When do you live YOUR life?
When does YOUR life happen? (An Easter pondering inspired by the idea of “rebirth”)
by David Decoteau
Age 0 - 18:
Formative years - you are the property of your parents, and they are responsible for you and your actions. Not YOUR life yet.
Age 18 - 24:
Higher Ed - A lot of folks in college during this period. The University takes the role of the parent, and doles out rules and punishments as such. Your life is not YOURS. You still have training wheels.
No Higher Ed - If you don’t go to college, these years have the possibility of being YOUR life, but only if you leave home, make your way in the world and don’t really get into any heavy relationships.
*If you have kids in this phase: go directly to the next phase approximately one year prior to the birth…
Age 24 - 35:
Settling down - This period is marked with serious relationships, career building, first real debt, and kids. I would argue that to successfully navigate this phase, a person has to put their selfish ideas behind them, and dedicate their thoughts and actions to bigger picture goals that help advance the tribe you have built around you. They count on you, and you need to put your own needs and desires far below theirs. Your life is no longer YOURS.
Age 35 - 55:
The Crushing Middle - Fully midlife. Big bills. Big responsibilities. Crazy schedule. Frantic, manic time of keeping as many balls in the air as possible. Thinking of yourself in this period just isn’t possible. No time. You are both raising your kids in this period, putting them in schools, and trying your damnedest to take care of your aging parents and their sole-crushing inevitable decline. Decade gobbling events like divorces and business failures also happen here: which steal your hopes and dash your energy.
Age 55 - 65:
Third Trimester - the finish line is in view, and you know your shoes are untied. The previous ages have left their mark on you, and you are limping along. The kids are out of the house now. Did you do a good job raising them? You can stress about that now. You start looking at your partner and thinking, “Do we still even know each other?” There are moments of denouement and some quiet. Your “climbing” has plateaued and you know it will be quite a feat to not slip off the ledges of the plateau. You have a chance to live YOUR life here…but you have to be lucky. You need enough money and health to make it happen. And then…grandkids…
Age 65 - fin:
The Bill of Goods - I can only conjecture on this part: I am not there yet. But I like “old people” and have spent a fair amount of time around them. You’ve already beat some odds to make it this far, so that’s something you can say is “YOURS” I suppose.
This is when you are supposed to be wise. When your experiences are passed to younger folks. When you are held in esteem and revered. The big pay off. This has not been my experience. From what I see, it’s more about pills, solid bowel movements and warehousing. Getting a shower is an event you mark on the calendar as, “had a good day”. Kids don’t really care about your “wisdom” because it’s well-meaning: but irrelevant to their world. Their visits will be infrequent and lessening. You are cute but absurd at this age…and you feel like an imposter, because you know that in your head…you aren’t “wise”…you know, you are still having the same stupid thoughts that you were having when you were 17 years old. And not only are you not that “wise”; you also aren’t as sharp as you once were. You know you are likely less wise than you used to be. The whole trajectory and life promise was an illusion. A mirage. Santa Clause. Movie props. Smoke and mirrors. You are too-late realizing that like your “permanent record” in elementary school, the whole thing was just a matrix to keep you in your pen. To keep you a cog. And now it’s over…and almost none of it was ever YOURS.
The realization
The grandiose plans you envisioned for yourself aren’t going to happen because you never really understood the rules of the game. No one explained to you that you had to make your mark in a very short window of time; or you aren’t going to make it. That the rules dictate that you give up YOUR life for the lives of others, and that time starts WAY earlier than you imagined.
Either that, or maybe your perspective and thoughts aren’t actually unique or special after all? Is it possible that you aren’t even interesting? No reason for you to even try to make YOUR mark? You’re just another “also ran” in the race of keeping other “also rans” safe and their stomachs full. A consumer. And in less than a full generation…it will be like you never existed at all, as everyone who ever knew you or cared about you will also be dead and at the end of their own “never owned” lives.
You never did pen those perfect words that resonate with the whole world. You never made that business or product that revolutionized the world to a point that you felt was meaningful. Instead, you followed the trajectory that everyone told you was the proper trajectory, and you worked your hardest, and you put yourself and your needs behind everyone else…and you were practical…and that made you responsible…for your own mediocrity and ultimate irrelevancy.
Infinity and beyond…
But, soon your life will be YOURS…hilariously, it comes in the form of infinite time as a dead person. When you are dead, you have all the time in the world…and it’s all YOURS.
In my estimation, this is the reason why people reminisce typically about times when they were between 17 and 26 years of age. I think we mostly reminisce, and wax nostalgic about what ever point of our lives we got closest to owning our own lives. I think for most folks…this is as close as they got. It’s why the music from that time is YOUR music.
But, I object
*NOTE* - I can hear the objections to these ponderings, as I consider posting this online or in a blog post. I will be hearing lots of objections, calling me “negative”, or “depressing”, or just outright wrong. Most criticisms will be sans any better or more honest accounting of life…but will be based in how folks would prefer reality look. The reality that makes them feel more happy, comforted and able to get out of bed each morning to face the challenges of the day. And that’s cool. I don’t begrudge a doctrine (real or imagined) that makes the rigors of life a little easier to swallow. In fact, these are the folks I envy most. I am jealous of them. As a young Christian man, there was a point when I was one of them. When I knew that if I just did what I was supposed to do…God would make sure that I would get my reward…even if this life came up short. That is the absolute happiest and best framework within which to live your life…no argument. Unfortunately, my life experiences took me away from that surety, and put me here. I miss those days of clarity and peace on many levels. I blame the permanent record and other tricks my hero’s played on me along the way for my disillusionment. For folks like me, they created SSRI’s and other “Soma” type pills to make life’s journey easier to bear.
He is risen
It was 6:00 a.m. on Easter morning as I started to write this. I have to laugh a little because I have been many places at this time and date over the years:
At church
Asleep (in all interpretations of that word)
Waking-up, hung-over and ears ringing on the floor of a strip club
Putting out candy and eggs for kids to find
Furiously waxing poetic about not owning your life
The number of “me’s” there have been at this date and time are as multiple as the number of times I have lived through this date and time…and I don’t see that changing. And perhaps that as close to a conclusion as I can draw from this journey and this day in general. Perhaps Easter comes each year and symbolizes rebirth, because we are all reborn each year, and what you thought was YOUR life last year was never YOURS to own to begin with…that was that other guy’s life. Your new temporary life starts again today.
Getting meta
You never live YOUR life…because YOU don’t exist… you can’t really OWN anything….and time is relative. There has never been the same “you” two Easters in a row. So who would live “YOUR” life…if YOU are never the same “you” twice?
I have heard it proffered that there is no such thing as individuals per se. Instead, the organism is “humanity” and each of us are just a cell in that organism. Each doing our jobs, but only because our job sustains the overall organism. And cells come and go in our bodies all day, every day…and does it matter? I suggest that it does…and it doesn’t. To the cell itself…it’s all it has to give: so it matters. But to our body humanity…it’s just a cell that did it’s job, and was discarded to make room for more new cells to work.
Is there comfort in any of that?…I don’t know. Sure would be nice if I could wrap this up in a pretty bow that reassured everyone that they are going to be alright, and if you just do certain things, and say certain phrases…it will all reveal itself to you. Boy, I sure would like to do that right now. But I am just a man. And not even a very good or smart one. And as a result, all I can do is sit at my kitchen table and watch the sun set this evening, and hope for a dawn tomorrow morning, and hope that cycle means something in the grand scheme of things.