RUNNING WATER + Shoulder Update
[A friend recommended Baltasar Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Gracian was a Spanish scholar of the 17th century who set forth a series of maxims for ethical action. He also wrote A Pocket Mirror for Heroes, another source of food for my thinking. This column was inspired by A Pocket Mirror for Heroes.]
Gracian speaks of the four ages of life and compares human life to running water, from the brooklet of youth to the wide river of age. He, somewhat pessimistically, states that humans embrace virtue only late in life. The reason I write these columns is to encourage readers to look to virtue earlier in life, to learn from the mistakes of the older among us, to understand the lessons of longer life without the problems of learning by making so many mistakes. This is a perpetual problem. We all want to live our own lives, make our own mistakes, try new things, accept the responsibilities of maturity. We don't listen as we should to our parents, teachers, older friends, those who have already seen the consequences of certain actions, we don't learn the lessons that would save us from pain, we don't avoid the pitfalls pointed out to us, we don't understand that older people are only trying to help in giving advice based on life experience.
The lessons of age and experience relate to all parts of life, physical, mental and emotional. How often I've wished I listened to those who urged me to take better of my body when I was young. How often I've apologized, in my mind, to those who tried to help me avoid mistakes, to make my life easier than theirs. How easy it is to see now what I should have, could have, done to make things better now. How much better things could be if I had learned the basic lessons I talk about here when I was young, instead of taking fifty years to learn them.
On my fiftieth birthday, I was able to say, truthfully, that I was better off, physically, mentally and emotionally, than ever before in my life. Since then, as I've aged, I can no longer say that I feel better than ever but I still feel better than when I was tormented by anxiety and anger, than when I paid no attention to my body, than when I assumed that the mind lived alone, that the mind didn't need physical and emotional support to do its job. Had I learned the lessons of anger avoidance, of kindness, of physical health, of trying to take care of myself at an earlier age, I believe that not only would I be better off but those around me would also benefit.
I'm being repetitive because it's so important. If my readers can learn these lessons without making the mistakes I made, if I can help people to follow the simple path of helping oneself by helping others, of taking care of oneself and others, then the purpose of this site will be accomplished. Listen to those who have already made the mistakes you're about to make. You'll be better off and the person who helped you will also feel better.
[My shoulder continues to improve, albeit at a slower pace than I hoped. The doctor's warning against overuse has scared me a little. I think I'm another week from driving. Nonetheless I am perpetually optimistic about my eventual recovery. I genuinely expect to be better than ever when my shoulder is fully recovered. I also continue to learn about the goodness of others. I'll keep you posted.]
2-25-02
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