Were you you, then? What I think happens is that we have moments where we open, and allow joy to happen. These moments, in turn, tend to solidify and become a part of who we “are”. We treasure them, and in treasuring them we calcify them, and in no small measure kill them. What was living in them lives in us yet. What was joyful in them lives in us yet.
But being open feels like rolling the dice, doesn’t it? You can’t get lucky forever. We all know that. So we stow away what we think we have, and take it out from time to time and look at it. I was talking with a guy in a bar the other night the high point of whose life seems to have been a Little League game that happened 50 years ago. It still makes him happy telling the story.
Growing old, though, is I think ideally about learning to value life itself, to value each day, to find links today with old joys. With Acceptance, perhaps, above all.
I feel deeply sad sometimes. I am an Empty Nest-er, but without a wife. My kids are gone, off doing their things. They are healthy, happy, successful. I did my job. I talk with them, I see them sometimes, but it will never be what it was. This is sad. I can’t get those moments back. My task, as I see it, is to become wise, which is what I am trying to do here.
There is so much sadness in this world. This has not changed in 3,000 years, even if our physical comforts and life spans have vastly increased.
I cannot continue to be who I have been. This is a clear conclusion. This, too, is sad.
But there are gates we all have to pass through. And there is an other side. That is where the hope is. It is nowhere to be found in who and how I have been.
Pray for me if you are so inclined. I could use help and wisdom. I am slowly remembering who I once was, so very, very long ago. What was done was awful. It shattered me. But somehow something endured, and if I can cross this desert, I will have something useful to say to everyone.