There is a common cliché about your life passing before your eyes just before you die. If such be true then perhaps my body/mind knows something I don’t know. The last few months my life in review has been on a never-ending loop. I ache to stop it, but expressing with the new word Señora taught me eons ago, I keep perseverating on the past. If I could escape out of my mind I would. Maybe I have already and I do not know it.
This perseveration likely has more to do with the fact that I just turned 70. I reckon I should be celebrating that I have reached this milestone with my mental capacities or more or less intact, that I am reasonably healthy, and that I can still do most of what I want to do. But a line from a Toby Keith song does comes to mind, “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once as I ever was.” In all reality this milestone precipitated a somewhat profound depression. The finish line has been approaching with increasing rapidity for a while, but now the tape fluttering in the wind across that line is coming sharper and sharper into focus. I read a while back that older people are happier as they tend to live more in the moment. Or as Buddha advised, live in the present, not the future, and not the past… so very hard to do and obviously I have not gotten there.
More than once I have seen an interview of someone famous who avowed that they would not change one iota of their life. I just want to scream bullshit at the top of my voice. I suppose you could delude yourself into believing that, but I don’t really believe them. There are so many things about my life that if I could change them, I would. But lacking Fox’s DeLorean this is not going to happen.
What I am discovering with this stuck VCR in my mind is that I am full of regrets. I am ruing things that I did. I am ruing things that I did not do. I am ruing erroneous paths followed. I am ruing opportunities ignored or missed. I am ruing my all too frequent less than stellar behavior with other people
Where is that frigging pause button, enough is enough.
Bad boy, bad boy
Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When life comes for you
Bad boy, bad boy
Whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When life comes for you
Reflection is normal. I’m not an expert on depression. Maybe try to give yourself some grace David. Then make a conscious effort to embrace all that is good around you. By the way, you don’t look or act old to me!
I’ve found myself thinking about life in terms of the number of potential years left, divided by the increasing pains, and raised to the power of now or never, realizing that some of the “wish I’d done” have moved into the never category.
I try not to focus on regrets since there’s nothing I can about them anyway, except perhaps not make the same mistake again, and do the things I regret not doing–those I can still have an impact on.
I had much the same issue three years ago. After a long talk with an older friend of many years I realized that ageing is it’s own reward. It also beats the alternative. Stay well, and safe.