I'm looking back at my several lives though I have only had one birth, and have never died. Just as the child we used to be still lives within us, so do the many lives 'we have had'. I consider my lives as being somewhat distinct from one another, by virtue of the major focus at the time: job, relationships, major life tasks, other factors.
Childhood was my first life. My parents planned most other than that which was forced on me by my two older sibs. I did what I was told to do unless I decided there were things I was told not to do, that I did do. Much of that period makes it seem a miracle that I survived to the next life. My second life was college, graduate school, the move out of my parents' home to live with my sister in an apartment (causing my mother angst and shame), to be warm in the winter (my father believed it was healthy to be cold), and for my first professional job. This was a profoundly exciting life. I drained everything I could from brains that interested me.. I learned a lot but hadn't the foggiest idea how to put it into order and make things work My third life was my first marriage, the birth of my three biological children, and a move to the Chicago area for ten years. This was a life of two extremes...the happiest and the unhappiest times of my life. The enormity of realizing that I alone was responsible for the support and upbringing of my three children was very heavy indeed. My fourth life was a marriage that lasted 34 years. In it, I moved back to the East Coast, to my new family with 3/5 ths of my nuclear family, and settled 'near-enough' to my family of origin. This took all my middle years, energy, youth, and patience. However, I honed many skills during this period, professionally and personally, and I reached some clarity as to what I wanted out of life for myself, at last. My fifth and, presumably, final life is as a widow, a senior, and cramming in as much life as I can before afterlife (though I don't believe there is an afterlife)....however long that may be.
When I discovered that I had so many lives, I asked myself why, or to whom, that was significant. After all, most people gauge their lives by age of majority; dreaded thirty (which used to mark the start of old age to the under-thirty); forty, the beginning of the real slide down to old age (one's body collapsing in male or female menopause); waiting for retirement at 65 (before which there are fantasies of rest, fun, choices for what to fill your day after which it never turns out to be any of that), and the last chapter, TBA....to be announced. No one can plan the last chapter since there are no guides. All you can do is fantasy what you want it to be as you get creakier daily.
I talked to someone with Alzheimer's the other day, whom I had called to wish a Happy 80th Birthday. She was delighted that I had remembered. She told me she does crossword puzzles and writes poetry to keep her head working. Then she said, "Who am I talking to again?" My idol remains my father who used to learn a new English word daily until he was 103; Daniel Shore on PBS, well into his 90s and still doing brilliant news commentaries; and my great-great grandfather who died in Greece at 112, fighting the Turks.
Writing a script for this life has certainly been the most difficult. It would be easier if I ever took anyone's advice on how to live my life but that doesn't seem to work for me, so I will slug on and enjoy every moment I can while it is still on the profit side of the ledger.
It is a time for retrospection...not because life can be relived but despite past difficulties I can now focus on the good parts. There are no cliff-hangers; I know how all those past lives ended.
Childhood was my first life. My parents planned most other than that which was forced on me by my two older sibs. I did what I was told to do unless I decided there were things I was told not to do, that I did do. Much of that period makes it seem a miracle that I survived to the next life. My second life was college, graduate school, the move out of my parents' home to live with my sister in an apartment (causing my mother angst and shame), to be warm in the winter (my father believed it was healthy to be cold), and for my first professional job. This was a profoundly exciting life. I drained everything I could from brains that interested me.. I learned a lot but hadn't the foggiest idea how to put it into order and make things work My third life was my first marriage, the birth of my three biological children, and a move to the Chicago area for ten years. This was a life of two extremes...the happiest and the unhappiest times of my life. The enormity of realizing that I alone was responsible for the support and upbringing of my three children was very heavy indeed. My fourth life was a marriage that lasted 34 years. In it, I moved back to the East Coast, to my new family with 3/5 ths of my nuclear family, and settled 'near-enough' to my family of origin. This took all my middle years, energy, youth, and patience. However, I honed many skills during this period, professionally and personally, and I reached some clarity as to what I wanted out of life for myself, at last. My fifth and, presumably, final life is as a widow, a senior, and cramming in as much life as I can before afterlife (though I don't believe there is an afterlife)....however long that may be.
When I discovered that I had so many lives, I asked myself why, or to whom, that was significant. After all, most people gauge their lives by age of majority; dreaded thirty (which used to mark the start of old age to the under-thirty); forty, the beginning of the real slide down to old age (one's body collapsing in male or female menopause); waiting for retirement at 65 (before which there are fantasies of rest, fun, choices for what to fill your day after which it never turns out to be any of that), and the last chapter, TBA....to be announced. No one can plan the last chapter since there are no guides. All you can do is fantasy what you want it to be as you get creakier daily.
I talked to someone with Alzheimer's the other day, whom I had called to wish a Happy 80th Birthday. She was delighted that I had remembered. She told me she does crossword puzzles and writes poetry to keep her head working. Then she said, "Who am I talking to again?" My idol remains my father who used to learn a new English word daily until he was 103; Daniel Shore on PBS, well into his 90s and still doing brilliant news commentaries; and my great-great grandfather who died in Greece at 112, fighting the Turks.
Writing a script for this life has certainly been the most difficult. It would be easier if I ever took anyone's advice on how to live my life but that doesn't seem to work for me, so I will slug on and enjoy every moment I can while it is still on the profit side of the ledger.
It is a time for retrospection...not because life can be relived but despite past difficulties I can now focus on the good parts. There are no cliff-hangers; I know how all those past lives ended.
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