tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4491125679904809656.post-45154449380110948492008-05-12T13:19:00.000-07:002008-05-13T00:26:57.255-07:002008-05-13T00:26:57.255-07:00My 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.<br /><br />"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. <br /><br />A section in <em>Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages</em> by Phyllis Rose gave me more to ponder on this issue. Writing about Charles Dickens' complete disillusionment with his marriage, Rose says:<br /><br />"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."<br /><br />Jung wrote: <br /><br /><em>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.</em>Elizabethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15855325002260654089miss_mudpie@yahoo.co.uk7