The last few years have been quite special. Some things have happened and they were very sad. Some other things have been very happy.
Now that the end of the year approaches, it’s time to do a little review. I am not a big fan of doing what everybody else does, but any excuse is as good as other to rewind, and consider where we are to then decide where we want to go to.
We all have goals (if you don’t, please stop reading, find them, write them down and have them somewhere close when you can see them every day!), but what’s a goal without knowing where we stand at the moment.
Picture yourself in an unknown city, standing in the middle of the street. You are out for sightseeing and there is a certain place that you would like to go to. You search for it in a map. Did you find it? Cool, that is your destination (your goal). What’s next? You guessed it: you need to know where you are in that city at the moment in order to map out the way that will get you there.
This time around this goal setting exercise is a bit different from others. This year I’ve reached an age that makes me feel like I am in the peak of the mountain and then everything else is downwards… I don’t really feel “downwards” but when I look back at my life up until this point, it feels a bit that way.
Then I know I tell everyone otherwise but in a way it is what I feel. It’s like I don’t really believe it is the peak but sometimes in certain things (goals) I think about, my first automatic response or reaction is “I’m too old for that, I should have done that so-many years ago”. Then I realize: “no, not old at all, I can do that anytime!”
This year has been a lot of looking back and realizing that a long time has passed but I actually feel the same I used to when I was twenty or even twenty-five years younger. I am still that person who loved music and wanted to travel the world, have an exciting life, and not regretting anything.
Did I do all those things that I wanted? Most definitely. I have done all that I wanted. When I look back I’ve had amazing years and experiences. I feel the same though, but I don’t see myself the same way. I’ve realized this when listening to music.
I’ve listened to pretty much the same bands over the years since I was a teenager or since I was in my twenties (you can tell by the songs I choose to accompany my posts here). Their music has evolved, just like we all have evolved. I’ve been “rescuing” this music mainly this year and have been listening to it again. While I still enjoy the music, maybe I don’t feel as identified with all the lyrics anymore. I guess we match (or at least I did) what we listen to to our state of mind at the moment.
At that time, awkwardness or the feeling of inadequacy mixed with certain level of rebelliousness and wanting to be different at the same time made me prone to certain type of content in everything I listened to or read or watched. There were many contradictions and opposing thoughts, but I guess that was normal at that point in life.
Now that music takes me back to how I felt when I listened to it. It is that powerful and I love that about music.
Now one of these bands I used to listened to published a new album with lyrics that resembled those of those years, but well, actually a little more “decaffeinated” and “soft” and it almost like they wanted to bring back those years… To me it just sounded strange that fifty-year-olds were trying to sound like twenty-year-olds again. It sounded a bit frivolous to me and of course, very disappointing.
What I realized after that is that we all have “calmed down”. The relentless dissatisfaction of youth has been substituted by the realization that taking action is its best remedy. If I don’t like something now, I work to change it.
When I look at my every day, it just looks like I’m not accomplishing enough or fast enough, but it is only when I look back, when I realized that I have accomplished a lot. I am sure you have too. If you doubt it, write in a piece of paper, decade by decade of your life, every success you have had, no matter how small and obvious it might seem. You will soon realize you have done a lot and also how much more you have to go.
I feel the same (I am the same) but my priorities and goals have changed, my way of approaching things and dealing with issues have changed, how could they not?
I’ve said I’ve done everything that I wanted so far. I’ll make sure I’ll keep it that way and continue to do whatever it is I want.
To many more successes.
This post best read while listening to “You Only Live Once” by The Strokes