Thoughts on age

[trixtah]

This meme that's going around?

If you're maybe noticing that you're older than you used to be, and are feeling sad/angry/confused/worried/frustrated that you haven't accomplished ... that you think you should have ... maybe you're also wondering how are you going to dig out from under the accumulation of habit and procrastination and self-doubt to some sense of satisfaction in your life again, then post this same sentence in your journal.

You know what? No. No no no no. I won't sign my name to such a thing.

Part of my getting older has been learning to appreciate the good things in my life, to be grateful for what I have, to be proud of my gifts and achievements. To forgive myself. To continue to resolve to do better, sure, but not from the perspective of considering myself a failure otherwise. I have loved ones who love me too.I'm solvent. I have a roof over my head. I have good health. I have a job I mostly enjoy. I'm not a criminal. I don't go out of my way to hurt people. I try to live my life consistently in accordance with my own set of ethics. I'm fit enough to do the things I want to do - if I should add something else to the list of things I want to do, I generally have the means of achieving it. If not, I know how to let impossibilities go.

I have regrets, but the sum of my achievements is much more than the sum of the negatives. To me, my life (so far) has thus been a success.

Positive reflections work better for me ("wow, this is good, but won't this be better?") than self-abnegating guilt. I've done enough of that in my time, and I can't say it helped me achieve anything at all (other than wallowing in more self-recriminations). Maybe it's a stylistic thing.

Nothing and no-one is perfect. Accepting that, to me, is more of a mark of maturity. Two quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold (which I'm sure I've mentioned before, more than once) that might be helpful to reflect on:

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.

I'd also say the fact that we achieve our moments of greatness out of our imperfections is more worthy. Where would the challenge be otherwise? And:

...tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

I would say too that facing up to the tests life throws us is sometimes another test that we can fail. But if we face them more often than we don't, then we have gained.

(And, christ, I'm not even 40 yet - if I live an average lifespan, I've barely cracked the halfway mark - plenty more time to achieve, or cock up, in the remaining years!)

Comments

[pretentiousgit.livejournal.com]

Mmm. I like! Abject guilt over not Getting Enough Done at A Young Enough Age is a family tradition that starts young, yet I find the more I feel guilty, the less I get done.

[bright-lilim.livejournal.com]

Agreed!

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

What you're saying here, about learning to forgive yourself and so on, is the entire point of the meme.

You see, a lot of us do feel that way (and I have to say that the way you phrased your rejection of the meme here felt dismissive to those of us who felt that it did describe how we felt) and the problem is that when you sit in your own little bubble of it and feel like everyone else is cruising along being strong and never having doubts or faults except you, it reinforces that feeling. The point of the meme is for people who feel that way to share that they too feel that way sometimes. Then you look and you say, hey, other people feel that way too, it's not just me, and it's especially relevant when other people who you think are awesome feel that way, because often those are the people you've been negatively comparing yourself to so to know that they get the same feelings can be a huge relief and source of release of that negativity.

So if it's the case that you've never felt that way about yourself, that's awesome, more power to you, I wish fewer people did. However, I think that you have the entire intent of the meme totally misunderstood.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Amen.

Because that meme? That's how I feel most of the time. It's nice to see that I'm not the only one, even if it is an exercise in misery loves company.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Please check out my response to epi_lj below. As I said to him, it did not occur to me that "I'm not alone" was the positive message that people were taking from this.

Also, I wasn't intending to be smug about the whole thing, if that's how it came across. I was really reflecting on the fact that while I can get down on myself, I am learning to appreciate the things I have learned (and I'm sure I'll have plenty of opportunity to keep practising).

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Done.

I think what really flabbergasted me about the negative response to this meme is that people seem to be protesting too much.

But I cannot see this discussion objectively, and I will be the first to admit it.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I am sorry if you felt that my remarks were directed personally. I actually didn't read your take on it, because I found the phrasing of the passage quite negative, and I read a couple of quite lengthy mea culpa maxima posts about it from other people on my flist who I think are quite together most of the time, and I found that a bit shocking.

Of course I relate to the feelings of self-doubt and so on that the passage expressed (and quite particulary at the moment due to something I'm not going to get into right now). However, I didn't take the positive slant on it that you did - for example, the kind of fellow-feeling that might be experienced by other people stating they felt in that same boat literally did not not occur to me.

I think my reaction to it was (and still is, frankly) that it seemed to be an unnecessarily depressing piece, and didn't offer any perspective on examining the positives in one's life as well as the lacks. Perhaps I just suffer from Pollyanna syndrome. However, again, my criticisms are more at the tone on the piece, and that even though I'm a fuck-up at times, the sentiments as a whole don't apply to me - not so much that I'm dissing anyone for feeling it might apply to them at present.

[grey-evil-twin.livejournal.com]

And still, I have yet to see this meme in a guy's LJ.