My sister-in-law Paula and I were talking about life, and how harder it seems to get the older you become. You pile up so many mistakes, regrets and guilt that as the years pass, you have to try and forget things rather than be consumed by their memories.
"Life," I said to her, "...it's not like it's advertised!" There are so many twists and turns, and the simple-minded optimism we had for the future when we were young seems so naive now.
A section in Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose gave me more to ponder on this issue. Writing about Charles Dickens' complete disillusionment with his marriage, Rose says:
"Researchers in developmental pscyhology tell us it is normal for a man between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five to undergo a period of acute change in which he re-examines his entire life and as a result of which he may desire to 'modify'...'an oppressive life structure.' The oppressive life structure may be his occupation or it may be his marriage. The real prison, however, is probably harder to escape from....Jung, considering the monumental task of re-education confronting the psyche in the middle of life, laments that there are no colleges for forty-year-olds, to prepare them for the second half of existence."
Jung wrote:
Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Stepping into the afternoon of life
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7 comments:
THIS IS ALL A PROCESS OF BECOMING WISER AS WE GET OLDER AND CONSTANTLY ADAPTING TO OUR SURROUNDINGS. WHEN YOUNG EVERYTHING IS SEEN WITH ROSE TINTED GLASSES. PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY THAT THEY WISHED WHEN THEY WERE YOUNG, THEY KNEW WHAT THEY KNEW NOW. I THINK THERE WOULD BE ALOT OF DEPRESSED YOUNG PEOPLE OUT THERE IF THAT WAS THE CASE!
Hey Anonymous, were you on vacation last week??
What amuses me is how old people (whose ranks I am joining any day now:) talk about their lifelong friends: "Oh, Maude has not changed ONE BIT since we were in school,"..."Fred? Looks exactly the same as he did 40 years ago..." and so on. Now, either they are stone-blind, or the prior generation was gray, bald, wrinkled, and sagging at age 20! Still, comforting to think that we will always look the same to our old pals. This is why one should never make younger friends! To them, we'll always look middle-aged (or worse.)
HEY, HAD A BUSY WEEK, BUT ITS GOOD TO BE BACK! YOU REALLY ARE HAVING A TRAUMATIC WEEK.
Methuselah, good observation. I think that about my friends too, if they haven't gained a ton of weight. I'll say, you look just like you used to except your hair is a little gray -- I'll bet that's our mind/age adjusting in some deep psychological way so we don't notice how old our friends have become. But then again, men notice what has happened to their wives, don't they, when rich guys dump their guys for young bimbos so they don't feel so old....
Had to laugh about that, Eliz! I have to say that I never worried about wrinkles and such until my husband had double cataract surgeries, resulting in 20/20 vision! We'd both been so myopic for so long, that when we woke up in the morning we looked like Romeo and Juliet in soft-focus to each other. WELL...!!! Once his eyes were fixed...he could actually SEE ME when he woke up! So there I am, all bed-head and no makeup...in cruel sharp focus. Because my poor ol' peepers are still 20/9,000 or so---one step from Braille---he still looks like Adonis---oh wait---is that him I'm kissing, or is it my bedside table? They both look alike, until I put in my contacts...
That's why *Jane Eyre* is one of my favorite books. Bronte went on and on about how "plain" Jane was, for 500 pages, then had the genius to render Mr. Rochester blind at the end...so that "to him she was fair beautiful." That's what I need---a Mr. Rochester!:):)
Ooohwee, also, Eliz, don't be so quick to cast asparagus on those oldsters who nab young wives. They got them a comeuppance comin' when they can't---er---perform like they used to. Maybe it would be more accurately termed a "failure-to-come-uppance":):)???
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