Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Losing My Touch - Keith Richards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMxa_Xebbrw

Losing My Touch

I love this song.  I know it is melancholy, but it is beautiful.  It is one of those songs that just sounds lovely.  Sometimes when down, I might go down that other road, but most of the time I just hear the beauty in this song.

I love the gravely-ness of Keith Richards.  I can also see how aging to a rock star might lay a heavy layer on ones being.  Knocking on 50's door myself, I can't help but identify with the reality of aging.  I for one see it in good ways.  I am losing my touch with a lot of things, but most of them I am glad to lay down.

I don't want to be 20 forever.  There was so much to learn, some of it, much of it the hard way.  Things were always needed.  Acquiring would be the word of that decade.  At 20 I was already years into a marriage.  I would become a mother twice.  I would go back to school and earn a nursing degree. Bought my first car, followed by a  house.  It is a blur.  NOW I know that.  I apply that to today and I try to remember I don't have to run anymore and that I want to be in the moment.  I learned that from my 20's.

I was 30.  That decade is the biggest blur in my life.  I remember little specifically during those years.  I lost my parents near the beginning of that decade.  I raised kids, worked as a nurse in critical care and thought ...well I thought a lot of things.  I listened to none of the truths in my heart.   Instead I listened to my pride, my vanity and my ambition.  I don't have to be ambitious anymore and I want to just do a good job.  Knowing that takes the pressure off myself to be perfect.  That pressure has made me an ugly person at times.  At 50 I can bring my art of nursing to my job and let the rule makers rule. I care more and worry less. I learned that from my 30's

There was 40.  40 had some good points at the beginning.  The kids  were almost grown.  Money was stable.  I started the decade good but push came to shove.  He pushed and shoving off seemed an appropriate choice for me.  In the middle there was years of fighting, screaming, hating, holding on.  The intensity was brutal most of this decade.  It was a crazy roller coaster ride.  So at 50 I seek sanity in myself and those around me.  I have learned, I don't like the roller coaster as much as I once did.  I learned that from my 40's.

So yeah, I am losing my touch.  I am embracing the calm.  Call it old, call it what you want.  I call it happiness.