When thought is speech, and speech is truth.
-Sir Walter Scott
The older I become, the more I realize what I have lost. The longer I leave my past unexamined, the deeper my memories are buried.
I became a record keeper much too late in my life. I now have wonderful and detailed accounts of my life which date back to just after my life became boring so that attempts at recording my new history might be seen as attempts at trying to piece together meaning for the prior years. This is not the case. However, my lesson was learned too late but also too well. A captain or pilot is profited little at the reception of a map when the journey is closing with the destination in view. It does a man no good to receive answers to questions he no longer asks.
The key folly is not that we do not receive answers or directions in our younger years, though there are certainly a fair amount of that. No, the key folly is that a vast majority of people do not give proper value to the experiential knowledge and wisdom of others older than the individual involved. We pass through life always hoping for improvement and for the best life has to offer while discrediting and discarding the keys to what we wish for. Why do we do this? That is a question for the individual, but one that must be answered at the peril of many lost years.
I do not regret how I have lived my life. Nor is this post the product of a failed discussion with a particular arrogant youth, as often as they do visit. Consider your life as you might look back on it at dusk - from the other side of the hill. Not all of life nor all lives are worth investigation. All can be. All have that potential. Here is a chance to make yours exemplary, at least for your own purposes.
Keep a record of your life. It is a disgrace to the ignorant that there are individuals in the world who have forgotten more knowledge than they will ever have learned. In the same song, I may add my own verse that if I had effected to remember everything I have learned and thought, than I would certainly be a genius and much greater in my own existence. However, knowledge is not the ultimate goal of my counsel nor of life.
Live life youthfully without the follies of youth. If we can remember our lives - all of the lessons, all of our worthy and promoting ideas, all of our deeds which decide our path, and all of our observations and influences - we would never look back through the bitter lens of regret. We can be young forever. Knowledge, experience, and responsibility do not prevent us from maintaining youth. It is loss and neglect which age our faces and dampen our vigor. If we will learn to continually learn, remember, and examine with love and purpose, both our own life and others' lives, we will be able to age without the inexperience which youth impossibly fails to injure us with.
Learn from the children, teach the adolescent, and aid the elderly. The adults will need to learn this for themselves.
You make it sound like your life is over and you missed your chance. Sure there are things you could've learned in your teens, but you are only now in your 20s. There are many lessons you must still learn and even beginning your record now, you are sure to forget many things of great importance.
ReplyDeletePost Script: Heed your own advice.
2nd Post Script: I resent that you think you life became boring after you married me!! (chiste)
I kept a journal for a while when we lived in Tennessee. Then, a few years later I read it. I thought it was stupid. I have not kept much of a journal since. :)
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that I do lose things of great importance though, and, hence, on occasion I do remember to record those insights that I feel may be especially important through life.