For the most part, I spend my days with people very near to my own age. I do get the opportunity now and then to spend some time with people considerably younger than me. I’m not talking about ten year olds. I’ve reached an age where I think thirty is pretty darn young. Oh my!
I know a couple of twenty somethings. Their priorities sometimes amaze me. Although not too much. I was young once. Yes. Really.
They make me reflect upon my younger years and what I thought was important and not important. Okay. When I was younger, I thought every darn thing was IMPORTANT. But chief among them was figuring out life.
The older people I knew when I was younger seemed to have it all so perfectly together. They knew where they had come from and they seemed to know where they were going. They had figured out what works and what doesn’t, or so it seemed.
It didn’t help that I was socially inept (still am to a certain extent but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it once did) and basically so darn shy that I’d break out in a sweat at the mere thought of going to a party or having to call someone on the telephone. The older people I knew would just pick up the phone and dial. And parties were a no-brainer for them. They knew what to do, what to say, what to wear and all the rest. These days, speaking from experience, it wasn’t so much that they had it all together as they had done these things a thousand times. Experience will often stand in for wisdom. And doing something over and over again can make it look easy.
So I look at the young people I know today and I’d like to tell them not to worry. Because I see them worrying. They worry about what to wear, how to do their hair, and do they have the right cell phone. They place a great deal of importance in what other people think of them. I can see the wheels turning as they try to figure it all out and get it all right.
But the thing is, there is nothing to figure out and you’ll never get it all right anyway. All you can ever do is the best that you can do and hope that it is good enough. Please don’t think this is a pessimistic point of view, because for me it isn’t. It’s liberating. Life is life. It’s what it is and nothing more. Sitting around and trying to figure it out won’t get you there. You just have to go out and live it.
Maddie's Mom Writes 