The human life often follows a certain pattern. First of all, there is the open expectation of the child that everything is still possible. Becoming an astronaut, the president, a firefighter or a mother. No child will wonder about the difficulties, they will face to get there. Next come the choices of the adolescent. Choices that often have to be made early and unprepared. Unfortunately, I sometimes think too little attention is paid to this in secondary schools. The adolescent in question gradually discovers that the possibilities are bound by rules and that in turn they have to do with your measurable capacity. In general, the sense of freedom is still there, because there are no consequences yet. Sexual development is synchronous, which means that other things are often more important.
I understand that there are people among you who now think: “Well, this was all very different for me.” But we’re talking here about a generalized pattern.
When we move on, we come to professional education and from there we quickly roll into the real work. Often during that time a choice is made for a life partner and there is some hard work done regarding the future. The focus is then on a house with a white picket fence, kids, and a pet . Until a year ago, the sequence was often travel, house with a white picket fence, kids, and a pet. But Mr. C has put an abrupt end to that. To the ‘travel’ part in that package. The next layer in the pattern is then quickly reached; Children are made and careers built. Up to this point, it is still a lot about what we have and what we can do with it. Perhaps there are already a number of people who are concerned about a deeper commitment in life, but as a rule this will only happen when the children (or the children of your friends) set out their own line for the future. Only then does the question and the need for a deeper meaning of everything arise. What are you doing here and why are you here to begin with? Yoga, meditation Tai Chi and Qigong have become substitutes for the earlier ecclesiastical answers. But they don’t give these answers that easily.
People in the age category where the renewed generation is about to go their own way and the outdated generation is slowly disappearing, the realization sets in that they form now the top layer.
When the working period also ends, there is a period of extra freedom for some and the feeling of emptiness for others. But none of these people, who do not have some home-binding physical disability yet, has time to spare. Every minute is filled in. Traveling (again now not), playing bridge, playing golf, looking after the grandchildren or being busy with a hobby for which they hadn’t any time up to then.
The pattern narrows when real limitations present themselves and slowly less and less of everything that has been done throughout life is possible. The ambitions are adjusted and people are already happy with only the real attention; a dinner, a visit, a smile and a conversation.
That’s how we race up and down the mountain. Everything in this pattern is actually determined by two factors. The first factor is; that what we think we need and is the second factor; our physical ability (whereby I include the working brain you use for learning and solution thinking). Our inner intention and the accompanying feeling are secondary in this whole story. If they are still present when we are an open and uninhibited child, they quickly disappears under the pressure of the average society. In all honesty there are few who are aware of this and even fewer who try to reclaim these values systematically and increase them again.
Everyone is bothered by the social pressure that the “rat race” entails. Even if you are very good in choices making. I am certainly not free from all this either. Still, I can consider myself lucky that from the age of 15 I have been working on something that has my passion. If you also in a position like that, then you know that you are one of the few. Just point up your ears and take a sharp look around you. You can recognize this when you see and hear people working on a carrier, who cannot stop talking about their work. As if they still have to convince themselves that it is very important what they are doing and that they are certainly not wasting their time. You hear it from people making plans for when they finally go into retirement. As if they only then start to live. You see it in people working on a o called legacy, because they don’t want to have lived for nothing. Well I can tell you this; If your name is not Napoleon, Hitler or Edison then such a “legacy” will not last three generations (100 years). Not even a mosquito fart in the eye of time.
I am still busy in the sense of what I want to be when I grow up. Because I assume that it will all continue. Not from an overthinking thought. Not from a teaching of somebody else, but from a personal feel. What I want to become later on is an image that keeps on changing. Like the horizon changes with the road you go. I work on my change every day. I don’t see that change every day, but I do when I look back over my shoulders every now and then. When you know or recognize this, you know that it comes with it a tremendous sense of satisfaction. The prestigious world has no use for the things you are doing. You’re not looking for a cure for cancer. You don’t fight for your land, you don’t condensate energy so there is less air pollution. You will not find a way to another solar system. The drive for your own development is born from a spark that you have received as a child. Improve the world around you from within yourself. It’s the smile that gently spreads and bounces back. I only know what it gives me now. Not where it is going to take me.
Now I don’t consider myself as the example to follow. Everyone is has to make their own discoveries and has to make their own mistakes. As I still do. But also take into account that underlying feeling more often and realize that it is present throughout your whole walk of life. And that by experiencing it more consciously, you will make it bigger, so that you continue to grow as a person. That is the chance you get and even though many things are thought to be more important than that. That is the only thing that gives the real satisfaction and with which you can really continue.
Well said. The reason we look forward to leaving behind a legacy because we wish to be remembered by something after we have departed physically. At the subconscious level, we leave behind unspoken by really lived values which the coming generations may emulate. Progeny and their achievements in their own lives is the next one which comes to my mind. Then there are artistic or literary creations which have also given us a satisfaction while we are alive and kicking.
Why the last post? We need many more of these!