Older and wiser?

I’ve been thinking lately about lessons in life that can’t really be taught, things I’ve learned that I wish I understood earlier in life, but that you only really ‘get’ through experience. Here are my top three.

1. How quickly time passes. We hear it all the time, but when we’re young we’re mostly looking forward – can’t wait to graduate, can’t wait to get married, can’t wait to have babies, can’t wait until the kids are older. And then when you get ‘over the hill’, as they say, the wheels start turning faster and you wish there was a brake pedal to slow things down a little, maybe even a reverse mode.
   
   My mom used to say that she’d see an old lady looking back at her in the mirror and think, ‘Where’d she come from?’ I have those moments too…I look down and see my mom’s hands attached to my wrists and think, ‘When did that happen?‘ It’s like we need the physical evidence to show us that time is going by. Or friends’ kids that we haven’t seen for a while and in our head they’re still little, then we find out they’re university graduates. Our minds are pretty adept at tricking us into thinking time is not whizzing by.
   
   Life lesson #1: Time is our most valuable resource. And it’s non-renewable.
   
2. Fragility. This one I learned pretty early, but it still regularly catches me off guard. When I was 16, my best friend and I were hanging out on the swings at the park, watching a soccer game. Ricky Allen, a funny, energetic guy from our grade, rode his bike over and hung out with us for a while. That weekend, he was killed while drag racing on the back country roads (something most of us did in those days). I remember so clearly the feeling of…he was here, we were talking to him…now he’s gone…forever. He wasn’t the first person I knew who had died, and two other classmates passed away over the next couple of years – one in the Air India crash and another from a peanut allergy – but something about the proximity of Ricky’s aliveness and his death made the fragility really sink in. It happened again the first time I ‘saw’ death. The vet came to our house to put our cat to sleep. One minute he was breathing and then he was gone (the cat, not the vet). Life. Then death. Seconds apart.
   
   It’s not just life that’s fragile, it’s also relationships, our health, our way of life. It’s how quickly a close friendship can fall apart; how easily a relationship can go from hunky dory to ‘Well, maybe we just shouldn’t be together anymore…’ ‘Fine! Maybe we shouldn’t!’; how family members who love each other deeply can become estranged; how your teenager can go from running half marathons to lying in a hospital bed having chemo treatments; how we can go from hugging our friends and family to wearing face masks and keeping everyone at arm’s length.
   
   Life lesson #2: Everything we have can be lost in an instant.
   
3. What makes people tick. The older I get, the more I recognize that our negative traits – complaining, judging, gossiping, self-centredness, arrogance – come from our insecurities. Even some of our positive traits reflect our insecurities (see Ted Lasso). They’re self-protection mechanisms.
   
   When you realize that most people, if you really get to know them, are just struggling with their own fears or feelings of inadequacy, it’s easier to be empathetic and people are less likely to ‘get under your skin’. As I’ve aged, I’ve also become more comfortable with myself, which – hopefully – makes me less annoying to other people.
   
   Life lesson #3: We’re all struggling with something and just doing our best.

In theory, realizing these things should mean I always live in the moment, feel grateful for what I have, and accept people as they are. I’m there sometimes, but not always. Life lesson #4: A lot of things in life are simple, but not easy.

Ray’s mom came to stay with us for a few days while her house was being shown. It was a great opportunity for her to see our new home and our new town. Barbara hadn’t seen Nick since pre-Covid times, so he and Megan stopped in for a lunch visit while she was here.

Despite October normally being a bad time to list, the house had over 30 showings and eight offers. It sold for well over the asking price, which has become the norm these days.

I’ve decided to take a media break for the month of November. I deactivated my Twitter and Instagram accounts, cancelled or paused my subscriptions to newsletters, newspapers and podcasts, and I’ll deactivate Facebook later today or tomorrow morning (I’ll still have Messenger). That means, for the next little while at least, my blog posts won’t be shared on social media, but I’ll still be writing them.

I’m announcing this to make myself accountable because I expect it will be a hard habit to break, but ideally it will lead to new habits, fewer distractions and a clearer head. If you see me back on social media in November, please feel free to shame me mercilessly.