I agree with the Brave New World comparison...we seem as a society to be running away from the shadow as fast as we cann but it of course follows us.
And making midlife an opportunity...even with the disappointments (and I am so feeling them right now), I hope the ages between 40 and 65 are the most productive in a person's life, that acquiring things isn't entirely over. But acquisition, this time, on knowledge and how to use it.
I had this conversation with a friend of mine recently. We were talking about the meaning of life - as one does - and she said one of her goals was to be happy.
I was staggered - that wouldn't even be in my top five. I'm not sure I even know what the top five looks like completely, but I know 'happy' isn't there. I think happy is an occasional by-product of life, a nice one, but as a goal it seems almost counter-productive to me. If you aim for that and miss - as so often will happen - then what you DO have is almost by definition a failure because it is not-happy. And there is so much richness in the not-happy - from joy to grief to realization to anger to love to everything under the sun. Maybe our differences were semantic - and happy is a richer word to her than it is to me.
I think about what it is like to drive across the high plateau in Wyoming -- 7000 ft. elevation and flat. So without a valley to tell me how high up I am, the altitude doesn't mean much, Peaks need valleys. And vice versa.
Commenting by HaloScan
