Most people have more apprehension about facing an unknown future than they do re-evaluating a questionable past. They fret over potential problems, calculate the odds for survival and success and wrestle with the widely variable prognostications for personal happiness in an ever-shifting, unfolding paradigm of local and universal expectations.
Even with the utmost at our disposal in terms of our personal arsenal of preparedness, the idea that we will face all of our tomorrows with only a wide grin and giggles is absurd. It is all those little black holes of the unforeseen with their impartial and seemingly hard-hearted tendency to throw us an anvil when we're expecting a feather that derail our confidence and shake our hopes the most.
Those inevitable pit stops in hell that we know await us and lurk perhaps within the upcoming month or week or hour create, for most, an uncomfortable subtext of apprehension and anxiety that is so routine we simply accept that each anticipatory glimpse into tomorrow is accompanied by a slight tightening in the gut or precipitates the alternate: an instant anodyne (and my personal favorite) of compartmentalization. Nothing relieves apprehension more effectively than sheer denial.
Perhaps it is just another earmark of this middle-age conundrum that has come full circle and again places more emphasis on the future than has been the case for many of us in the past two or three decades; distracted as we were by the demands and expectations of those passages that might have included the pursuit of higher education, carving out a career, raising a family, self-reflection and introspection or spiritual exploration. In short, the general maturation that urged us to seek out and settle into the bones of the person and the life that reflected who we thought we were or wanted to become at the time.
But whatever the reason, it would appear that the present has shifted just enough to make the future a little less reliable than we might have assumed it would be at this point in our lives when we considered it thirty years ago.
At twenty-four, we assumed that what awaited us at fifty-four was fairly predictable and routine in much the same way we faced a day of classes when in school. You knew your class schedule and the familiar faces you'd pass in the hall; you knew you'd have homework and a quiz or two; that certain classes would be a bore, lunch would be met without any enthusiasm for the culinary fare, and that, finally that blessed last bell would sound releasing immediate title to your time and mind but holding you to the obligation and promise of a return visit tomorrow. There was just enough structure and routine defining those five days out of our week that it mitigated our fears of the unknown with the gentle stroke of predictability and life was manageable.
So what happens now? There are no class bells to signal it is time to shift our focus or the expectation of testing to keep us on task and striving for a higher ranking and a passing grade. There are no children, adolescents or teenagers clopping through the house with a boatload of half-met needs that your parental instincts compel you to assist. There is no external structure that regulates the passage of time by a series of imposed conditions. At this point, conscience is our only taskmaster; common sense, our timekeeper; and integrity, our guiding principle; which leaves a whole lot of freedom to consider tomorrow and decide how we want to define and design it.
Personally, I find that oddly intimidating in the sense that since there are no obvious external conditions to blame for my failure to complete those hidden goals, the burden of how my future will unfold rests squarely on my shoulders, including the one suffering occasional flare ups of bursitis. If a day passes where nothing has been accomplished, I can't fall back on the acceptable excuses of being overly-burdened with work in one class or misunderstood in another. I can't even fall back on the standard loophole I've consoled myself with for the better part of three decades, which was the all-consuming obligation of raising my kids and managing four lives in addition to my own. That was golden, and believe me, I dove behind its ample circumference of forgiveness on a regular basis.
Right now the future lays like a narrow band of gold-colored beach in the distant horizon as I fend off razor-toothed sharks of insecurity and bob like a weathered cork in a sea of waning excuses. Although I'm equipped with oars of reliable mental acuity, in a relatively stable emotional raft (albeit one seasoned with several generations of necessary refurbishments), and enough reserves of providential dreaming and imagination to navigate my way to shore; the reality of my actually reclining with mimosas on the beach one day still seems like a long shot.
I think this is true in part because, as already stated, there is no prevailing superstructure here. I am in free-fall mode off the high dive and it is only now, in midair, that am I realizing I forgot to check the water level in the pool of possibilities below. And for the first time, probably in my life, there are no swim meets or coaches; teachers or classes; kids or domestic deadlines; and I am left to decide whether to sink or swim; to keep paddling toward whatever beach head is within view or sacrifice myself to the sea and the respectably noble excuse of going down with my ship.
No one would fault me or think twice if I were to completely submerge myself in an ocean of menial diversions and pedestrian preoccupations. In fact, it could easily be viewed as a well-deserved retirement from a long career of loyal service to the firm of Domestic Allegiance and Freelance Meanderings, Inc.; and I could dodder off into the sunset with my AARP card and a generous fruit basket without the least concern that I might be letting someone down.
People do it everyday, and in light of the ominous and daunting prospects of facing an unknown future with diminishing eyesight, joints narrowed in range by arthritic corrosion from too many years pretending that being chronically knock-kneed was not a legitimate deterrent from doing daily six-mile jogs, and the blatancy of my advanced years advertised in both face and form like the enlarged LED readouts on the side of the Goodyear Blimp, the thought of drowning in obscurity grows more appealing by the minute.
However, just as with everything else, there would be the tenacious foil of conscience heartlessly preventing me from attaining any real satisfaction or peace by relentlessly reminding me that the standards and promises I held for myself take effort and discipline to achieve. As well as the fact that nothing of any real benefit or consequence ever evolved from the patent acceptance that gardening, reality television, scrapbooking and monthly runs to Costco are all that is required of a life once the high-gaited tempo has been leveled to a somewhat more rambling and unreliable trot.
At this juncture the future looks rangy and undefined and the past looks patchy and incomplete. Retrospection has it's benefits as a tool capable of altering potential missteps in the present, and since today's present will be tomorrow's past, it quite naturally becomes the perfect strategy for baby-stepping our way towards what will come. Of course, this all goes back to our obligation to lead a life of consistent and quiet examination, which is the foundation for personal success and peace on any front, and because it is not a technique solely endemic to these mid-life years, it should be a pretty routine undertaking if we've put in any effort at all up till now.
I'm fully expecting to weather the rough seas of renewal and manage the tides of transition with pretty much the same random aplomb and sporadic enterprising that brought me to this point and has provided me with enough remaining chutzpah to still consider risk-taking to be a reasonable platform toward advancement and enlightenment. I am definitely a lot older than I was the last time this level of unrestrained freedom and such an ill-defined future loomed before me, but I have no doubt that I am up to the challenge. At least on a good day.
I've lived on the edge, unintimidated by open waters for most of my life. For me, following whatever force next captivates my attention has been the best way forward, and I see no reason not to dive in and continue the process. I probably won't change a thing with the possible exception of now having a lifejacket on hand. This erratic bursitis in my left shoulder can be a real drowner.
What. So doing standup will not be part of my future.
I think I can live with that.
