Mountain Lore Living

Learning to Embrace Life and Growing Older

Today, I am spending my first day as a twenty-seven-year-old. The reflection in the mirror looks the same, but doesn’t. Everything feels the same, but everything has also changed.

I think back to my sixth birthday. I remember eating dinosaur oatmeal, moving the fluorescent shapes around in the bowl, and counting my new age out on my short fingers over and over until I bored myself. I couldn’t believe I had to use both hands to count the digits, and couldn’t wait until both were filled.

I remember turning seventeen, receiving my license a few months later, and finally experiencing the taste of freedom I had yearned for. I thought I knew everything, and life would be malleable in my hands like damp clay.

I remember graduating from high school and then college, each degree a parchment made from the fibers of science lessons, endless mathematical equations, scrolls of historical events, and countless research essays that contained a piece of my soul. A new chapter, infinite possibilities, all depended on counting more fingers.

As children, we spend so much time wishing to grow up just like I did at six, and probably seven, and probably thirteen, moving through fingers faster than we could really, truly count them.

I now need almost three sets of hands to count my age, and by 2028, I will have finally reached the end of the sixth hand.

When I think about 2028, it seems so, so far away. I have many goals that I want to achieve, but I haven’t yet accomplished them. My life doesn’t look the way I strategically mapped it to look, but does anyone else’s?

Instead of comparing myself to those around me, on social media, or the view I had for my life, I have decided to just embrace today. Embrace today, and tomorrow, and the next until my days have expired and there is nothing left.

Embracing Time in 2025

My parents always told me that as I got older, the years would pass more quickly with each subsequent year. That sage advice always seemed silly to someone who seemed to have an endless supply of fingers and hands to count on.

As I have aged twenty-seven years, I didn’t realize my loved ones did too.

One day, you wake up and realize your father’s hair is slightly lighter in the corners, eyes wiser from experiencing hope, fear, joy, and pain over the span of counting his own fingers. You notice that your mother’s face has softened, and the hands that have comforted you throughout your entire life have a hint of fragility from the years she has counted. Your uncle’s frame feels thinner, hugs feel gentler after embracing you for so long.

One day, you wake up and realize all of the expressions you make are permanently inked in intricate lines across your skin. Your exhaustion is palpable in lilac patches under pale, weary eyes. Your memories you hold so dear become fuzzier until they dissolve into incessant static you can’t quite tune out.

You realize your partner isn’t nineteen anymore – just like you aren’t either. Time wears away at both of us equally as his hair is speckled with light gray and eyes crinkle when he smiles. The smile and way he looks at you are still the same.

These markers begin to make you worry about all the granules of sand that have already slipped through your hands, not truly knowing how much you have left in your palms. It is only then that we realize how much time we have wasted on wishing for life to move more quickly.

As I write this today, I am realizing that the reason I wanted to grow up so badly was to understand the world and my place in it.

Perhaps if I were older, I would understand why good people sometimes make poor decisions. I wouldn’t worry about life’s unknowns and learn to embrace each curve. Maybe I would understand death better and honestly know its finality

I think I’ve spent too much time worried about those things instead of living, knowing what can happen, and choosing to live anyway.

Embracing Thirty in 2028

To Emily in 2028 on her 30th birthday,

I hope the last three years have been full of joy, happiness, and laughter. I hope time has been kinder to you than before. I hope life becomes less about learning lessons and more about enjoying the time and embracing the future with hope. I hope you embrace life for what it is – fleeting, and never quite long enough.

I hope some of those dreams that keep you up at night, creeping into every thought and conversation, have a chance to see the light with you. I hope you get to do what you love every day and learn to somehow love it more.

I hope you remember to tell those important to you how much you love them. You never know when your phone will ring for the last time, and their picture will be on the screen. You never know when you’ll see their smile or hear their laugh and miss the view entirely.

Maybe by thirty, my life won’t be focused on just my own hands. Perhaps I will have a set of little hands to nurture. The hands you counted on for so long will have a different purpose. Those hands will wipe away fallen tears and runny noses, offering affection and kindness as they explore life, just as I did once before. I’ll look at them, memorize how much they look like me or the one I love, and hold onto that image for as long as I can until the static creeps in.

As I watch them joyfully count, year after year, on their own fingers, perhaps then I can share that wise advice from my parents, knowing they won’t fully understand until my hands have grown weary, my eyes have crinkled, my hair has grayed, and the granules begin to run out of my weathered palms.