I Want to Age Like Sea Glass…  

…smoothed by the tides, not broken.  I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean.  I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak, but supple.  I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out. 

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next–not stuck, just waiting, pondering, feeling what it’s like to pause; and when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspecting soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder.  With each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born. 

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ve become, they’ll embrace all that I am.  They’ll hold me gently in their hands and be impressed by my well-earned patina—neither flashy nor dull, just the right luster.  They’ll question, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to be in this very here and now.  And we’ll both feel lucky to realize, once again, that we have landed in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time. 

I want to age like sea glass, I want to enjoy the journey, and let my uniqueness be not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them. 

By Bernadette Noll, writer, author and co-founder of Slow Family Living