as I’ve gotten older, I realize that things kind of reverse as we mature. Let me explain.

A month ago, I went to Costco and bought several of those large 40 bottle cases of water. As I carried one into the house, I banged the back of my hand against a sharp corner of the countertop. It hurt like heck and I dripped blood all the way back out to my truck. Here it is one month later, and my hand still hurts, plus the wound hasn’t healed up yet. So I still have to wear a stupid band-aid every single day.

Also about a month ago, I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in 20 years. He’s a lot younger than me and the first thing he did was to comment about my “gray hair” and the second thing he did was to ask me how it felt to be “getting old”. Both of those comments reminded me of what a jerk he was, but at the same time, I realized his comments didn’t truly bother me at all. I’ve discovered that one of the benefits of “aging” is learning to take things in stride and not worry so much about what other people think.

At that got me thinking… Young people usually heal quickly from physical pain but not so fast from emotional hurts because they lack maturity. So, the sooner we learn that we have the ability within ourselves to flatten out some of those steep hills in life by simply deciding who we will let hurt us and who we won’t, the smoother our ride will be!

It’s sad to grow old, but nice to ripen.

~ Brigitte Bardot