“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can’t be right. I need a change, or something.”  –JRR Tolkien

Some days, I don’t need a mirror to tell me I’m not 32. Or 42. I feel all of 52 and 7 months, at least. Not old exactly, just older.

Some days, I don’t have the energy for all the things I want or need to do; my mind spins down instead of up, losing ideas faster than I can come up with them.

Some days, everything seems like too much.

Those days, I feel achy and saggy and slow. The dog bouncing around the house, so damn excited about everything, annoys me.

It’s hard, on those days, to come up with a happy, perky way to wrap up my tales of life and family with a platitude and a bow. Some days the only lesson my stories tell is that life is messy and hard and the grass isn’t green over the fence either.

Maybe those are the most honest days. Honest is good, but that honest makes me tired and sad. There is an honest that motivates and encourages;  happy bow-tied stories are true sometimes, too. I need the low honest to make the high honest real; one without the other has a hollow sound.

Those low-honest days are the days I think it’s best not to make big decisions, take on large new tasks or get into emotional discussions–the high honest is better for those activities.

What is this low honest good for?

It’s excellent for developing humility and a sense of one’s own mortality. It’s good for dog-walking, just to get him to stop bringing me his ball and barking at squirrels. Staring out the window with a  cup of tea suits this type of honest.

It’s good for making me listen, for quieting the barrage of words and for letting my mind rest. Stillness. Breathing. The turbulence stops and the thoughts settle down, like gust-twirled leaves heaped in a corner when the wind stops.