The numbers in our lives: Do we like what we’ve become?
What becomes of us as the years pass? Do we become what we like to be or do we end up with no choice but to like what we have become?
A life that exceeds 80 years is likely a celebration of fulfilled aspirations; a life cut short at 50, a tragedy of wasted possibilities. Taking a good look at our individual lives, we see a single snapshot when we look back; we see a series of milestones when we look ahead. Like train-stops that serve to remind us where we are in a journey, these milestones keep us aware of both time and distance, specifically what is left of them. Stephen Covey has an excellent way of summing up all these milestones in a phrase: To learn, to love, to leave a legacy. With so many things to aim for and too little time to accomplish them, how we balance the various elements in our lives within the limitation of time ultimately determines where we find ourselves – and how people find us – at the end of the journey.
Milestones are embedded at the back of our minds when we enter college and most especially when we choose our profession. Things that have to happen have to happen at certain time frames. We are one thing when we are 16, but we are something else –or supposed to be something else- by the time we turn 21. When we finish college by 21 or 22, a whole new set of milestones take shape as we decide on one career path over another. We make a big deal of turning 30 as we imagine reaping the perks of a promising career in the years that follow.
By the time we turn 40, life begins to take on a new meaning. We begin to peak and acquire a certain standing in the community where we circulate. Many assume bigger roles in the associations where they belong; some look forward to becoming their leaders. We go through the so-called midlife crisis at around this time when we perceive a mismatch between our dreams and our achievements so far. The pursuit of success becomes complicated because success assumes diverse definitions, some of them perverse.
As we turn 50 – as I did in 2006 – we seek to simplify things by realigning our definition of success with what really makes us happy. Happiness becomes more personal, closer to the self than to the dictates of friends and family. Retirement crosses our minds more often, just as health concerns become more real. Eventually we turn 60, and senior citizenship confers on us the privileges of the 20% discount and a sharper focus on the generic drugs with the best price for our blood pressure and cholesterol. With luck and a more disciplined attention to the warnings of decline, we may make it to 70, then 80, and, why not, 90. A hundred years is, perhaps, too much to aim for but as the years add up we learn to appreciate the numbers in a much grander way.
Numbers influence the decisions that we make – both the major and minor ones. We celebrate milestones depending on the numbers we associate them with. Our 1st birthday – and the 1st birthdays of our children- are painted in our minds with balloons and clowns and a birthday cake with a single lighted candle at the center, recorded for posterity by a videocam that is permanently stuck on the father’s face, and orchestrated by the mother who throws herself at the frenzy of the moment. The 100th birthday is absolutely an even bigger day – this time for the offspring of the clueless celebrant who may not even know where she is or who her children are. Indeed, the first birthday and the 100th are occasions celebrated not by us but by the people whom we take care of or who now take care of us. In-between these milestones, we either grow and gain mastery doing great things, or occupy space and flaunt a lifetime of insignificance.
The first year of marriage is bliss, with adjustments and difficulties overpowered by love if not by passion. The first wedding anniversary is an exclusive romantic occasion that every wife looks forward to and every husband who values peace should never forget. The first anniversary of an achievement – and even the first death anniversary of a loved one or a respected individual – never passes unplanned, unacknowledged, or unprepared for. People always remember the first; the second seldom comes close. The first of anything is almost always imbued with passion, commitment and great promise for the years to come; the second that follows is usually soon forgotten.
Ten years of marriage, happy or otherwise, is a milestone for couples who learn to put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies. A decade at work calls for an award or recognition, if not for excellence, at least for loyalty and resilience. A lot of things go into 10 years of any endeavor. We come out of it whole or broken, but we come out different either way. Time changes us; we learn to adapt. When we can’t, we learn just the same.
We expect certain changes – progress, if you may – as we move through the numbers, because we like to believe that time confers on us wisdom or even just recurrent opportunities to redeem ourselves. At 18, we become legal; at 21, we go mainstream; at 25, we think of work and survival; by 30, we start a family; at 40, we look forward to comfort and achievements; at 50, we consider things greater than ourselves; by 60, we expect peace, quiet and security; at 75, we count our blessings. We bracket the numbers in our lives with the sparkle of our hopes and aspirations. Twenty-five years is silver; 50 is gold; 75, diamond.
In time, 100 will become the norm as medical science and technology assume a major role in the ‘evergreening’ of the human species. As we struggle through the wrinkles and the sagging breasts and unreliable tumescences; as we attempt to renew ourselves – with tablets and injections and vegetable-cum-fruit juices and all sorts of anti-oxidants– we may have to establish a new order in the way we count the numbers. When 60 becomes the new 40, and adolescence extends up to 30, joie d’ vivre could put our world at risk of being crowded with people who love life but only for themselves!
As the number of our years moves onward, we have a choice of not allowing ourselves to do more of the same things that keep us safe and comfortable. We can open our eyes to the reality that a lot in our lives, no matter how important they may seem, are spent on things of little consequence – transient things with no significant impact on the community where we live. We can bravely opt for substance rather than form, and enhance instead what we can no longer extend. If all that science can provide is a longer life for moneyed people with overstretched faces and overblown egos, 100 would be to plastic what 75 is to diamond, and people who refuse to see it would never know the difference.
What becomes of us as the years pass? To be sure, we become older and richer in years. Everything else depends on whether we can count on ourselves to go for what counts the most -in an era where what counts is masked by distractions ironically created by an obsession to accomplish more with so little effort and in the shortest time possible.
I turn 57 today, not at all affected by the cursory “ Happy Birthday!” greetings that I receive or do not receive. It has been 7 years since I got all excited and uptight about turning 50, presently disappointed with myself for having let the years pass without the fervor that defined the previous decades of my life. How time flies, and how it unnerves my state of unreadiness.
Unreadiness for what?
For the time when time stops, I guess, and the numbers lose their meaning. When we can no longer look forward and add more numbers, and can only look back and see, with clarity and surrender, that there is only the here-and-now to experience and savor; that there is nothing we can do about the past and there is no future to look forward to, and all we have is ourselves, hopefully with the people we love and the things that matter to us, in the present as it presents itself.
June 19,2013
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