Why is growth so painful?
I thought by now, I'd be at the point of my life where there's be a kind of 'grizzled wisdom' that comes with age. Where I'd be letting pearls of enlightenment fall from my lips. Where I'd smile knowingly at those younger than myself and gently guide them along.
Well.
Didn't happening.
I'm still mucking up. Making mistakes. Learning from them.
Gotta say, little angry about that.
Living life and being engaged with it, I suppose means a constant exposure to questions and situations all of which come with the potential of error and misjudgement and just plain fark ups.
Sometimes I want to just stop and yell at the sky - NO MORE GROWTH OKAY, I'M GOOD, I'M DONE.
But the sky would just look down with benign silence and life would move on and I'd step in a puddle on the way home.
I thought the train had arrived at the station.
But it hasn't.
The journey continues.
I'm wiser but, ouch, the bruise is still pretty colourful.
This reminds me of one of my favorite sayings, attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (who lived during the time of Alexander the Great):
ReplyDeleteWhile we are on the road, we must try to make what is before us better than what is past; when we come to the road's end, we feel a smooth contentment.
"The road," in this case, being Life. So, no. We never stop traveling until we stop breathing. And we can never be perfect, but we can always strive to be a little bit better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today.
And, along the way, we're making the world a little bit better for all the people who follow behind us.
I know eh? Try having a teenager stay with you for the summer. Pearls of wisdom are coming from her mouth, not mine. Pearls such as..."you guys both are terrible communicators," delivered with much laughter.
ReplyDeletestill learning from experience...which is what we call it when we make mistakes....
ReplyDeleteand yes, the bruises can be colorful..as is my language, on occasion, when I have gotten something all gnarled up!
my definition of a good day is to do something to make someone else's day a little brighter, to learn something new, and to notice something lovely in the day....
helps me not get all tangled up in my own mental and physical meanderings.
Clairesmum