If you’ve been here a while you know all about my quasi-obsession with the passage of time. Today I find myself thinking about five years ago, when I was in China (more on that here)…and I’m thinking about how that trip is literally and figuratively half a world away from now, give or take…
There’s something both comforting and jarring about thinking back on 2019-2024, and cataloguing how much things have changed since then, some forever, some for better…and some for worse. It’s not just about what’s different in my life…it’s so much bigger than that. Because over the last five years, the world changed.
Needless to say, this line of thinking has shined a light on transformation in general, so it’s a good thing it’s Tuesday and I can talk about it here. I really need to do this mental laundry today.
I’ve been thinking about my life even more than usual…probably because I have more free time than usual thanks to my state of (un)employment…thus more walks and more thinking time. It is impossible to reflect on the last five years without thinking about the almost 52 years that came before them…and as I reflected about my life overall I came to realize that it has been divided into four pretty discrete stages, each with a certain general quality of lived experience, from more positive to more negative and everything in between. Consider this visual, where the red line is my “life” line:
From birth until about age 18: the wonder years. I wasn’t yet jaded, so I was full of hope, believing in all kinds of possibility…the days lived in a sort of general wonder of discovery…ultimately these years proved beyond a doubt that ignorance can be bliss. The quality of the lived experience was high for a while there to start…until I realized life was more cruel joke than anything else. Then it started to go a bit downhill. And sideways. Upside down. Uh-oh.
From age 18 to about 40: the wonder, but…years. I still had hope and pockets of wonder, I thought maybe The Rolling Stones knew best…I wouldn’t;t get what I wanted, but I was trying…so maybe I’d get what I needed. I learned and re-learned that life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. And sometimes, many times, I knew better, but I didn’t act better. In fact, more often than not, I knew better BUT I acted horribly. My lived experience had more lows than highs, and the highs weren’t really all that high. Fortunately, those became the learning years too…which led to increased quality of the next chunk of years. In hindsight, I was so afraid to put myself out there and that resulted in some emotional paralysis, of sorts,
From about 40-50: the wonder, and…years. Hope existed still, but in smaller doses. I still thought I was capable of and would achieve more, do better. I started to realize that I preferred ugly truths to pretty lies. There were fewer unicorns, fewer rainbows…AND I was learning to be ok with that. I applied many of the (painful) lessons of the previous 40 years, started saying yes more often than not, and although there were still peaks and valleys, they were all of a (relatively) higher quality. Maybe I was starting to figure this life thing out.
From 50 until who knows when, well: the know years. I know better. I act better. (Most of the time.) I know that hope isn’t a strategy, that maybe things will get better…or maybe they won’t…but I know I’m going to be ok regardless. Because I can handle whatever. And as grateful I am for all the people and love in my life, this about me and only me…and I’m ok. I know that I’m ok. Even when it sucks, I’m ok. I’m at peace with who and where I am. In general though, since I hit 50, things just keep getting (relatively) better (though not without hiccups, speedbumps, and an occasional serving of bullsh-t). I know what I want, and I’m better with boundaries. Not every day is great…but in the aggregate, the quality of my lived experience does keep getting better. I appreciate where I’ve come from, and I appreciate more about where I am. Those TV ads are right…the more you know. Right? The more you know, well, the more you know. I also know that the quality of my lived experience will remain relatively high if I don’t allow my thoughts and (in)actions to add a fifth stage, regret. How I live now will go a long way to staving that phase off. I can’t do anything over but I can do everything different…and I need to be mindful of how I do most things, as I know my days are numbered. The days are numbered no more so than they ever have been, but my awareness of the fact that they are grows more acute and I’m more conscious of it with each passing tick of the clock. I also know that I am in almost-complete control of the quality of my lived experience from here on out. I control how I respond to everything around me. I know this now and I know it without anything resembling the remotest shadow of a doubt. I know that regardless ofwhat change lies ahead—big, small, good, bad, desired, or detested—I can handle it.
All this recalled to mind something I wrote about a few months back (#9, here), that your 60s bring you peace. I'm not there yet (I have a few years to 60), but as I make peace with things in the second half of my 50s, well, the path feels solid, direct, and rewarding.
So now I know—all the things I wished and hoped for, the things I dreamed about during the wonder years, well, they may or may not come true. I’m annoyed that some of those dreams have gone unrealized, but now I know that I can still keep working toward them, because I know that’s how it works. I know that the joy is in the journey…the detours, the waypoints, the people we meet along the way…
And as I sat out back the other night watching the moon, taking it all in, thinking about my place in the universe, I started thinking about the moon itself. It wanes and waxes on the regular…cyclical, like clockwork. But life is linear, and everyone’s line looks different. Our individual lines might be parallel, perpendicular, spiraling…intersecting, tangling…we all have our paths. My life is one of waning wonder, but waxing hope. And I’m at peace with that. Very much so. It really does get greater later. If it’s true that a million nos pave the path to yes, well, the red line above reflects that…and is trending in a positive direction. A “yes” may still be out there.
Maybe.
🤣🤦🏼♀️
Framing my life in this way is giving me a new way of looking at and processing things, which has been interesting and useful, partly because—as noted earlier—I have more time available to try to figure out what it all means. Yeah, I am out of work and can’t find a job, which sucks. But an alternative way to look at that is this: life is giving me an opportunity to do something different, so I need to figure out WTF that is and stop squandering the chance.
Anyhow…
We’re now at the point of the year when each day gives us more than 12 hours of daylight and the Vernal (Spring) Equinox is tonight at 11:06. When the astronomical start of spring springs, well, that means one thing—summah’s comin’!
Thanks for sticking with me through the seasons of the year and my life, week after week—it means the world to me.
Love you too.