Thursday, November 2, 2017

Have you been there?




Chances are you know how it feels. We may not like to admit it, but if we have been around long enough we know it is true. Whether it has been calm and cushy or littered with trials we would rather forget, we certainly understand that October and early-November are only way-stations for what waits beyond. Which means that even at our age, we still need to keep our eyes on the road ahead.
There was a time, back in the olden days, when I made my living as a Business Manager. Actually, in one form or another that was what I did for the whole of two different careers. An important part of that work involved looking ahead and planning for what was coming next. As you can imagine, that usually works best when you know where you are now, and where you want to go from here.
Twelve years ago, as I started off on what would become Career Path 3.0---a wannabe writer---I thought I knew where I was. It was a place I called ‘September.’ (Though in fact it was probably early October.) But whatever name I gave it, at that point I had no plan at all. 
Why would I? I had written a single novel-length story thirty years before and nothing since. I was six years removed from the workaday world, struggling to find a reason to get up each morning. From my perspective the golden years were not going so well. Actually, I’ve covered that ground before---how I was flunking retirement. 
Have you ever been in that place where you are not sure what you should do or which way to turn? I know from experience that those unsettling doubts---so many questions and so few answers---making planning ahead a tricky thing. It is hard to navigate such uncertainty in the best of times, even more so in the uncharted landscape of late-life.
I know that in my case, when I finally turned my attention back to that earlier storytelling interest, I was more than a little skeptical. Perhaps that first time, all those years before, had been nothing more than a passing fancy---one of those things I might want to try again some day---or so I told myself. But everyone does that. Right? We all have a story we want to tell, or some other dream we intend to explore ‘someday.’ But how many of us get around to that ‘someday’? So much for planning ahead.
Yet, no matter what our goal, we all know how good it feels when our ‘wanting’ turns into ‘doing.’ There I was, a month or so before my fiftieth high-school reunion, ready to put pen to paper. But what would I write about? I asked that question more than a few times before settling on what felt like an appropriate answer. Without looking back, and with only the most basic of plans, I began the Harris brothers’ story---starting with their own fiftieth reunion---and taking two books to tell. I had told myself I could do that, and I did. I liked the way that made me feel.
From the beginning I was telling up-close and personal stories of what I call the ‘October’ of life, about every-day people dealing with late-life reality. Was the writing great? Not so much, though it has improved with time. Besides, I had not set out to create literature, but simply tell my stories.
In the course of twelve books those friends of mine have faced a litany of October challenges---good times and bad, illness and accidents, poverty and depression. There have been life partners lost, first-loves rekindled, second-loves found and sometimes lost. For twelve long years I wrote about October, mainly because it felt like the time of life that described me.
Then, a while back, it finally dawned on me. Who was I kidding? Times were changing, and so was I. Having spent all that time in October, it was time to consider a new reality---one that waits out there for most everyone. There is only one way to avoid it, and I would rather not settle for that. So there I was, ready to move ahead to what I reluctantly called ‘November.’ Though it was a label I had steered clear of in the past, I was finally ready to admit it seems descriptive of the guy I was becoming. 
Perhaps like you, I was graduating to the next level. Though it was difficult to admit, I knew it was what came next. After all, we can’t hold back November any more than we can return to September. Though it feels a bit like losing an old friend, the time had come to say goodbye to October and get acquainted with November. 
In both books and blogs I have carried on about ‘change’ and ‘becoming’ for years, how October brings change---in ourselves and the stories we tell. But now I had reached the point where October didn’t work so well any more. It was too limiting. It was time for a change.
Think about that for a moment. All around us friends and acquaintances are adapting, trying on a new time of life---sampling new possibilities and facing new challenges. Our late-life friends may be increasingly content to tend their flowers, grow their veggies, and lose themselves in a good book. They are apt to choose cruises over backpacking, preferring the comfort of their own bed to a big-city hotel. Bake-at-home pizza may sound better than a fancy restaurant meal. For some, financial planning becomes less about high-yielding investments and more about holding on to what we already have. And always, lurking in the background, are the troublesome health questions we would rather not think about.
And then, of course, there is family---the children who have become parents, the grandchildren who are having kids of their own---a new generation for us to spoil. We love them to pieces, though we may not understand half of what they say or do. My God, there are times when they make Last Tango in Halifax sound like a documentary. Fortunately, however, when it comes to computers, television remotes, and cell phones they are the ones we call.
We know that all this change will include new and sometimes surprising lessons to be learned. For instance, there was a time when I assumed that October, and certainly November, would be a bleak and boring time. Watching my own parents and grandparents deal with that time of life---dealing with kids and grandkids who had no idea what their elders were facing---I certainly never realized that along with ‘bleak and boring’ there would be moments of frustration and pain, as well as times of extreme pleasure and excitement. Though I rarely understood what they were dealing with, I can see now that their life has become my life. 
It’s true, you and I have learned a lot in the course of a lifetime. But is there any reason to think our life-lessons have ended? Whether we see ourselves living in June, July, October, or November---life goes on. Every day arrives with its own experiences and challenges. We are learning that November‘s leaky-bucket list, the one I wrote of in a recent post, may look different than October’s list, but it will be no less demanding. 

And though it may not qualify as ‘planning ahead,’ it seems that life has a way of preparing us for the future---until, in its own time and way, our December arrives. In the meanwhile, however, why not devote ourselves to thriving in our own October and November? 

1 comment:

  1. I am 55, so I don't know what "month" I am in, but I know that I have more years behind me than ahead me. This post really resonated with me and I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for sharing it.

    ReplyDelete