LIFE IS NOT ONE SIZE THAT FITS ALL
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Everything is changing all the time, and most thinking people understand that, and most of us have come to accept and embrace change.
I don’t think resistance grows greater with age, but embracing change involves accepting risk – the greater the risk, the greater the reward, and the lower the risk, the lower the reward, but not all things non-fiscal can be measured that way.
Emotional matters may involve money, but they tend not to be about money. They are more about coming to understand what triggers our feeling, our reactions, and our resistance. Some of those issues might be recent, but in my experience, they are rooted in childhood, lessons/admonitions from parents, teachers, nuns, etc.
Life today is different in many extraordinary ways from how it was a decade ago, a generation ago.
Yet, most of us carry on with our expectations of how life will unfold. We’re wrong, of course, because if our lives turned out the way we once imagined they might, we would not be the product of our experiences and environment – we would not be who we are or where we are doing what we are doing. Lucky us …
No need for anyone under sixteen to change much, not yet at least, but if we are thinking for even a moment about running our lives proactively and progressively, the way we run our jobs, our careers, our active citizenship – don’t we have to rethink what we are doing if we don’t want to be forced to leave our dreams behind without first developing new ones?
Few things that happened could not have been predicted – they so often have been, but we are returning to the future, rather than any past normalcy, in this ‘the pandemic is over time.’
Whatever happens next, when it happens, will be easily explained as, “we could have predicted that,” or “we saw that coming,” but the truth is we didn’t. Hindsight is sometimes comforting but more often painful as we realize what has happened was preventable. Of course, it was preventable, but we weren’t living our lives on high alert for trouble.
We weren’t trying to prevent reality. We were focusing on the zillion other things we had to do, wanted to do and the ones that we tried and failed.
I was reminded recently that when I write ‘we,’ I often mean ‘I,’ but it is easier to use ‘we,’ generalizing in my assumption that we are all similar enough that the commonality disguises the personal confession or pain. That’s true from one perspective, but too narrow to fit any one size fits all simplistic notion.
Reader feedback:
Mark; It is showing an amazing talent and example of perseverance when you post your daily musings. Like many people I believe, I don’t read every one, but I read enough of them to know that they are reflective and thought stimulating every time. “To Dream” is an example. Everything is really just a fleeting moment. The first line evokes sadness for me, but like you suggest, the moment would pass and in the morning likely be forgotten. Our lives are like that. Even the most famous are just a slightly brighter flash than the rest of us, but they too are quickly forgotten. Our task is not to worry if we are remembered, but rather to use our time in the best way we can, hopefully with benefits to ourselves and others. That’s the dream, GB, Calgary, AB