Ok, first of all where the hell is that?
It is a gushing waterfall in Milford Sound, New Zealand.
Now that we got that outta the way. What is the Legend?
The Legend is that if you are sprayed with the mist from the raging falls, you will wake up the next day, 10 years younger. Well, that is what they tell the tourists...I am sure to get a laugh out of how many people willingly get wet in order to buy into the legend and all it promises.
We all know nothing can turn back the hands of time...nothing. Time marches on no matter how much money we throw at it, no matter how much we deny it’s passing, without relief, we all are time’s bitch.
I didn’t intentionally stand in the spray...but I was there taking photos so I got wet anyway. And the person I was that day, wanted to believe that I would, in fact, wake up 10 years younger...but alas, no such luck. I am still 55 regardless of how much I wish I could go back in time and live this life of mine better, more fully and completely.
A friend of mine says his biggest fear in this life is to live his life and be filled with regrets. Filled with all the things he wishes he did and didn’t do. He is only 37 so he has the time I do not. But I have all that life I got to live, all the missteps, all the right steps, all the things I did to arrive me to this moment right here where I have the audacity to wish to be younger.
I have thought a lot about time and aging and death and living on this trip. I have thought about it morbidly and wistfully. All of them. What I have concluded is that I do not want to waste anymore time trying to regain something that time charged me along the way. I didn’t get a bad deal, time offered up great terms. It is just that now that I have less time left, I would like to renegotiate the deal.
But then this would not be my life. It would be someone else’s life. And that is something none of us can ever have...well, unless we are identity thieves, but even then, just because we are fraudulently donning a new name, doesn’t make it so...
This is my life. I have the scars to prove it. And perhaps aging and living is really all about coming to some sort of truce with that nagging doubt that perhaps you did it wrong. Perhaps you were not the best version of yourself. Perhaps things didn’t work out quite like you wanted. And finding a home for that within the life you have.
The longer I am here the more I see that a life well lived is about making a home for all the things that happen to you. All the ways in which you fuck up and all the ways you killed it. It is about creating a space within us that is large enough to hold the good and the bad. To accept that in this life rain is going to fall, plans are going to change and we are going to have regrets. We can’t take every path life provides us...we are always making a choice that will lead us to the next destination, often one that no matter how much we decided, wasn’t the spot we thought we were going to...
So the Legend of Stirling Falls was just another gimmick to trick us into leaving the present moment...for wishing for something none of us can ever have: mastery over time and its effects. I did not magically become ecstatic at being 55, but I do feel like I found a little more acceptance for myself...my looks, my experience with aging, my body, and my life. Perhaps life isn’t all about what we accomplish or what career we have, perhaps life’s main goal is to teach us that there are so very many things to distract us from the truest lesson living can ever provide: we just get this moment right here. That is all we are guaranteed. So what we do with it is super fucking important.
Live. Laugh. Love. Age. Accept that no matter what you do, time, while not exactly on our side, is there pulling for us to make the best use of however much time we are allotted. And that in order to do that, we may not ever know exactly how much of it we are going to receive, and we are going to have to make our peace with that very hard fact.
Might as well live life to the fullest. Say the thing. Do the thing. Live the life you are presented, live it so fully that you revel in its abundant luxury every single day you are granted. And spend no more time regretting that which was not meant for you. For me, I just need look at what lies in front of me, to see what I need do next, and then to do the sometimes very difficult work of wanting what I have. That is the secret to life I believe: not minding what happens...and wanting what you have.
Again...still.
Always.
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