God, I am so glad I’m not young. Things that seem so hard
when you’re in your twenties are still hard in your fifties, but they aren’t so
burning because you can see farther.
You know, from bitter experience that what is immediate now,
pressing against your nose and breathing heavily enough to cloud your vision in
your twenties is boring and old hat when you reach your fifties. By then, with
all that experience behind you, you’re better able to step back and away, to
weigh the benefits and costs. Everything has costs and benefits, there’s no
escaping that reality.
Faced with a particular situation I don’t have all of the
answers. I don’t know that Plato or Socrates or Solomon would have the answers,
but I can see the distance. I know that a decision made today, in anger or
haste, will leave bitter dregs and regret far into the future. A bad decision
or bad series of decisions made today will leave the bitter taste of ash long after
the immediate need is a painful memory.
In my twenties I thought things had to happen right now or it was the end of the
world. What I didn’t see was that the end of the world was almost always something
else, entirely.
I was much like any other twenty-something. I often had
trouble looking beyond my immediate needs, my wants and wishes and dreams and
desires. It’s normal. It’s a hold-over from kiddom when our parents were there
and did their best, within their means, to do what they could to make us happy
or at least keep us healthy.
If we are deprived of things as kids, dreams take on
greater import, deeper significance and meaning. In our twenties those dreams
become all-important, perhaps even to the exclusion of longer term happiness
and security. Dreams can cloud clarity and higher reasoning, preventing that
long-term happiness by the determined chase for something that is momentary.
It’s like, or it can become, the case of killing the goose
that lays the golden eggs. You want it all now
not seeing that if you kill the goose in an attempt to get the eggs, you get
one or two eggs but you don’t get them into perpetuity. It’s shortsighted and
damaging to both you, the getter and to the goose, the giver.
Instead, it would be better to be patient, to wait, accept
what is now, basing your decisions on
logic and deep thought not on emotion and reaction, and let the future play
itself out.
I had dreams. Some big, some small, all were important
because they were mine. Then I got older, suffered the bruises of living and I
learned that one thing, one dream usually isn’t worth sacrificing happiness
over. Happiness has a higher value than a single moment or a period of a few
hours. To me, happiness is a culmination of many things – not just one.
I can’t speak for everyone. Maybe for someone it is that
important, but then I have to ask: If you gave up that one dream and had years
of satisfaction with a wistful ‘I wish’ instead, which is better?
Why does that dream have to happen in a particular order?
Cart-horse is not the best of all worlds, but sometimes it’s
the hand we’re dealt and then it’s incumbent upon us to make the best of a bad
situation. By all means, take the time to rearrange the cart and horse but
accept what is. Things will be different. Perhaps it won’t happen in the order
planned, but they can usually be accommodated.
Will it be ideal? Perhaps not, but few things in life are
ideal. Most are far from perfect and happiness is where we find it and, mostly,
how we make it. More often than not, it’s a matter of compromise, of giving
something up partway to meet someone else, with their conflicting wishes and
dreams in the middle. To arrive as an adult – a fully-grown, fully mature grup –
at a place where compromise is possible, you have to be willing to bend, to
give, and sometimes, depending on the case, to sublimate yourself at least
partially in order to achieve that longer-term happiness.
Faced with choices A, B, C and D it is up to the individual
to stop and weigh the options.
If I do A because of C, what will happen?
If I do D because of A and B, what will happen?
It’s not likely, in any given scenario, that things will be
perfect. At the point though, it’s necessary to pick the options that are best,
accept what is, acknowledge what cannot be and move on.
If you cannot do that, all you will do is bring misery and
unhappiness, regret, to those around you. Ultimately the individual making the
choice will end up miserable, too, because instead of missing one dream, they
will likely miss many others – all because they could not have the one.
Then the individual has to ask themselves if that’s their
goal, to cause regret. They have to ask themselves, are you going to make
someone else unhappy because you can’t have things exactly as you want? If the
answer is yes, then they have to ask what is the price? Is that price higher
than I want to pay?
I suspect, based on my experience, that if the individual
puts the dream above reality, they are going to be wildly disappointed.
Everything will collapse and they will be left with nothing. Not love, not
wealth, and most importantly, not happiness, and that’s where the price becomes
too much to pay.
Dare to dream but be willing to compromise.
Look long-term
and make decisions based not on the fleeting moment of Now, but on the future.
Weigh your
dreams against the cost to others, and decide which will serve both parties
fairly, or at least as fairly as life and circumstance allow.
That's my advice to the youthful dreamers. I hope it's advice that's never needed, but knowing life as I do, the hope is faint.
Best~
Philippa
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