Dog Walk One: The Passage of Time

Aging is a funny thing. The process is at once gradual and rapid, the effects shocking yet expected, a simultaneous binary that I can only assume has bewitched humans for centuries. Despite actively living each year of our lives, aging feels passive, as involuntary as breathing itself. The older I get, the more I understand the bewilderment of confronting continuous time, the steady heartbeat of life and nature, the rhythmic steps of progression and mortality.

As I walk Radley through my neighborhood, a modest suburb dappled in late afternoon sunlight, these are the thoughts traipsing through my mind. I know how I ended up here, in this particular point of my life, but it baffles me all the same when I stop and recount the years that have passed. As the days peel away, I sometimes forget to stop and appreciate this moment in time, this day as ordinary as any other day, and yet extraordinary in its defiance of every challenge I have faced to get here.

I suppose what I mean to say is that I’m grateful; for my dog, for living here, for being alive at all. In these moments of gratitude, I find myself reflecting in awe at the advancement of life around me, the accomplishments and milestones of my peers, family, and friends. One of my childhood friends, a girl who braided my curls in grade 7 gym class, grew up to be my hairdresser. An old classmate is on baby number 4, and another is celebrating three years of marriage. My brother, who always loved the game Monopoly growing up, is now a successful marketing analyst, and I teach junior high Drama and dance, and write stories like I have since childhood. Without my permission, but not without my awareness, life has steadily marched me forwards.

Human beings, as creatures who reach sexual maturity before most societies consider them full adults, share what I imagine is the common experience of a vague young adulthood, a period of time between teenage life and true adulthood. No one tells us when the “young” is removed from “young adulthood,” when the expectations shift from fumbling through grown-up tasks to managing all areas of life with composed efficiency. In spite of birthdays and bar mitzvahs and every other human attempt to solidify a defining line between youth and maturity, it seems to me that there is no singular day, no exact moment when we become an adult. What starts as a confused navigation of independent life eventually becomes a lucid awareness that time has passed. We just sort of apathetically glide into adulthood with little objection or enthusiasm. Time moves at its own pace, and with little choice in the matter, I choose to be present and acknowledge its occurrence.

After two years of living in my comfortable townhouse, my admiration for the surrounding community has yet to wear off. I live in an area abundant with families and children, an area of growth and stability that is still unfamiliar to me. The reality of it shocks me sometimes, in those moments when I step out of my life and observe from an external place. I am an adult. I live in a real neighborhood, complete with elderly speed walkers and barbecuing dads, giggling children and spunky labradoodles. I own my own home with my loving husband, and we have pets that rely on us for their care, affection, and survival.

No one advertises the fact that being an adult is not always synonymous with capability. Just because we age and grow, does not mean that we have all the answers. I often feel like an imposter in my own life, a perpetual rookie at work and a young and clueless individual in society. I marvel at the fact that I am a teacher, a professional, an educator and caretaker of children, when it seems only moments ago I was a child myself. I feel my own inexperience, a visceral sense of overwhelming unpreparedness. I feel underqualified to be the age that I am. And yet, here I am walking my three-year-old dog after teaching improv and mediocre dance choreography to children all day.

As I walk the neighborhood path, with Radley padding perkily in front of me, I let these thoughts sink in. I watch as a squirrel munches some hard-earned scavenged treat, and two blue jays swoop overhead in unison like they were cast in a Canadian travel campaign. The whole experience is idyllic, a moment of peace in an otherwise chaotic day. It is a reminder, I realize, of how far I have come, an encouragement to keep going, to appreciate where I am while continuously pursuing self-improvement and growth. Too often, I focus on the negative, running worst case scenarios through my head in an attempt to temper my expectations and plan my approach to each situation. I forget to stop and appreciate what I have and all that I am.

The endless ticking of time can be frightening, and the process of aging is not always pleasant or graceful. But if we stop and notice our surroundings, look back at the trail we’ve tread, it can make the path forward a little less daunting.