"19" What Does it Mean?

A little while ago on my 19th birthday....

​I did this photo shoot and began wondering about what it meant to be '19.' With turning 19 I had new responsibilities, had graduated high school, and was stepping into adulthood and the world.

My family was no longer responsible for taking care of my every need and I had the freedom to make decisions that I had never encountered before. 

But I still felt young. What does an age mean, truly? 

What I came to understand, is that age is a number used for other people to associate you with and to categorize you based on.

However, there are days that I feel 100 years old and days that I feel like a baby. (not literally.)
​So what is the difference that age makes?

People begin to treat you differently...
... sometimes with more respect ...sometimes with more responsibility & ...sometimes with prejudice 
​
No matter how you are treated, age is just a number.

And you choose how your age defines you.

A few weeks ago, I went to Yosemite and hiked Upper and Lower Falls. Upon my decent on the trail, I passed a beautiful women who commented to her friend, "... and I just turned 70!" 

Upon overhearing her, we struck up conversation and she explained that she had not been joking (as I had thought) and was actually a 70 year old woman who was descending the Mist Trail! She did not look a day over 50 and was fit as a fiddle.

In Contrast, a friend of mine's grandmother believes that she is on the downward slope of her life. She believes that being 70 means winding down, no more adventures, health problems, and the decay of her beauty and relative enthusiasm for life. How on the contrary that is! I love the woman to pieces, but there is so much more life left for her!

Writing, reading, growing, exploring, car rides to new places, poetry, music, films, and knowledge are all hers for the taking!

Our perspectives are everything. 

The second that we recognize the sanctity and fleetingness of our own lives, is the moment that we must make a choice. Do we choose to love life until its very end or settle in its certain decline?

I choose the first.

I want to be the woman who still chases her dreams, conquers the trail, and pushes forward in life until the end.

​-xoxo SP