The half of it

It’s that time of life, when there are a bunch of reunion invites – school(s), engineering, MBA. The sudden influx makes me realise that it’s halftime. We are pausing – to collect our thoughts, to take a deep breath. I wonder aloud to D if the journey is like a mountain, and halftime puts you closer to the peak. The way is downhill and you can read that in more ways than one. Maybe that prompts folks to look back at the journey and savour the moments – the significance and insignificance, the hits and misses, the gains and losses. Or maybe it’s just a moment taken to catch our balance in a world that’s changing at a dizzying pace, and to seek the anchor of certainty that the unchanging past provides.

The past does offer that elixir called nostalgia. Nostalgia, I have often argued, is less the place, and more the time. A yearning based on the memory of a life stage – of what you were, and how you were. Revisiting the place and people helps you make the time travel even more vivid. The journey lands you at a time of hope and optimism, when you thought everything you wanted was a matter of you reaching out and taking it. Or maybe not. I can only speak for myself.

But beyond nostalgia, when one is looking back, what is one looking for? Is it the same as what one is looking for when projecting the future? What really is the expectation of the self, from itself?

My thinking on this invariably lands me at one place – meaning. For the story thus far, and the story going forward. But is it? This wonderful #longread – about the onset of professional decline being nearer than one thinks  (50 is apparently the average) – made me wonder if we “settle” for relevance. One could argue that this is applicable only in the work context. But think about it – children and grandchildren do provide meaning because they bestow a kind of immortality. But on any given day, what would be the state of the parent/grandparent if they weren’t relevant in the child’s/grandchild’s life? And isn’t that the scenario in an increasingly nuclear family setup?

And thus, as one takes stock at half time, with all the perspective from the baggage of the past and the baggage of the future, it’s a good time to ponder the path to meaning –  whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal, as Hunter S. Thompson so eloquently puts it in a related context. I am trying a middle path – float with the tide and seek small goals while at it. But, to borrow from the same article, make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.

And that means, maybe that journey I wrote about in the beginning is not a mountain’s downhill, but instead, a series of small hills, gracefully undulating until the end.

(via)

P.S. The discussion belongs to the same genre as happiness and contentment, enough and efficiency…