Expectations About Growing Old
April 1st, 2010 by sushitune
Late bloomers are often still in emotional diapers when they hit the big five-zero. Yes, they may dress in the proper monkey suits, say the politically correct things, and even be considered by others to be normal to the bone. Yet deep down inside they are living a lie and tired of putting on airs.
They have sufficient breadth of experience to know that they are living life vicariously and suffocating under the pressure of trying to act and be “normal.” That type of normalcy makes me scream!
They secretly wish that they could go back to their tender early childhood and erase all the traumas and negative defining moments – some of which they are aware of and others that they are not - and reprogram their minds for happiness and enlightenment for eternity.
Get real with yourself while time is still on your side.
We are 55, 60, 70 or older and everyone and everything tells us we must slow down and stop dancing. We must prepare for retirement, but we have no money. We must define our legacy, but we see ourselves as only drifters in the polluted pond of has-beens.
If that is where you find yourself, then take a deep breath and decide that you can reprogram your mind and exponentially improve your life results.
Every breath must remind us that life is still on our side and that we can make significant gains whether our clock will tick for four months or four-hundred months longer.
Start by being real. Understand that if you are doing things to avoid pain or to right wrongs, then you are living in an empty vessel. Doing the right things for the wrong reason is a big, fat lie. That lie may lead to riches or toned muscles through sheer willpower, but will not last because your successes are build on a crumbling foundation and not on strong and pure principles.
Growing old gives us a chance to understand our ignorance and blind spots implanted in our precious yet vulnerable minds before we had a chance to protest. Our bio-computers (brains) are running on damaged programming that desperately needs updating.
ee cummings sums up the quest to be true to oneself:
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Start today by being real and every day hereafter. Expect the best despite circumstances that would lead you to think to the contrary. Grow old with grace in spite of your external circumstances.
