My Thoughts: Why growing older is good...

Ageing. Old. Older. 

How these dirty words have started to itch now there is a 3 at the beginning of my age. Who knows how insulting they'll become in a decade's time? Despite the fact that really I am nowhere near a generic definition of "old". But I am getting older... We all are.

I get so annoyed at myself for succumbing to the voices telling me negative things about growing older; that it's all downhill from here, that I've got to hurry up and do this or that before it's "too late". Life is a marathon, not a race and I got injured when I tried to run a marathon at a pace faster than my body (and mind) was prepared for. (No, I really did, ITB syndrome hurts.) So let's take it a little slower shall we? Let's savour some of these ageing moments.

Today is my birthday. I'm 31. 

And I'm happy, healthy and horribly in love with so many things.

I'm using the positive energy that this gives me to fight back those voices with ten reasons why growing older is good. 

1. Everyday I love a little more.
2. Everyday I am loved, maybe a little more but that's not so important.
3. I am ten times wiser than I was ten years ago. Do you know how wise that will make me in ten more years? I don't have the answer to that. I'm not wise enough to work it out yet.
4. In the last week I have learnt how to make Moroccan tea, how to use a semi-colon (again) and how to bake banana muffins using a French recipe book and Moroccan Arabic ingredients. That's just one week in my life, imagine what I will achieve in all the weeks that will pass me by on my journey of "getting older"?
5. There are over a 100 more countries I haven't got lost in yet. I can only do that by getting older. The same goes for all those slices of cake I haven't eaten yet. 
6. I care less and less and less what people think with each day that passes. I believe that only age holds the key to unlocking this liberating secret.
7. I love vintage clothes, wine and books. They only get more vintage as I do, which can only be a good thing.
8. The older I get the more I understand my parents and the more I think they are wonderful souls. There's hope for me yet...
9. If good things are coming, and I believe they always are, well, I'll put up with a few wrinkles and a persistent reoccurring grey hair in order to meet them.
10. Albert Einstein once said " I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don't have to". I'm no anti-establishment sock destroyer - I love socks - but I know that age has started to make me more aware of the things I do have to do and the things I don't. I await its further instruction...