Sometimes you can’t help but wonder what the bloggers of today go through when they reach a certain point in their lives. At some point, life as an adult becomes more about taking care of others than actually raising your children (or at least learning to be OK with finally being an adult yourself). This can make family holidays fraught, and expanding on your own brood extraordinarily difficult.
Losing ten years in the wink of an eye would be a dramatic life change. If I were ten years older than I am now, I would be forty-seven years old. If my life hadn’t changed in all that time, I wonder if I would be able to steer my life.
If all of a sudden I were forty-seven, what would I do? Maybe I’d sign up for online dating, filling out my profile with such designations as:
Age: 47
Seeking: a woman
My occupation: cemetery volunteer and social media addict. Facebook would be as much interesting as it is in my thirties!
Interests: Watching the EastEnders serial
Enjoying the wisdom of getting old
Hopes for the future: Keeping aware of changes and developments in the world
And so on.
I’d be aware of the shorter length of time left in my life. I’d want to pay more attention to what’s printed in the Saturday paper, instead of hurrying through it. My astrology chart designation would seem all the more pressing, I think.
Try this and try that–I would try to be more aware that there is only so much time in the day and it goes in the wink of an eye.
Other than looking for love, I’d be all the more set on my vocation. There would be fewer opportunities, I believe, so getting additional education would be all the more remote a possibility.
Upgrading a skill set would be all the more unfathomable as well. But I think I’d be satisfied with what I’ve managed to do so far. I’d be all the more persistent.
Maybe something like that would go on my dating profile!
I don’t think I’d be any keener than I am on the ongoing changes in technology; I’d be all the more typical growing old, putting my faith in the past instead of the future. I know I would write on my profile that I want to stay informed about what’s new. Still, I think as a guy I’d be saying that in order to demonstrate a certain character of the rube in my personality, seasoned by the years but not necessarily completely astute.
I think I would want to devote some time to reading good literature. I am sure there are many fascinating books, and in my late forties, I would want to delve into more than I have.
I wouldn’t be optimistic that I would learn much more than I have, because time spent in a book can go in the wink of an eye. That being said, there’s an illumination that goes with looking at the pages of essential books and fun books, and strange books.
Live in the moment and be happy there
Coaching Positive Performance
Coach and trainer Carthage Buckley reminded me this year on the Internet that Wayne Dyer wrote in Dyer’s book Your Erroneous Zones that guilt and worry are useless emotions. Carthage writes this in a Coaching Positive Performance post discussing goals. Carthage argues in the post there is no goal worth too much sacrifice.
Even if I’d missed the last ten years of my life, at the age of only forty-seven, I would still find happiness in what remained to be lived.
Of course, at this time, I’m still only 37. If the next ten years disappear somehow, I will try not to be too disappointed. At later stages of life, there are still many joys to experience.
You might know more about those joys than I do! Ten years is a long time, but in human life, it can go all too quickly: in the wink of an eye.
The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 