Sugar Bend Farm

Youth

9:20 AM, 2006-Sep-27 .. 2 comments .. Link

"If I had known my youth would be so

fleeting, I would have enjoyed it more

while I had it."

I don't know if anyone else actually said this, but this has been my thought most of this week. I am rounding a corner of my life, in less than two months I will be 40 years old and I find as I get closer to the date, I am getting a little stressed and down about growing older. I know 40 really isn't that old. And if I take after my grandmothers, I have a long life still ahead. One Grandmother passed away in 2005 at the age of 98 and she worked until she was in her late 80's. My other Grandmother is still living, mostly in her own home, on her own, and doing a good job of it, she will be 94 in December. So, I know 40 is not even mid way, but for me I can see changes in my body and mind that worry me. I feel my youth has slipped away while I wasn't looking and suddenly here I am, realizing that it is gone. My husband says not to think of what is gone, but what is ahead for us. And I do, but I still mourn for what is gone and will never return. I mourn for what I will never be able to accomplish now; for dreams that will never be realized. I know that I will get past this melancholy feeling and move on, but for now, I am going to wallow for a while and "feel" my sadness and grief. Then I will get up an charge ahead into the next decade of my life, hopefully wiser and enjoying each year, each month, each day and each hour of my life. Not letting the next portion of my life pass by without using up each moment of it. When I come to the end of this life, I want to be able to look back on the life I have lived and not have regrets for things I have done, but mostly, I don't want to have regrets for things I wanted to do, but never got around to doing. I don't want to put off until later, what I want to do now, because later may not come. I suppose this would be a good place to post my favorite poem of all time:

The Road Not Taken

By Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.