Lost and Found

The older you get, you might find that the term “treasure” takes on an entirely new meaning. When you were younger you probably remember going grocery shopping with that favorite relative and longed for that candy bar or box of cereal with a prize inside. At that point you found yourself begging and pleading, all the while knowing that the fate of obtaining the treasure was in someone else’s hand.

Unfortunately, even if the outcome was positive the thrill became short lived and soon another apple of your eye would take focus. We were once again off on another search. You might see the pattern here and recognize that your life has continued on that same general path which was learned early on.

When you find yourself a little older and some may say wiser, you might choose to decide it is prudent to take a little breather from the physical hunt for stuff. After all it is and can be quite tiring. In times like these you often take an introspective look at not only yourself and what your future holds but it is hard not to glace at your past as well.

A common way some are looking into this window is through the phenomenon known as Facebook. For the present generation this is a communication tool to instantly share a thought or a feeling. For the people of past generations it is a way of finding people that they lost through the passage of time and some how wish to reconnect.

The younger generation of today snickers a little when they are told that the older generation, to communicate, would often write a letter and mail it, which is called snail mail because it is considered so slow. Yet the same electronic version minus the paper is considered, somehow new and improved. Alas, because of technology we have texting, private messaging and tweeting! Is this really a true improvement to communication or a way of avoidance?

While it is hard to know what the future holds, it appears we are getting more impersonal. Call me old fashion but I for one am not convinced that “social media” is not all that it claims to be. I’m totally convinced that if you wanted to you could spend practically your entire life online! Your rush to connect electronically can sometimes and I would say often does ultimately mean your disconnection from everyday society and real people.

Through technology it is claimed that the world is smaller because we can talk to and communicate instantly to practically anyone, anywhere. Yet, I would contend, that we are more isolated now than in any other time in history.

So, who is really lost in the world today? Do we have the ability to find them? I’m not talking about needing a global positioning system either. My question is: have we missed the point of the real treasure in our lives? Are we searching in the right place? Are we using the right tools?

In the end only you can determine if you have the answer to this puzzle. It’s my hope, however, that you will choose wisely and be the one that is found not ultimately lost!

The Silent Scream Inside

The older you get the more you realize life is passing by. If you are like many you might begin to wonder how much time you have left. Some people look at this in a realistic way while others tend to do everything they can to ignore facts. Middle aged is not fifty because no matter how much we would like to believe few people live to be one hundred and those that do have such minimal existence because they are worn out. You have to ask do you really want to last that long?

As you get older you begin to understand that you have either learned from your past or are continuing to make the same mistakes that you are so accustom to making.

Likewise, you quickly find that you are either bogged down with the “have to” or “should” lists in life or somehow you have realized the pointlessness of it all and have drifted to doing more of the things you really want to do, if you can figure out what that might be. While the movie is an older one, how many of us have our “Bucket List” and how many things have we really marked off that list? As easy as this might sound, figuring out what you might enjoy doing with your time and energy often can be a foreign concept in many respects.

A reality we all have to face is that the longer you live life the more you have numbed yourself as a natural means of protection. Broken hopes, dreams, missed opportunities and failures cause some of us to never wake up fully from the anesthetic because we ultimately fear the pain we might feel would destroy us.

Everyone I am sure at some point in their life takes an introspective look. However, after that first glance do we as individuals chart a new course? For many our imagined level of comfort that is derived from operating within our known boundaries keeps us firmly affixed, as if we were a train, that only had one set of tracks to run on.

Life, however, involves more than one direction and is made up of multiple layers of experiences and feelings. Unlike that of an onion you can never peel it all away but many times you find yourself realizing honestly how meaningless so much of what we spend our time doing actually can become.

After all we had no say in our conception. Likewise, for the vast majority of us we will have no say in our time of death. Most of us would like to believe that all that happens in between has some overall purpose. As individuals finding out that purpose can take a lifetime and for some the answer is never revealed.

Author J.K Rowling on the Fringe Benefits of Failure

While this address was given in 2008 the words spoken are timeless.
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