Wisdom blooming late, or simply a late awakening?

As we truly advance in years, certain attitudes and behavior take on understanding and clarity that we feel will tide us over till we die.  It is quite easy to say that the accumulated years of experience have taught us the incalculable lessons we feel we have been vested with.  But still if we scratch deeper we could also claim that there are other things at play that may have triggered their genesis.

Anyway, through our mellowed years many of us find that we have become more tolerant and accepting not only of others’ faults but of the uncertainties and at times cruelties of life.  We find ourselves not only less impatient, but actually more understanding, as to how and why a lot of people we have put trust in have fallen way short of our expectations, however realistic those expectations may be.

We have learned to not expect too much about the temporal desires of life from actually happening, unlike before when our expectations were iron-clad and steadfast.  Now we learn to take things in stride, diminishing the gravity and passion of our desires, and expectations.  We have learned to “make do” with whatever results life may have dealt with us.  With the least of regrets, and more of contentment if not consignment.

And I do not believe that all this is attributed to old age which has dulled or slowed down most things we do or think.  And needless to state, we assume that practically everything we do or perceive has slowed to a walk or worse, as we are in our twilight years, not just the physical pace, but including the mental acuities we have acquired during the growing years.

So why are we as almost default more tolerant, less impatient, and more accepting of the realities which in our younger years, we used to resent with gusto when they do not go our way?

I do believe that the real reason for this world of change is because we ourselves have looked inward and found that in the things we have been doing and planning we have constantly failed not only ourselves, but also the people around.  And this in spite of our darn honest to goodness attempts to try to do better. And this frank realization is easily arrived at if only we are quite honest with ourselves.

We find that failure is our constant companion in this life, our sojourn buddy who has kept with us, unshakable and unwavering.  Neither could we shake it off or leave it behind. Failures not in the things of the spirit, but failures in all the temporal or earthy things that we have hitched our futures on.

Only our spiritual quests will find fruition and realization.  And this we will ultimately realize not in this life, but after we have shaken off our mortal coil.

How do we know?  We simply will have to latch on to our Faith and to what it promises.

And because old age typically does not last long, the waiting may be sooner than we think.