ARE YOU THE PERSON YOU WERE MEANT TO BE?

ARE YOU THE PERSON YOU WERE  MEANT TO BE?

A couple days ago I came across an earlier blog post where I  was trying to explain my notion of “thriving” in our October Years. At the time, in my own mental shorthand, I defined thriving as “coming closer to being the person I was meant to be.” 

That in turn led to questions like….Who was I meant to be? Am I thriving now? Should I expect to thrive? Does it even matter one way or the other? I’ll admit that most days I am inclined to forget about all those concerns and settle for being the person I am. Still, those nagging questions won’t go away.

Thriving, of course, is a very personal thing. My thriving won’t look like your thriving. If you’re already a late-life thriver (Is that a word?), chances are you’ve found the proper balance in your life……what works for you. You can look ahead, while remembering the past. You can accept the person you have become, while sometimes hoping to become something more.

Yet from time to time I see, and perhaps you do too, October friends who seem not to be thriving. Perhaps they have been beaten down, or given up. Still, such judgments are fraught with danger. Who has the right to judge such things? Who can say that his or her sort of thriving is the most acceptable kind? Thriving, and the change that often comes with it, are very individual matters. Your change does certainly not have to look like my change.

I’ve written about “change” before in these pages. It seems to me an important part of late-life. It is, after all, still permitted at our age. There are times when it seems that life is an unending chain of choices and adaptations…..in other words…..change. 

Though we ought not judge what change is appropriate for someone else, I am confident that adapting to life’s changing circumstances is an important part of thriving at any age. To use our October/November status as an excuse to stop “Becoming,” is to sell ourselves short. It is a sad thing to see, or write a story about…..a person who believes it is too late to become something more…..that change is not worth the effort at this late date.

One way to integrate change into late-life experience is in the context of a life lived on purpose. Do the concepts of “purpose” or “intention” resonate with you? Have you ever wondered if you have become the person you were meant to be? 

As you may have guessed by now, I’m a Wayne Dyer sort of guy. In Dr. Dyer’s life-view there are no accidents….things happen for a reason. To resist the changes implied by life’s “non-accidents” is akin to resisting our destiny.

As a storyteller I create change in the lives of the characters I have imagined into being. In a hopefully entertaining way I lead them from one place, with its particular circumstances and outlook, to another, hopefully more desirable, place. 

More than once I have used the notion of life’s “intention” to link someone’s beginnings (think childhood and adolescence) to some later October event. In the same way that can happen to each of us, I ask my characters to follow the sometimes twisted chain of change and adaptation to where it leads them.

Take for instance Jack Benz in the following excerpt from Becoming. For fifty years, half a century, he has nurtured his improbable dream of knowing Her. During their high-school days at Tanner Southside High she had been Cindy Welton…social diva, prom queen, and miles out of his league. 

More recently she had been Cynthia Larson….socialite wife, living life in the fast lane. Until, that is, a devastating stroke changed her into someone her husband could no longer love. Now, Jack has come face to face with his nearly unrecognizable high school dream. From the beginning  the odds had been stacked against him….yet he had been willing to stay the course. Was that course ‘meant to be’?

************

They had pulled off into a roadside rest area when Jack took a deep breath and asked himself once more if this was a good idea. A moment later he understood that it was time to come clean…..to let her know the truth of it.

"When I talked to the manager at Eastside Estates,” he began. “He said that if I was even a little bit interested in an Independent Living apartment for the two of us I should put my name on the waiting list. So I did. I signed us up. And we’re number three on the list.”

“Oh my. You are efficient, aren’t you?”

“It was a ‘just-in-case’ kind of thing,” he hurried on. “I told the guy it might never happen. He had no problem with that. So I decided why not. I hope you don’t think I was being too presumptuous.”

Cynthia’s response was slow in coming and nearly lost in her soft laughter. “I’m glad you had a sneaky surprise for me,” she said. “That means I’m not the only one.”

“You have a sneaky surprise too?”

“I think so.” she nodded. “I just hope it won’t shock you too much.”

“Sneaky and shocking?  Man, I need to hear this.”

“Well, it’s this. I was wondering if you could plan to be sick tomorrow?” With her good hand she covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

“Could I be sick? What kind of question is that? Why?”

“Well, if you were sick, and didn’t have to go to work tomorrow, you could stay here tonight. We could get a room. Maybe I could be your nurse....to help you feel better.”

“A room? For the two of us?”

“Yes.” 

