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

[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.