Nick Cave says,
"We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self — This is me! Here I am! — in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces.
Then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person — I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world." -- from Faith, Hope, and Courage
I can get that. The trouble with a lot of these types of musings is they come from people who have found comfort in their later years. Maybe that came from some hard work, and maybe from some luck. When you're young, you can't predict how those forces will play out. So the old repeat the old truisms, that are true, except, not always.
If they were always true, then people who are working three jobs would have enough to feed their families.
We are stuck between centuries of traditions and an uncertain future. The one got our ancestors through adversity and the other we can only imagine. When I read the stories of those ancestors, I can feel their sense of being in this same place. I see myself as the result of their dreams.
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