If Not Grace, Then What?
On Clumsiness, Fatigue, and the Myth of the Wise Elder
I recently wrote about “aging gracefully,” and I have not been able to leave that phrase alone.
The trouble is this: I have never, ever, in my entire life, been what anyone would call graceful.
As a child I was a clutz. If I set out to paint, I spilled the paint. If I baked cookies, I knocked the flour off the counter and spilled the milk trying to clean it up.
I could trip on flat ground. I could tangle yarn without meaning to. Threading a needle was — and remains — a moral challenge.
“Aging,” at least to 21…or even 51…did not bring dramatic improvement. When I started college, I briefly considered medicine.
Surgery, in fact.
But for someone who cannot reliably thread a needle, I thought perhaps that was not the best occupation. So I muddled on.
There were decades of sheer survival as a single parent. The only people who witnessed my lack of skill were busy spilling their own milk.
We lived on a tiny farm at the end of a dead-end road, far enough out in the country that embarrassment evaporated before it reached town.
My nearest neighbor was my cousin, who managed a dairy farm. I was in good company.
Grace was never the point.
The Promise of Improvement
Now I find myself at the other end of the line of life, and I keep bumping into the phrase “aging with grace.”
And I find myself asking: Why should I?
Grace has never described how I have traveled in this world. But there were other traits I honestly believed I would outgrow.
- Petty irritations.
- Frustrations with incompetence — especially my own.
- Impatience.
- Fatigue.
Why is fatigue an issue?
Well, we could set aside for a moment that it is one of the major symptoms of MS. There is that.
But there is also another kind of fatigue. The fatigue that comes from walking a long pilgrimage through difficult terrain.
- Accompanying loved ones through illness.
- Holding steady in a time of national unrest without constant commentary. (That alone is exhausting.)
- Carrying responsibilities that never quite resolve.
And then there is the fatigue of failure.
I think I honestly believed that by the time I stretched toward my eighties, I would have learned how not to fail — especially in matters I have practiced for years.
That I would go to bed at night satisfied that I had been kind in thought, word, and deed.
That I would no longer drown in a sea of “if only’s.”
But there are still evenings when I lie awake and ask, quietly:
Is this all there is?
The Myth of the Wise Elder
Somewhere along the line, I assumed aging would bring automatic transformation.
That if I simply accumulated enough years, I would cross an invisible threshold and become a “wise elder.”
A little old lady with white hair to whom people could come and seek sage counsel.
HA.
There is no magic transformation that occurs simply because we have trekked through more years on the calendar.
Time passes.
Hair whitens.
Knees protest.
But irritation still flares. Ego still whispers. Pride still attempts to tidy the mess before anyone notices.
The difference is not perfection.
The difference, I am learning, is ownership.
Leaps and Steps
When I was twenty, I traveled by leaps.
- Down the aisle to the altar.
- Across state lines to build a life.
- Back across those same lines to begin again after the shipwreck of a marriage.
Life moved in dramatic arcs.
Transformation, I assumed, would arrive in the same way — sudden, sweeping, decisive.
But now I see something much different.
Transformation comes from release.
Release of the standards of self-judgment that expect me to be flawless — or at least exceptionally good.
Release of the illusion that practice guarantees virtue, or that years equal wisdom.
Instead of leaps, there are steps. Small ones. Sometimes backward. Sometimes sideways. Sometimes simply staying put.
Mary Oliver once asked, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
For many years, I answered that question with verbs.
Build. Raise. Fix. Prove. Endure.
Now the answer feels different.
Perhaps the question is not what I will accomplish — but what I will release?
The Same Messes
I make the same messes with life today that I made with watercolor at five.
I still get irritated with people who do not see life the way I do, which is like expecting someone on the other side of the globe to see the sun rise when I do.
I am still fatigued. Some of it from illness. Some of it is from carrying too much. And some of it (perhaps more than I acknowledge) is from my own stubbornness.
I still fail morally, as well as practically.
But here is what has shifted:
I am more willing to own it.
- To stop projecting my faults onto you.
- To stop expecting you to live up to the version of myself I cannot maintain.
- To stop rehearsing the ways I have fallen short.
There is a strange kind of freedom in that.
Not graceful, but incredibly freeing!
If Not Grace, Then What?
If aging is not about becoming polished…If wisdom does not descend automatically with years…If fatigue and irritation still visit…Then what is the point?
Perhaps it is this: To become more honest and more willing to release impossible standards, to admit limitations without dramatizing them, and to rest more willingly.
Perhaps the truest transformation is not moral superiority but self-acceptance.
Not sainthood — but surrender. Human. Limited. And loved.
An Invitation
If you have been quietly waiting to become “better” with age…
If you assumed the rough edges would disappear by now…
If you lie awake some nights rehearsing your own “if only’s”…
You are not alone.
This season of life may not make us graceful, but it can make us real—and that may be enough.
If this reflection speaks to you, I would love to hear what you are learning to release. Because perhaps the invitation of aging is not to perfect ourselves, but to loosen our grip. And with that one action, finally rest.
