Who Is In Charge Of The Roller Coaster Called Life?

We live near a retirement community, making for a long walking trail. As we were walking, we met an older man who started talking to us. He mentioned that he had to go to funerals, and he did not like them, but they were happening quite a lot.

My three-year-old niece told her dad (my brother) that his Kindle is a one-page book with all the wisdom of three years.

My husband was a judge for the ‘best business idea’ for the second to the fifth graders. The first idea was ‘Fun Experience’, which included a roller coaster, fireworks and other fun stuff for a $ forty-eight ticket (Food was separate). Since he was a business investor posing as a judge, he got a ten per cent stake in the company and a lifetime pass to the park.

My dad has been talking about the bell curve—how we start as children and, as we age, return to being child-like.

For me, career growth is the main topic these days.

Every stage of our lives has a specific theme—we may say the fifties are the new forties, and you are as young as you think, etc. But there is a certain charm to every stage of life—sure, you can start a new career in your fifties or have a kid in your fifties, but that still does not take away from the themes, generally speaking. The way our minds are conditioned is to think about the past or the future. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up, and now I keep reminiscing about all that I missed. It takes practice to ponder where I am NOW and what is essential to this stage in my life.

There is a certain symmetry to our life cycle. We start with innocence—a certain naivete towards life—where we believe that every human we encounter is good, will not take advantage of us, etc. Somewhere down the line, we encounter a person or a situation that shakes that belief to the core. For some of us, it happens in our childhood, for some, it happens later in life, and for some rare cases, it may never happen. With that incident, our world view starts to change - we realise that whether we want it to or not, there are people in this world who do harm, kill, etc. We start to adjust our life views accordingly, and as we grow older, we learn to make peace with it to the point where we can still retain our innocence despite the cunningness. We learn to find our balance between both extremes. But, before we find that centre for us, we must accept that all is not well with the world. There are bad actors out there, and it takes all to make the world, not just at an intellectual level, but as a reality that grounds us in our world. It is easy to skim over the parts we don’t like or that make us uncomfortable, but we can only be fully in this world when we experience all sides of life. And the different sides of life are revealed to us when we are ready for it - think of it as a preparation for what’s coming.

However painful it might be, the sooner we realise that life is opening itself up to us because it has deemed us worthy of the lesson, the easier it will be for the next level. It requires courage and acceptance that the universe is friendly and wants what is best for us. It might take us a few years down the line, so connect the dots, but in the end, it all works out; otherwise, it is not the end. All we can do is enjoy the journey, sometimes pretending that we are charting the course and sometimes accepting that we are a passenger in the journey called life.

Can you see parts of your life journey where life was in charge, but you thought you were?