A lot of the strangeness of this year has to do with me being on the cusp of a new season of life. Honestly, sometimes it feels more like standing on a precipice deciding whether or not to jump. Like most important things in life, no one prepares you for this. Maybe that's because there really is no preparation adequate to the task.
I am much better able now to grasp why, when people reach a certain age, it's tempting to just keep doing what they've conditioned themselves to do in most cases over decades. Beyond financial concerns, there is a whole "back end" you don't see until you're close enough to peek around the corner.
Yes, I'm being vague. In less than a month, I turn 60. Not that this in and of itself is necessarily a huge event. But there are decisions I must make about my future. When thinking about my future, it's sobering to realize that much more of my life is behind me than before me. "Disconcerting" seems to me the right word.
Like a lot of people, in getting married, raising a family, building a career, etc., it feels that in some ways my life has been pretty "plug n'play" for a long time. Perhaps too long, if I'm being honest. So, how to make the most of the years, hopefully decades, I have remaining is the question I face. It is not one I am going to answer with a blog post.
I have to point out, that rededicating myself to this little on-line endeavor about a year ago (26 October 2024, to be exact) was a step in the right direction. I had nearly forgotten how much "blogging" means to me. After all, it's been part of my life since I was about 40! Despite my desire, I wasn't sure I could pull it off. But here I am a year later enjoying and doing it with a fair amount of ease.
As I ponder "whither my life?", I have become acutely aware that I am not nearly as grateful as I should be. My natural disposition is to be critical, especially of myself, rueful, and even resentful. Gratitude doesn't come easily. Given all that I have to be grateful for, this is much to my shame. I don't even mind divulging that as I grow older fighting cynicism becomes more and more of a battle.
As to being tempted to become a cynic, I try to bear in mind an observation made by George Carlin, which I paraphrase: "Scratch a cynic and underneath you'll find a disappointed idealist." C'est moi. It isn't even that "the world" and everyone else fails to be all that I would like or once thought it possible to be, it is just as much myself.
What really keeps me from becoming a cynic is the theological virtue of hope. At least in part, this is a function of having less life in front of me than behind me. What happened to that idealistic if deeply self-doubting young man?
Life certainly has its sorrows and disappointments. In many ways, you reap what what you sow. And, I don't think it's enought, to crib from Monty Python, to simply "look on the bright side of life." I don't deny that life has its bright side. But, for me, pie-eyed optimism is not gratitude and optimism is certainly not hope. It was singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman who declared herself "a hopeful cynic." I like that maybe more than I should.
One of the songs I find myself listening to in certain odd moods is U2's "Walk On." Since I invoked this song in my homily last Monday, it is our traditio:
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