I had a great girls’ night out with some dear old (not age-wise, but length of time!) friends recently. These are ladies I have known longer than my husband and one of whom I have known since we were in the single digits. Now that is a long time! We have had the privilege of going through all of life’s ups and downs together – adolescence, boy troubles, college, graduations, more boy troubles (haha), career changes, weddings, man troubles, births of kids, etc.

As we sat around eating ramen and sushi rolls, I was struck by how different our lives are now than from a decade and a half ago when we were in college. We used to be able to eat a whole order of combination crispy chow mein – by ourselves – at midnight! I am talking about grease, grease and more grease! And we didn’t get heartburn, food coma or muffin tops! We were also carefree, energetic and spontaneous, even at 2 in the morning.

Thank you Sun Hong Kong for staying open late to feed starving college kids!

Things have definitely changed… that evening, we could barely finish our meal and each of us took turns yawning by the time it was 8:30pm! Though I would love to go back in time for a day or two and just be young again, there’s a lot that I don’t miss about that other side of the hill:

~Not completely knowing who I was or where I was going
~Not being as comfortable in my own skin
~Thinking that disappointments (whether in relationships, school or work) were “end of the world as we know it” moments in life

I see now that…

Aging = Experience + Wrinkles + Gray hair + Sagging body parts(!) =

And being older and wiser is something that can’t be bought or taught, you just have to live life to get there.

This song by Taylor Swift, “22” is an ode to our younger selves and a reminder of how far we’ve come. 🙂