Time is a very odd thing.

To borrow an old cliché, when you’re young, time seems to move at a snail’s pace. Birthdays take forever to arrive, summers seem endless, and the next chapter of life always feels somewhere off in the distance.

Then you get older, and somehow time begins to pick up speed. At this point in my life, it sometimes feels less like a clock ticking and more like a fan running at full speed!

I took this photo this morning because I wanted to see if I could look at myself objectively, not simply at the face looking back at me, but at where I am in life and what it means to be approaching my 73rd birthday.

And this is my takeaway.

I am part of a generation of gay men who learned very early that growing older was never something we could take for granted. We watched far too many of our friends and peers leave this world as young men during the AIDS epidemic. Men with dreams, careers, relationships and entire lives ahead of them simply disappeared from our world.

Those years carried an uncertainty that can be difficult to explain to someone who did not live through them. None of us really knew what the future held.

And yet, here I am.

I was one of the fortunate ones. I have been given something far too many men of my generation were denied, the opportunity to grow old.

That realization has changed the way I look at aging. I can’t feel badly about another wrinkle, another gray hair or another birthday when I know what a privilege they represent. Growing older isn’t something I want to apologize for or fear. It is a gift, and one I intend to appreciate.

From an overall health perspective, I am doing well. Life is good. I am still doing the things I want to do, and thankfully, I can still do them with a certain amount of ease. I still have things I want to accomplish, stories I want to tell, people I want to spend time with, and experiences I want to have.

So when I look at this photo, I don’t simply see a man who is about to turn 73.

I see the years I have lived. I see the people I have loved. I see the difficult times I survived and the extraordinary moments I was fortunate enough to experience. And somewhere in that face are also the memories of people who should have had the opportunity to grow older alongside me.

In a world that spends so much time trying to convince us to look younger, perhaps there is something to be said for looking your age, and being grateful that you got there.

I am.

So, as that fan called time continues spinning faster than I would like, I find myself approaching my 73rd birthday not with sadness about getting older, but with gratitude.

Seventy-three years on this planet. What an extraordinary privilege.

Just my thoughts as I approach another birthday.