The DUMB-ING April 2012
I read a book last week about health in the last third of your life.
I’m left wondering whether or not I’m in the last third of my life.
I suppose if I die by the time I’m 60, then yes, the next twenty years will be the last third of my life. But my plan is to live well into my 90’s, and really, why not to 100? But after that seems excessive and kind of braggy.
So, I won’t enter the last third of my life until I’m 60, so that means right now I’m not even half way finished.
Realizing that I might learn again as much as I’ve learned so far is all at once thrilling, exhausting, daunting and a mighty relief. Because I don’t feel like I know very many things.
Frank Lloyd Wright said,
“The trick is to grow up without growing old.”
(I like so much of what Frank Lloyd Wright did – amazing architect and thinker. I really don’t admire the way he went about loving women.)
How does one grow up without growing old?
Kipling’s “IF” resonates when I think about growing up.
He says you are grown up -
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs & blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when everyone doubts you,
but make allowance for their doubting too.
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
and treat those two impostors just the same."
Not getting caught up or carried away by any one thing –and also to be sure to get caught up and carried away.
Richard Dreyfuss said, “part of me is still waiting to grow up, to be an adult, and the other part knows there is no such thing.”
No such thing as a grown up? Someone who is all the way ….finished? Yes, I agree. ING. It will always be grow-ing. Adult-ing.
Sometimes we grow out and sideways and in circles and upside down. I suppose it all counts. I sure hope it does, cause it is hard work – the ING.
Nothing makes me feel older than celebrating the birthday of one of my children. Particularly the oldest and the youngest. I have been known to pine for more children so that I could feel younger. If I have an infant in my arms, somehow I am also at the beginning. Why am I so afraid of being in the middle?
You know – I’d really love a crack at the beginning now that I know what I know from the middle. But then my middle would be different because I would change the beginning, and then maybe I wouldn't know what I know from the middle.
Within my social structure, I can find many age groups. Its invigorating and maddening. I spend a lot of time with kids between 13 and 15, and then my very own 14, 16 and 17-year-olds. I've got a world teeming with teenagers. They make me doubt my ability to reason. They make me question my every thought and I also see life afresh and with hope and possibility. And they make me laugh.
Oddly, I also have a group of friends in their 20’s and early 30’s. This group makes me restless. This is the group that urges me to want to start over, but I know it would take about 8 tries to get it “right”, so I think I’m ok just moving forward.
Strangely, I pass around advice to this group. I want to stop. I just want to pat their knees and tell them that everything is going to be alright. They are doing things differently than me and sometimes I reel in jealousy. That’s pretty dumb. I have everything I wish and we don’t all wish the same wishes.
But sometimes I wonder if someone else’s wishes would look good on me.
Yep – dumb. We are dumb.
Born dumb, live dumb, die dumb.
Maybe the secret is to be ok with all the dumb-ing.
My dumb – your dumb – his…
And live anyway.
Jump anyway.
Fly anyway.
Cry anyway.
Maybe by the time I’m in my last third… or sixth…. or eighteenth, I won’t be afraid of anything dumb, and I can just focus on the … ing.