Is getting old something to be happy or unhappy about?
Well, it’s like St. Augustine, who begged God, “Let me be chaste, but not yet.” Everyone thinks, “Let me grow old, but not yet!”
However, entering those doors I can say this: growing old has disadvantages, but …
It has this amazing advantage called perspective.
You can get perspective on a city by climbing to the top of a tall building and looking out to the horizon, or on Earth by going to the moon and looking back. That’s perspective across space. But you can get perspective across time only by living. With a short perspective, you see only a snapshot of reality and can’t yet understand what the picture means.
Here’s the thing: nothing is meaningful in itself. Meaning comes from how it fits into the world around it – its context – and the ability to see context is the great gift of perspective. Perspective reveals context, and context is where meaning lies. Just think about these examples:
Without the story of Moses, the ten commandments are just a random list.
E=mc2 is just a meaningless bunch of squiggles unless you know what the terms represent in the context of a much larger theory.
People are always asking, “What is the meaning of life?” Well, how does life fit into a larger context? Life is an astonishing explosion of possibilities that, as far as anyone knows, might be bursting into reality in this universe for the first time on Planet Earth. And we get to experience it!
But if you think of life as just your own brief time here, ignoring its planetary and cosmic context, you may not find an inspiring meaning. Life might feel purposeless or even negative, because without context you’re missing the most enlightening part of the answer.
Meaning is not just intellectual -- it’s the warm blanket that wraps us comfortably in our world and lets us feel we belong and can direct our own lives. Without it, we are alone and trapped in a Kafka story.
“Meaning makes a great many things endurable, perhaps everything.” -- Carl Jung
I have known several people who had a shining goal from childhood and pursued it with determination throughout their lives, very successfully. But they are a trace minority. I think for most of us, uncountable random events redirect our plans, opportunities suddenly open, or close, an accident leads to an unexpected outcome or relationship, etc. etc. etc. Randomness was smiling when your parents met, and then again when one particular sperm of millions penetrated one particular egg and created your cosmically unique DNA .
Within the laws of nature, random events, like leprechauns, have thrown monkey wrenches into history all the way back in time to the first cell.
From this wild and vast interaction of events, a life emerges -- with a trajectory and a network of connections that could never have been predicted.
The pictures are me in my twenties, then me with a daughter in her twenties.
There is meaning in your life’s story! It may not have gone as well as you deserved, but if meaning makes all things endurable, what could be more valuable than finding the perspective to grasp it?
So don’t worry. There are pleasures in aging you don’t see until you get there.
This Learning Game
© 2023 Nancy Ellen Abrams
If I knew then what I know now
So many things I wouldn’t do the same
The chances I blew
When I had no clue
I can’t click UNDO
Life’s just a learning game
If I knew then what I know now
It would have been clear that some things weren’t even sane
But it was only the blues
Taught me to stand in your shoes
It’s the things I didn’t choose
Make this a learning game
Sometimes I wonder
How things might have gone
If I’d taken a path not
The one that I’m on
But which one would that be?
There’s no way to know
Life’s a forest of choices
And Time runs the show
I know now what I didn’t know then
A miracle is the life I’m in
My knees may not hold
Not always great to be old
But age is solid gold
In this learning game
I have now what I didn’t have then
I am in awe of the life I’m in
Knees may not hold
Not always great to be old
But age is solid gold
In this learning game
Knees may not hold
Not always great to be old
But age is solid gold
In this learning game
Profound insights. Nicely done. It calls to mind Ronnie Lane singing, "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger" in "Ooh La La".
Another wonderful song, Nancy. My favorite line, because it speaks to my feelings of gratitude is "I'm in awe of the life I'm in". Thank you!