Here
We Are!
“I
may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I've ended up
where I needed to be.”
Douglas
Adams (The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul)
I'm
still reflecting on conversations I had at the reunion. I
think about where people are now after 50 long years. Most of us have “retired,” which is to say that we aren't actively
engaged in our primary careers any more. But that doesn't mean that
we've left life, and watch TV all day while the world passes by
outside our windows. I spoke with happy people and unhappy
people—passages we all travel through more than once.
Some
of us married early. I saw a woman whose wedding I was in 50 years
ago, still with the same husband, and looking delighted about it. Two
of my friends dated off and on from seventh grade, married after
graduate school and are still together. The majority have been married more than once. Some worked at the same
career for forty-five years, and some skipped around doing a
little bit of everything. For most folks, life's trajectory isn't
straight; it resembles a labyrinth turning and turning again.
All
in all, I think very few of us go where we intend to go, but how can
we know at seventeen what the future holds? How can we know at sixty?
We are, in most circumstances, just along for the ride, and those
circumstances can change in a nanosecond. In the words of Albert
Einstein, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you
must keep moving.” And so it is. Isn't it a pure miracle that most
of us end up exactly where we need to be?
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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