The Great Transition--becoming an older person, feelings and thoughts

[Tyrion Cheddar]

It's been hitting me lately, in ways subtle and not so, in realizations and inchoate feelings: I am becoming old. I feel it in my bones. I hear the encroachment of mortality like waves beating on the shore. There's an ashen hush of ending, a poignant surrender, an echo of a life lived.

It's me. That's the part I can't get over. This person who putters about my house who is increasingly recognizably an old person is me. It is all new. I am not unhappy or upset, I'm just trying to get my mind around it.

I am 51 now, and I guess I never thought of that as being "old" in the sense of suddenly being something distinct from what I've always been, and from the world of younger people--whose distinction from is now stark and so curious.

My very nature is not what it was. I am slow now, and for the first time feel an absence of haste or urgency. It is pleasant and relaxing, but has crept up on me. I dodder about. I am content (a nice feeling), and look forward to sitting and staring into space, perhaps while listening to music or an audiobook, or into the fire, or my own thoughts. It's all fine and lovely, it's just sudden and unexpected. Me, an old person.

I love the woods and cool crisp air. I wish nothing more than to be at peace, and to be with my family.

Any of you who have gone or are going through this transition, please share your experience.

[Mohammad Ahmad]

What to share you we are all alike, but not to lose the confidence on each one's soul we ought to be tolerant and to be strong and not despairing for the last moment of each one's life.
51 years age of a person isn't too much, I myself 63 years old having three wives and deciding now to fetch another one.

[Dreamwoven]

51 isn't old, Tyrione. I never thought I would live to be 70 and now here I am, 73. Even that isn't old. Perhaps we all age differently?