Today is my birthday.
Well, okay, today isn’t EXACTLY my birthday, because when you write something for publication, wherever it might be, there’s usually a delay between the time you write it, and the time you see it “in print,” or in this case “online.”
Unless of course you’re commenting on something like YouTube for example; when you hit send – presto! – there are your words, captured on the internet, instantaneously, for all and sundry to see.
Anyway, today, as I write this, it’s actually five days before my birthday, which is January 28. If you’re reading this on January 28, drop everything immediately and start making my cake! I’ve always wanted to have my cake and eat it too. Perhaps this will be my lucky year.
If I didn’t get this to the folks at TBW in time, and it’s after January 28, don’t worry, I’m fine with belated birthday wishes, just send dozens of star gazer lilies and Arabic perfume J
MIXED BLESSINGS
Birthdays are a bag of mixed blessings for me. Getting older is too. I’ve discovered that old cliché that says, “you’re not getting older, you’re getting wiser,” is absolutely true.
I’m a hellluva’ lot wiser than I was say, hmmmm, 20 years ago. Or 20 weeks ago. Probably even 20 minutes ago for that matter. I just keep on learning new stuff. It’s never ending.
The problem is, there’s a paradox (damn paradoxes are popping up everywhere these days…); while I know more than I’ve ever known, I’ve also come to realise that the more I know, the less I know – relatively, I mean.
Thus, as the volume of things I know increases, the volume of things there are to know also increases, but at a much faster rate, which means that the amount of stuff I know relative to the amount of stuff there is to know is declining in real terms.
In at nutshell: more is less.
MANIFESTING HUMILITY
None of this applies to what I know or understand about men, which, as I’ve said before, has pretty much stayed close to zero, zippo, nada, nothing, for most of my life. That’s one thing I don’t expect to change (ever!), but that’s okay, I’m accustomed to it.
Similarly, none of it is likely to be of much interest to toyboys, most of whom, in my experience, believe they already know everything anyway. I haven’t yet decided whether that’s a function of gender or youth – maybe it’s a combination of both.
Although, to be fair, I seem to remember being equally confident with respect to the breadth and depth of my own knowledge when I was in my twenties. That misplaced arrogance reached a peak just as I turned thirty.
Thankfully, the merits of humility began to manifest themselves as I matured, bringing me to a point where I now enjoy a more tempered estimate of my own self-worth balanced with a healthy dose of self-assurance.
SAY IT AGAIN SAM
Another aspect of the knowledge paradox is that as one gets older one’s memory begins to worsen, so I’ve probably forgotten a significant portion of what I’ve learned over the years.
The upside of my reduced power of recall is that I can be told the same story repeatedly, and be as entertained by it the tenth time round as I was on the first – a happy state of affairs on some dates and at most parties.
As I grow wiser, I believe, or at least I hope, that I’m also getting better. “Better at what?” you may well ask. Well, better at practicing some of the virtues that were so elusive in my youth: patience, forgiveness, compassion, understanding, those kinds of things.
I use the word ‘practice’ deliberately; I don’t expect to achieve perfection in any of them, at least not in this lifetime. There’s always room, it would seem, for improvement.
PRACTICED IN THE ART OF LOVE
As one gets longer in the tooth, one also becomes more skilled in the art of love, for which the opportunities to practice are sometimes less abundant as one ages than those involving the aforementioned virtues.
Happily, knowing how to behave (or more to the point, misbehave), in the bedroom is a bit like riding a bike, it’s something that, once mastered, one never forgets, no matter how much the memory fails.
The fact that ‘older’ woman are known for their sexual prowess is partly why we all find ourselves here, flipping through TBW profiles with gay abandon.
In the meantime, muah!
By Susan Macaulay (aka Desert Fox)
http://www.amazingwomenrock.com
