OLD CEILING TIME
Monday, January 24, 2022
Some days what we do is good, but not good enough.
Some days what I write is good, but not good enough.
Some days are good, and we need to realize that is always good enough.
Not to imply we cannot do better, but we don’t have to. Nobody is whipping us, nobody is making us choose between the carrot or the stick, and while the world is not racing to ruin on a speedboat, nobody is exhorting us to save it or blaming us if we don’t.
Life will go on without us – it already is, every day. Life effortlessly passes us by, and we don’t have to lift a finger. In the millennia of history will be just so many ashes or dust.
Age, ageing, ageism – these are real for people of all ages.
What do I mean?
What separates us is, quite obviously – health, more than health, is attitude. Should we be leading or following? Should we be in the human race or on the sidelines?
It makes me wonder, through the ages, if it were possible – what messages the great minds would send us from the grave, what pitfalls they would warn against, what advice they would give so we might better enjoy and make useful, all the chapters of our book.
There is a moving ceiling separating us – those who see themselves below the ceiling, still enjoying youth while they see those above the ceiling as a progression to end-of-life and irrelevance.
Those who see themselves as above the ceiling – looking down on memories of youth, looking forward and upward to things they can now do. Unencumbered by the need to build a life, career or family, the freedom to pursue the fulfilment of unrequited dreams.
What separates these two camps goes beyond differences in where the ceiling is – be that 55, 65, or 95 – that point at which there is no question of crossing over. It’s how we see ourselves, where we are on the continuum, vis-à-vis where we see everyone else.
I want a few more decades. I cannot retrieve the ones gone by, so I need to use the one ahead for everything I’ve not done yet.
Talk about defining a deadline …
Reader feedback:
So how might one apply air tag technology to finding people one wishes one hadn’t lost (track of)?, DP, Calgary, AB