I Remember When....

Misty_Morning

Narcissistic Hedonist
Joined
Nov 11, 2006
Posts
6,129
...I was a kid...lots of bad things...lots of good things. After many years I have learned to focus on the good things. Sledding in New England, the awesome fall foliage, the my dad would lift me up and swing me around...better than any ride at an asumement park.

...When I was a teen...lost alot of friends to suicide and accidents....but I remember their faces as we laughed at the juvenile humor that seemed so amusing to us. I remember...awards and honor societies...slumber parties and cruizin along Beach Boulevard...going to "The Point".....

...When I was in my 20's....the fun and drama of college...traveling across the country to follow the Grateful Dead...thinking I was in love (or at least, trying to convince myself that I was)...everything coming easy....


...When I was in my 30's...realizing that life was harder than I had planned. Losing close family members...but yet..they really weren't that close...and beginning to understand...




I'm in my 40's now...and every day that passes I wonder what knowledge I will gleem....




It's odd....

But everyday that passes... I feel as though I am a kid, a teen, a 20 somthing, a thirty something.....

I keep thinking...tomorrow I will wake up and I will have all this knowledge...



But tomorrow comes..and I am am just a kid...again....but a little older....
 
I get that a bit. Seem to spend my life looking back a year, a couple of months, even a couple of weeks - and thinking: "Shit! I was such a kid handling that!"

It's a bit of a cycle that I used to beat myself up over. These days I try and focus on what I'm doing in the here and now, rather than what I screwed up months ago.

At least we're making progress, though. Would it suck if you saw all your past actions as absolute triumphs, and your present ones as a pile of pants?

I'm not sure if I should post on threads like this so early in the morning, because I'm probably not making any sense :eek:
 
Never stop growing. And never stop being a kid.

I got that from my grandfather. He never stopped being a kid, he never lost that gleam in his eye. And he saw more heartache, lost more friends, than I have.

It took me a long time to learn his secret. Maybe I haven't learned it completely, but I think I have the basics down.

Mainly . . . live. Enjoy. Feel for those you've lost, don't let them go, let them guide you . . . but understand that your life is just that.

Yours.
 
scheherazade_79 said:
I get that a bit. Seem to spend my life looking back a year, a couple of months, even a couple of weeks - and thinking: "Shit! I was such a kid handling that!"

It's a bit of a cycle that I used to beat myself up over. These days I try and focus on what I'm doing in the here and now, rather than what I screwed up months ago.

At least we're making progress, though. Would it suck if you saw all your past actions as absolute triumphs, and your present ones as a pile of pants?

I'm not sure if I should post on threads like this so early in the morning, because I'm probably not making any sense :eek:

Well, it is mid afternoon here and you make perfect sense to me. And as time goes on I concern myself less with my past mistakes and failures.. perhaps because of the sheer volume of them... I don't know but I would like to think it has something to do with maturity. Never thought about that before.

I have this theory about maturation.....totally unsubstantiated and devoid of logical constraints but my theory anyway. That maturity is all about the length of time in the future which you consider when making decisions.

At birth and for sometime thereafter, it is virtually instantaneous... if it isn't happening right now, it isn't relevant.

By the time a kid reaches say 5 or 6 the future may stretch until the end of the day but not much more.

This continues until adolescence when it extends to the weekend ahead. (Example: Give a 14 y/o being punished a choice of going out THIS weekend and staying home the next two or being grounded only for the coming weekend, they will always opt for going out THIS weekend!)

Eventually..... a mature adult is considering what will happen 20-30 years from now when I retire.... or something like that.

I have progressed beyond that point into the super-mature stage of worrying only about getting laid tonight.

But perhaps, maturity is learning to merely let go of the crap you can't change and moving on.

And that is what too many cups of coffee will do for you by mid-afternoon.

-KC
 
My father lived to age 96 but he had lost his short term memory by age 90. Even after then he enjoyed each day as best he could.

He once told me that he didn't feel as if he was in his mid 90s, and especially not when a nurse walked past in a short skirted uniform. Then he felt in his late 20s. However he treated the staff of the residential home with unfailing courtesy. In his 80s he had decided that if young women were going to object if he opened doors for them, or if he stood up when they entered a room, then he would open doors for men and women and stand for anyone - that way he couldn't be "sexist".

His recipe for enjoying life was to believe the best of everyone and try to forgive if they didn't live up to that; to have a sense of humour and exercise it but not at anyone else's expense, and last to have a sense of the ridiculous about yourself. His failing which he has passed on to me, is pomposity. In both of us it is moderated by willingness to laugh at ourselves.

Og
 
I try very hard not to remember my past, it wasn't much fun.

I don't look to the future much. As far as I'm concerned the future will come no matter what I do.

I'll just be thankful that I'm still around to enjoy life.
 
My theory is whatever you were doing when you were 18, you'll be doing when youre 50. I see no evidence that people evolve much or change from experience. Its more like old age tires them sooner so they fuck up less often.
 
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