TIME AND TIME AGAIN*

Come with me as we travel through time! Not in the physical sense, of course, because we don’t know how to do that. But we can do that through memory and imagining, if we are so inclined; and if we have a built-up store of memories that we have the wit and wisdom to examine, to analyze, and to try to understand. I don’t know about you, but I think we can become, we are different people, as we thread through the different times of our lives. And even more important, I believe, when we do think about that, we can begin to better understand the behaviors of others wending their way forward in time along the paths of their lives that may parallel ours.

I try to examine the past, to sort out the kind of person I was at different stages, stripped of wishful thinking. I may not remember all the whys and wherefores, but I think I can assess what I think the behaviors were, and how they might have impacted the people around me. That part we cannot really know unless we can ask them, interview them. In most cases that’s not really possible. We can only attempt to draw conclusions from our own consciousness, guided by the values we ourselves have accumulated during our particular passage through time.

Did you ever think about what you are about? Did you ever decide what you are about and act to realize it. Did you ever tell anybody about it? Did you note how who you were changed over time?

What I remember most was the fierceness of the passions I brought to the objectives I set for myself in my life. In my mind, I would brook no opposition to achieving the goals I set for myself. If people and events happened to get in the way, they would just have to be got around somehow. I did not verbalize any of this. It was just a knot of resolve inside of me. There was little consideration in my mind of the feelings of others. They were just pawns in my path, to be used, dealt with as necessary, avoided if possible, insofar as they blocked the path to the objectives that I set, and was determined to attain, one way or another.

Another feature of my passions at an early stage of my life was a willingness to go so far as to self-immolate, if necessary to achieve the higher goals I wanted to see attained. My own life, if necessary, I was ready to sacrifice if it furthered goals I believed was necessary for my causes to attain. I can understand the motivations of suicide-bombers, seeking to attain what they have been brain-washed to believe were goals worthy of sacrificing their lives for. I was ready for that to advance some of the causes that were dear to my heart.

One of my fiercest motivations was the attainment of a professional status by earning a university degree. In the culture in which I was raised there is no higher goal than the attainment of higher education. Progeny are judged on the basis of whether they have the capacity and the discipline to earn an academic distinction. In our community, you, and even your parents, are judged by the laurels one attains in this arena. For me, this goal had the added impetus of appearing to offer a path to economic security. (Probably, no different from many!) Our low economic status as a family during my early years seared in me the drive to ensure that my future, and those fated to be my life companions, would not suffer what I believed was an intolerable fate. So fixed was I on this goal in the early years of my first marriage that I must have been very difficult to live with.

Fatherhood and marriage, with its economic demands, was a challenge to overcome beyond the academic requirements to be met. And all this had to be done on my sole resources. I would have refused assistance if it had been offered. I had as many as three jobs at one time during those years to ensure the means to pay my way through university. I am sure many shared my fate, but I hope, with better humor, and less self-righteous fierce intensity. I was going to do this by myself, by gum!

I have the recollection that I felt entirely alone in these ventures. I had felt that all my thinking years. I had never had a friend, or even a family member, with whom I had felt able to  share who I was, what I was, and that continued to be the case through most of my life. Are most people living lives like that? What a very lonely place that is! It has been my good fortune to find a relationship where I could be totally open, but that occurred only in my seventies. A lot of time to spend alone, time that could have been much sweeter with the right person, or if I had been the right person. I know I have changed a lot over time.

Does any of this strike a responsive chord?

What do we make of all this? Are we proud of the life we have led, are leading? Are we satisfied with what we have accomplished, what we hope to accomplish? Have we been blessed with parenting children, rejoicing in their good times, consoling them, being with them over the rough spots? Above all, maintaining the connections, finding and keeping those we treasure and can be open with. That sometime takes courage. I don’t have to tell you that being open can carry risks.

Time and time again we have the potential to re-make our lives.

*Also the title of a novel by Ben Elton, available on Amazon