You See More Going Downhill
They will be coming to an end soon but I am enjoying my 50’s. A stage of your life, better than any other, when everything comes together.
You are old enough, but you are still young enough too.
I am old enough, after 50+ years of life experience, to have a bit of wisdom. I won’t be taken in by the clothes somebody is wearing, the car they are driving or anything they post on social media. I don’t overreact, either positively or negatively, the way I once might have. Life has given me too much perspective for any of that now.
But I am still young and healthy enough to climb a small mountain, to run a slow marathon or to go and see an old rock band. I can still be adventurous and spontaneous when I want to be.
But what I really like about the maturity of my fifties is that I am starting to see less of myself and more of the world around me. My run is approaching its final leg and that seems to have given me the freedom to forget about the finish line and start taking in the view around me. I am much more open to observing the planet on which I live which prompts me to question and appreciate in equal measure.
Everything has come too far to go back now.
Why do we have wars and famine?
What makes the sun rise every day?
I have my own personal faith on many of these items but even beyond that, on a practical sense alone, I have an increasing sensation that a day must surely come when everything that is wrong, will be right.
The earth seems to be far too advanced, and we are all far too complex for that not to be the case. Everything has come too far to go back now. We all know how it could be so it only seems inevitable to dream that a day must come when there will be no pollution, no climate change, no crime, no poverty, no illness, no sadness.
There will be no hatred.
From the vantage point of my fifties and regardless of any belief in any superior being, my senses seem to be convinced that is the only place we can ultimately end up.
Going up the hill, in your younger years, you can only see the top, but coming down, rather than focus on the bottom, you begin to take in the panorama of what lies beyond. A vista you couldn’t see before.
For a long time I have trusted everything I can’t understand to God. These days, now that I can see more, that seems to be just about everything. I don’t know why many good people suffer throughout their entire lives for no apparent reason. And bad ones, who care for nobody but themselves, often get an easy ride to the top. I don’t know why we have disasters or cancer or corruption or human trafficking. I don’t know why somebody walks into a school or a shopping mall and suddenly shoots 20 people dead.
Life, it appears, has not been designed to be easy. Young or old, rich or poor, it doesn’t seem to matter. We all have a mountain to climb. For some of course, the peak is much higher than others, but we are all going uphill. We spend our lives trying to get to the top only to discover that we can see much more clearly going down the other side.
And now that I can see, the only thing that seems to remain steadfast and eternally pure is love. The glitter of wealth and possessions will soon fade but love seems to be the only permanent source of genuine happiness. Even bad hearts are broken by love.
So having spent a life in pursuit of happiness it has taken me until now to realize it is a very scarce commodity in the world. We get tantalizing glimpses of it as we journey along, but when we reach out to grab hold of it, it often soon disappears in our hands. When you find it, it doesn’t tend to stay very long.
So of all the things I trust to God the greatest will always be that one day there will only be love.
Love, everywhere and forever.
Only then will we be truly happy.
CAREER ADVICE
GOV TALK
