Aun aprendo

The first response to my blog came via email from a friend who told me that Goya had drawn a portrait of himself as a very old man and titled it Aun Aprendo, meaning “I am still learning.” It hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Goya continued to paint and draw in spite of ill health as he grew old.

Growing old chronologically is a given but being open to learning throughout our life leads to a wisdom of the spirit that keeps us young at heart.

Sophocles wrote, "Old age and the passage of time teach all things." I have often wondered if learning is the very purpose of our existence. Life seems to be a series of lessons. Opportunities for learning present themselves. If we fail to learn the lesson, it is uncanny how further opportunities for learning it come along. Once we do learn the lesson, we move on to the next one.

Continuing to learn until "death do us part" from this world is one of the reasons I believe that our souls continue to exist after our physical departure. Why else would we be learning, if not to prepare us for whatever lies ahead?

Happy New Year!

My family and friends have been encouraging me to “write” for many years. So I have resolved on the first day of this New Year 2007 to start a blog. I have been a regular blog reader for quite a while but the thought of writing one myself is scary. I’m not at all sure of what to write about.

I suppose I will start by sharing some of my thoughts and feelings about growing older and being an older woman in a culture obsessed with youth and sex. I think it was Art Linkletter who said many years ago that, “growing older is not for sissies.” I am certainly finding that to be true.

Two years ago I celebrated my seventieth birthday. My four children and their spouses and my sixteen grandchildren gathered from Kansas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Tennessee, Florida and Iraq, traveling a total of 3500 miles to host a party for me. It was a wonderful celebration and the first time that all my family has been together in one place since my children grew up and left home. And I was thrilled to have a family portrait taken with me in the middle as the grand matriarch of a family of 25! Not bad for an only child!

I am in good health and happy most of the time. However daily I am ever more aware of the fact that the older we become the less our outside appearance reflects the reality of our inner life. In her later years my mother frequently protested, “But I feel young!” And she was offended at my suggestion that perhaps she qualified for the status of “old” when she was eighty. In our culture the word “old” has many negative connotations. Now that I, too, am old, I know what my mother was saying.

This blog will include, but not be limited by, my reflections on growing older. It will include my reflections on whatever comes to mind. I began to read blogs when my granddaughter, a sargeant in the Army started one when she was stationed in Iraq. So here goes! If anyone should read this I pray that you will have a very blessed new year!