I was also in love with the idea of human love. Too many Arthurian romances, too many Greek myths, too many transcendent novels and autobiographies bent my world view at an angle that could have turned me into either a bitter old maid or a self-defensive cynic. I lucked out so that perhaps my greatest life lesson is that I learned early on to recognize blessings when they are given. Mostly I was able to see the proverbial glass half full.
It’s common enough to see people with handsome houses, successful children, luxury, and leisure who feel they’ve been short changed somehow, or are missing something they think they deserve. Some people who are well aware of the hollowness of material wealth are nevertheless dissatisfied with their lives. Perhaps they feel they lack talent, or are deprived of recognition, or are unloved. The unnamed soul who said that happiness was not in having what you want, but in wanting what you have got it right.
We must somehow get the knack of perceiving the occasions of joy. The saddest thing I have experienced is the suspicion that I might not have been sufficiently aware — and not just of happiness. It took years of heedless laughter and hard work and worry before I was to detect the extent of my own good luck. I thought I had appreciated it, but learned to wonder at it thenceforth. That other cliché about not appreciating what you’ve had till it’s gone comes to the fore. Fortunately, it doesn’t apply to me. I think my children have received the message too.
When I found, or was found by, the man who would be my mate, my friend, the one indispensable for over half a century, I knew I was fortunate. After ten years, I realized I loved this man much more than I had when I was besotted with my groom and delirious with pride in him. After forty years, I could scarcely believe how we had grown into a grafted entity like something in a prize arboretum. When we both recognized that his health meant we were in a literal sense living on borrowed time, we behaved more like newlyweds than we had since our first child was born. We were blessed with over ten years of that phase.
Since our time was up, I’ve been learning that some experiences (not necessarily as long-lasting as ours) change the architecture of the person so totally that no remodeling is ever going to work.
That realization forces more introspection than is probably healthy — except for that all-important matter of being aware. It’s such a cliché to be told we should live every day as if it were our last. George Eliot pointed out how impossible life would be if we were fully aware of everything all the time. “… it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
And yet, we all know so many people in varied walks of life at different ages and degrees of maturity who not only don’t know how to count their blessings, they don’t even recognize one unless it jumps up and bites them on the psyche. So maybe the lesson isn’t one that can be taught, since we’re back to the problem of deciding countless times every day which experiences are worth noting. That’s especially true when you think of the other constant variable: we don’t always get to choose what we will remember — unless we know how to concentrate at the right time.
How are you going to teach someone how to do that?
©2011 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com
Swan On Lake by Vera Kratochvil
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