Who Put That Old Person in My Mirror?

Answer

Yes, it's normal. Getting older brings challenges that can catch us by surprise. Everyone faces them in different ways, and you can't avoid them. But you don't have to face them on your own. It's good that you reached out, and don't hesitate to seek professional help from a therapist.

What I can offer you is a formula from the Baal Shem Tov for dealing with just about everything that comes your way. It's a three-step process: Acceptance, Separation and Sweetening.

Let's take your situation. You're not as young as you used to be. Neither are your parents. You don't have the energy, stamina, and light-heartedness you had twenty years ago. It's frustrating.

Let's apply the three steps.

First comes Acceptance. Accept that you are getting older. This is where you are. You can't fight reality. You can't reverse it. You can't go back in time. You can't switch lives with somebody else. You are who you are, where you are, right here, right now. You don't call the shots, G-d does. Accept it. That doesn't mean giving up. It means starting from where you are. Until you accept that, we can't move on.

Once you've accepted reality as it is, you need to shift your perspective on it. This is the second step: Separation. Separate the facts of your life from the story you're telling yourself about them. Drop your assumptions. You have defined getting older as a bad thing. Separate from that definition and see it for what it is: entering your next stage. You aren't falling, you are progressing.

That sets up the final step: Sweetening. Turn what seemed negative into a positive. The things going on in your life, even if they seem like obstacles, can become stepping stones. Getting older means engaging in life on a more mature level, experiencing things more deeply, appreciating what you once overlooked. You may not have achieved everything you dreamed of, but perhaps there are new dreams you never even thought of.

You are being invited to go deeper into life, to embrace a new level, to take a step up. Difficulties are not just interruptions to life, they can be invitations to growth. Don't avoid the challenge. Take it on, bring it in, let it transform you. Make the bitter sweet.

You need all three steps: acceptance, separation, sweetening. You can't jump to sweetening without accepting where you're at and reframing it. Each step takes time and work.

But it's worth it. Here's the message for someone hitting fifty: you're not getting older. You're getting sweeter.