As we become older, wiser and fiercer, we learn to accept that even in our evolved state, we are still not calling the shots. Is this something we’re thrilled about? Of course not. We’ve invested most of our lives thinking we knew what would make us happy and how to go about getting it. Sometimes, our best efforts fell short. Other times, we succeeded in getting what we thought we had to have and still it didn’t deliver on the promise.
Whatever the flavor of the particular disappointment that burns on the tongue, this turns out to be a good thing. Now you have new, improved information about the truth of your supposed degree of mastery and how much it was taking out of you to keep your fantasies going. When the whole construction starts to crumble, you may find yourself knee-deep in human frailty and neck-deep in our turbulent times. But now, at last, you can begin the critical work of providing a stronger, more reliable base upon which a more authentic relationship to life can be built.
The real work of aging begins when we renounce our thwarted expectations that were only ever part of the false narrative that we would eventually be smart, wise and powerful enough to master ourselves let alone the universe. Our expectations may not be so easily dismissed, but they can with practice increasingly come to be witnessed rather than engaged. And regardless of our circumstances, we can tender compassion to ourselves, others and the world, including our disappointments with how those things that trouble us the most seem to be turning out. As the Serenity Prayer teaches, we change what we can and accept the rest. Call it character—that mix of acceptance, courage and perseverance that for many of us grows in tandem with the losses.
With practice, there can come a day when our very sense of what we once thought we and the world were, have changed profoundly. But after the grief, we are likely to encounter something unexpected: hope that beyond resignation, what remains is that much more able to be fulfilled than the insatiable fantasies that were never real.
So, take a deep breath and pause to reflect that even if our eyes now see things we hadn’t admitted to before and even when we find ourselves knee-deep in human frailty and neck-deep in turbulent times, at least we are still standing.
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This blog has been adapted from Carol’s Orsborn’s perennial bestseller Older, Wiser, Fiercer.
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and a link to CarolOrsborn.com.
