Last night, for the first time in maybe five years, we walked two movies back-to-back. It just so happened that both were classics.
The first was Sunset Boulevard, picked for the primary reasons that we haven’t seen it in a long time, we love it, and it was free. The second was Breakfast At Tiffany’s, which I’ve seen twice (not in a long time) and couldn’t recall either of it other than it was two young kept people who develop a friendship. It was surprisingly good.
It was interesting that we watched both movies on the same night because there is a similar string in a way. In essence, all the main characters are younger people struggling to pay bills who are at risk of (or dream of) becoming kept people by people with means.
It is an interesting dynamic in a romantic relationship, a financially struggling person and financially comfortable person. Both people have to be totally grounded (I believe) and noble for it to work. The risks otherwise of course, is that one person takes advantage of the other. This can work how we might expect it to work, wherein the wealthy person exploits the poor person; in Sunset Boulevard, the struggling “hero” as consumed by the wealthy older person until he loses his independence and identity and becomes a virtual prisoner. But it can work the other way too, where the struggling person wraps their tentacles around the poor person. In my own instance, I think of how I was 20-something with work ethic and a college degree and a savings account who met a high school dropout with bad credit and literally nothing to her name. I feel like she latched on to me and drove me to get what she wanted in life until such time 30 years later that I was no longer capable or needed and so was put to pasture, all the while gaslighting me. I was duped. I should have been wiser. Smarter. I became a victim. It worked out for me in the end (I was free!!!) but I lost 25 years of my life and my health in the process.
So it definitely can be where a person-in-need becomes entrapped, but so too can it work the other way. So it’s very important always that we enter a relationship with our eyes wide open, and we are aware of the potential dynamics, and we work to stay on sound footing, whether financially or otherwise. Anyway, that was my take.
I loved watching those movies last night. It was a fun way to relax on a stormy evening. And I liked Breakfast At Tiffany’s a lot more than I thought I would. And how much I wish I’d been wiser about relationship dynamics when I was 23.
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
How The Passage Of Time Has Influenced My Perspective
I was 43 the first time I started to relax.
For 20 years of my adulthood I’d fretted and toiled. Fretted and toiled, mostly about each of life’s milestones.
First, it was to graduate college. I was going to university in a small town that I didn’t like very much, because being in my early 20s I didn’t want to be in a small town — I wanted to be in the city! So I wanted out of that college, and the best way to do that was to graduate, so I fretted and toiled my way toward graduation.
Then I graduated and it was time to get my career going. Except we were in a mini-recession (early 90s) at the time and no one was hiring recent college graduates. So I worked a series of grunt jobs as a mover and a DJ and bank teller and tutor, and meanwhile went back to school to earn my teaching certification. I’d love to say those were good times, but they weren’t: it was a time of very low checking account balances and day-to-day drudgery and all through those years I fretted and I toiled.
Then I got out of school and got my first career job and then wanted so desperately to have a house. I felt like houses were out of my reach, and felt a lot of resentment at older generations for creating a world where I couldn’t afford a house. I spent a lot of time fretting and toiling although after a few years I was actually able to buy a house (!).
And so it went.
Every single step of the way, year after year of my 20s and then my 30s, I fretted and toiled. Fretted and toiled. I was pretty miserable most of the time, if I’m honest. Yes, I had my moments of joy, and on the surface everyone always commented how happy I seemed, but there was just this overwhelming sense of toiling and fretting surging through my veins like an invisible poison. I worked and worked, and when I wasn’t working I was taking care of the kids and the house and covering for an always-absent (now ex) wife, and all the time I worried and fretted about this and that, always worrying about the next milestone.
Then there was hope!
There was a moment — actually two — when I was 43 when I finally relaxed.
The first moment was on an early morning bike ride. We were at our vacation home, which I loved BUT which I was forever worried about paying for, and we were at the house one summer week when I was on a dawn mountain bike ride through the forest. There was a moment along the river when suddenly I realized the early morning sun was on my face, and the birds were singing all around me, and the river was murmuring next to me, and meanwhile the sweet smell of nature was in the air. And suddenly I just stopped. I stopped, got off my bike, and just soaked in that moment for a minute, then two minutes, then 15 minutes. There literally was not another human being around me, and I suddenly wondered if I were in heaven because it was just soooooo peaceful. Up until that time, I’d never experienced a moment like that before.
The next moment when I relaxed was THE moment when I relaxed. Age 43, and having dinner with my parents, and was making great money, and my work seemed to love me, and the kids were teens and seemed happy, and my (now ex) wife was around helping a little more often, and I was even still in my athletic prime (I’d batted .920 in and still regularly making diving catches during the recently-ended softball season), and suddenly I thought, “I’ve made it. I’m going to be okay.” I actually thought life might freeze at that very moment, where I’d be okay and age 43 forever.
But time didn’t stop. And (thankfully) life didn’t stop.
It kept on coming. Moment after moment, day after day, year after year.
That was way over 10 years ago.
In the decade since that moment at dinner with my parents, so many changes have happened in my life. I was let go for the very first time, and then for the second time. I battled a fluke lung disease (successfully, thank goodness). I got divorced and then after promising myself I’d never date again actually dated again and got remarried again (to a much more present person than my ex was). And meanwhile the years just keep on coming. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
To me, the most shocking things aren’t the life changes I’ve undergone since I was 43 (actually, each one of them has been a blessing). It’s that each year just keeps on passing. That life just keeps on passing. One year after the other. And it makes me realize the folly of toiling and fretting about milestones, about wanting to achieve certain things on a certain timeframe in life at the expense of being in the moment. Because life is in that moment. My amazing ex-grandmother-in-law used to say, “Life is what happens while you’re making your future plans.” How true that is.
I wish I could go back in time. And to tell myself to stop fretting. And to stop toiling. Because that stole so much happiness from me, and sucked 20 years of my life away.
But.
But!
I’m here now. And presumably I still have a few decades of good life left in me. And I’ve been influenced by the passage of time in that I’ve learned to just be in the moment, to just feel joy in the here and now, and to take a moment to appreciate each and every day.
Regret is folly. Better is to take what we’ve learned and to apply that to our present and future. Because our present and future is all we have in our life. And I’m just so grateful that time has taught me to appreciate today.
Wishing you a great day.
NOTES:
Every day WordPress offers a writing prompt. I’ve never been a writing prompt person but actually have been enjoying these prompts. This is my response to today’s prompt.
Life, Work & Wonder 