Mine is the novel, which is tricky, because there are all sorts of ways for novels to bog down.
Not that we are getting to middle age, but here's an interesting bit of Anne Morrow Lindbergh that I hold close, because it is indeed a relief to know that cannibal touristing is not for me.
Saying no to Harvard Law School was a lot of fun, much more fun than having an opportunity to say yes to Harvard undergrad would have been.
Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living; one’s pride, one’s false ambitions, one’s mask, one’s armor. Was that armor not put on to protect one from the competitive world? If one ceases to compete, does one need it? Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!
It is true that the adventures of youth are less open to us. Most of us cannot, at this point, start a new career or raise a new family. Many of the physical, material and worldly ambitions are less attainable than they were twenty years ago. But is this not often a relief? "I no longer worry about being the belle of Newport," a beautiful woman, who had become a talented artist, once said to me. And I always liked that Virginia Woolf hero who meets middle age admitting: "Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires…I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely. Certain things lie beyond my scope. I shall never understand the harder problems of philosophy. Rome is the limit of my traveling…I shall never see savages in Tahiti spearing fish by the light of a blazing cresset or a lion spring in the jungle or a naked man eating raw flesh…"
Mine is the novel, which is tricky, because there are all sorts of ways for novels to bog down.
Not that we are getting to middle age, but here's an interesting bit of Anne Morrow Lindbergh that I hold close, because it is indeed a relief to know that cannibal touristing is not for me.
Saying no to Harvard Law School was a lot of fun, much more fun than having an opportunity to say yes to Harvard undergrad would have been.
Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living; one’s pride, one’s false ambitions, one’s mask, one’s armor. Was that armor not put on to protect one from the competitive world? If one ceases to compete, does one need it? Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!
It is true that the adventures of youth are less open to us. Most of us cannot, at this point, start a new career or raise a new family. Many of the physical, material and worldly ambitions are less attainable than they were twenty years ago. But is this not often a relief? "I no longer worry about being the belle of Newport," a beautiful woman, who had become a talented artist, once said to me. And I always liked that Virginia Woolf hero who meets middle age admitting: "Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires…I am not so gifted as at one time seemed likely. Certain things lie beyond my scope. I shall never understand the harder problems of philosophy. Rome is the limit of my traveling…I shall never see savages in Tahiti spearing fish by the light of a blazing cresset or a lion spring in the jungle or a naked man eating raw flesh…"
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