She was offering no smile now, only the serious knowing that there were things to discuss, things to learn about each other. “I think it’s time,” she nodded “Don’t you?”

A moment later Jack was moving on to more practical concerns. “But can you? I don’t want .....”

Clamping her hand lightly over his mouth, she was cutting off his questions. “My doctor told me months ago it was okay. I just never imagined it made any difference.”

“And you want me to stay here tonight? So we can talk about you moving to Tanner…..and other stuff?”

“And 'other stuff,’” Cynthia added before tracking off to other, more mysterious matters. For a few seconds  it felt like he had lost contact with her, until she looked up, ready with a new question.

“Do you really believe that?,” she asked. “What you said at lunch.”

“What did I say?”

“Last night you said that when something is meant to be it will happen, if we give it a chance. Then today, at lunch, you told me that everything is working out just right…..like it is supposed to.” Pausing for a moment, she added, “Is that what you think? That you and I being here right now was meant to be?”

“Meant to be?” Jack blinked at the sound of her words. For an instant it felt as though she had traced his own questions back to their source. He could not remember exactly where he had first read about it…..the idea that there might be an ‘intention,’ a ‘purpose’ behind what he had always assumed to be the random unfolding of his life. It was that possibility that had captured his imagination. 

When viewed from that perspective, perhaps there had been a reason for his years of unremarkable plodding…..a purpose for the way his life had played out. If nothing else, it would help explain the unlikely fact that Cynthia Larson, the late-life incarnation of school-girl Cindy Welton, was seated comfortably beside him, seeking his interpretation of their unexpected, perhaps life-changing connection.

“I’ve read stuff like that,” Jack answered, rolling his eyes, offering a hint of doubt for her benefit. “How everything happens for a reason.

“According to that way of thinking,” he continued. “There is a purpose for everything that happens to us. It’s not just accidental. It means that every person who shows up in our life is there for a reason. We may not know what it is, but it’s important…..otherwise they wouldn’t be there. It also means there can be reasons that we don’t necessarily understand, for things like your stroke and divorce. It might even explain why I’ve been such a pest lately.

“Just think about it.” Shifting in his seat to face her he hurried on, caught up in his not-so-conventional logic. “That day in the sixth grade, when we held hands and didn’t want anyone to see us. I’m not sure you even remember that. But I sure do.

  “Anyway, I’d like to think that happened for a reason. Because, without those few minutes together, more than fifty years ago, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here today, talking about getting old together.”

For a few seconds the sight of the bridge in the distance seemed to have captured Cynthia’s attention. When she finally looked back at him her crooked, but comfortable grin had returned. Was it the soundness of his argument  that had won her attention, she wondered, or the growing hope that he was right? 

“And you think all that happened because we held hands way back then?” she asked softly. “It’s enough to make you think, isn’t it?”

“I’ve asked myself over and over,” Jack continued. “If being with you is just a coincidence. There must have been a million different ways to get from where each of us was that day in the sixth grade to where we are now. It seems to me that you took the high road…..living the good life with Eric, while I bounced along on the low road…..working at my state job and drinking beer with Carl.” 

He had her good hand again, squeezing to make his point. “Our paths were so different, but even with all the twists and turns, your way and my way both led to this exact time and place. 

“That sounds like what Carl calls ‘Becoming.’ He says that everyone, even at our age, is in the process of changing, becoming someone new. That change may be something good. It may be something bad. But no one can stay the same. For you and me it feels like our ‘Becoming’ has brought us right here. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t feel like an accident to me.”

Jack leaned over to kiss her on the cheek. Cynthia was not prepared to settle for that. Seconds later he pushed himself back into his seat, rebuckled his seat belt, and paused to wrap his mind around the improbable truth of it. After years of idle daydreams, Cindy Welton was sitting there beside him, looking forward to his company. 

True, she was no longer the youthful school girl who had first caught his eye. Like him, she had changed. Yet even after her stroke, with her crooked little smile and halting, jagged words, she had never been more appealing. Indeed, he was unwilling to accept those changes as accidental.

“I think we’d better be going,” he finally said, gently nudging her good left arm. “I believe I’m beginning to feel a little under the weather. In fact, I think I’ll probably be needing a nurse.”

You can tell that I’m selling change…..becoming something more…..what I call ‘thriving.’ You may not agree, but I am willing to believe that more than a little October change happens because a small voice is telling us we should keep striving and thriving, growing closer to being the person we were meant to be.