Dropping Years

Phillis Greene tells us it can be done.

To feel younger as we grow older.

She herself was rejuvenated when she wrote her phenomenal first book Moonglow. When her second, Shedding Years, became another hit, she must have dropped a few more from her 80-plus years. She felt young, she said, while she sat by the pc writing her manuscript, as she autographed copies of her book at its launch, whenever she received fan mail from readers who identified with her musings.

I don't have to take Phillis' word for it. And I don't have to wait for my own first bestseller to come out; it is not likely to happen in this lifetime.

I have learned a few tricks of my own in dropping years.

Oh yes, I pit myself against the (young) standard and go through some of the rituals -- diet, work out, color, moisturize, tone, cleanse, and otherwise try to conceal the bulges, the lines and ridges, and the grey. I try to stand and walk uprightly, springily, tummy sucked in -- never mind if I get blue in the face.

But the years show in more ways than meets the eye.

One can drop years by learning new lifestyles. For me, it is entering a new world called the blogsphere, where I have found a new voice to talk to the world.

It is connecting with new friends -- including those as young as my own children.

It is doing things I've never dared to do before. Snorkel, skin-dive, sing without fear of offending eardrums (though I offend eardrums), drink one too many, walk in the rain, see a movie by my lonesome, wear a duster to go shopping, pick a neighbor's rosal flowers while she's not looking,

Most of all, dropping years is looking at the outside and inside circumstances of my life with a fresh eye.

Like someone greets me "How are you" and even as I reply "Fine" without thinking, deep inside I know better. That I am not just fine, but superb, having just woken to a beautiful sunrise, drunk a perfect cup of coffee, received a parcel notice from a faraway friend, and won successive games of scrabble the night before.

I hear something that bewilders me, intrigues me, and I dont run to a book or a guru anymore but instead look inwards for confirmation -- for a chord that will sound off a "ting-a-ling" response or a "boink-toink" alarm.

"Hitler went to heaven," Neale Donald Walsche tells me for example, and I am outraged at first. It goes against the grain of all I have been taught to believe about heaven and hell. But wait -- knock, knock -- I tap into my inner wisdom, which doesn't take too long to answer: "Why not?!" God is so big, even the likes of Shylock who insisted on his pound of flesh couldn't have missed Him.

I guess, like Phillis, I shed years when I watch a beautiful sunset, when I read a good story or write one, when I bury a seed and it shoots up greenlike in a few, when I look up at night and hear the laughter of stars, when I reformat predictable family reunions, when I teach my Apo Andeng how to "close-open," and "high-five" and "eat-bulaga" and she responds gurgling.

I drop years when I discover what I was born to do, and to do it with a passion I thought I had lost with my youth.

I drop years when I learn to be tolerant of other's follies; to listen to reasons why I can be wrong sometimes or most of the time; to laugh more, especially when the joke's on me; to accept temporary setbacks and not feel it's the end of the world; and to work on relationships that have gone sour.

In our highschool yahoo site where I sometimes get caught in the crossfire between sniping ole classmates-- I grow older when I get trigger-itchy and shoot out my own venom; I feel younger when I find a way to disarm antagonists and broker a deal resembling a truce.

In fact, it is basically in the relationships.

Our relationships to the god within, to our own fallible self, to every person and bird and bee and flower and tree and brook and river around us.

A positive attitude to others -- both fellow humans and lesser creatures -- can add bounce to our steps as we walk those final miles before we sleep.