Just Like Starting Over

My seventies were for summing up. I thought about the person I had become and what I meant to others. I thought about the after-life of fatherhood when the true pleasure of being a father is found in happiness for what the children have become, for what they have done and how they have grown in the doing.

In the nineties one must find new motivations for going on. The goals I had set for myself earlier had given me a destination. Goal setting is an art form, combining inspiration with self-expression. Art is said to mirror life. Well, a symphony ends with a flourish, a drama with an internal logic, a song climaxes on notes of beauty, a ballet ends with grace. The mirror must be rigged to break up in one's nineties. Then, as I tugged at this paradox, the solution came to me. Life is hugely interesting. As a man in passion allows himself to get involved with a woman, I, overcome with interest, understand that I want to live on.

More Later, Joe

When I'm 94?

In a few months I will be ninety-four years of age. No wonder I have been thinking about how long I want to live.

Thoughts like that sneak up on you. When I "retired" from my career (I have had three more careers since then), it felt like playing tennis with the net down. For the first time in my life there were no expectations of me. No one could fire me, flunk me or flay me. But now that I am in the nineties, there isn't even a net. What's different now is that all previous decades had a purpose and a destination. The twenties were for completing education (Master Degree), starting a career, falling in love and getting married. .

The thirties were for raising children and getting ahead in work. The forties and fifties were the time to consolidate gains and accomplishments, as well as to find new purposes so that the years ahead would not grow stale. The sixties were for final spurts and then winding down and wrapping up a career.

More Later, Joe