Life, In Stages

 

I had a revelation today.
I'm currently reading a book - Managing Complexity, by Robin Wood - which was published in the year 2000.

My first thought: Where the heck did that time go? Why haven't I achieved much in a quarter of a century?!

My second thought was the revelation: 25 years ago, I was 13. I had five years before I would even be a legal adult.  It would be two years before I got my first "proper" part-time job (as opposed to earning pocket money doing gardening, car washing, and dog-walking for the predominantly elderly neighbours in the street I grew up in.) 

In those twenty-five years, this is what I have achieved:

. I've worked in youthwork, retail, business development, finance, marketing, project management and leadership in the non-profit space.

. I've survived two major psychotic episodes, and learned to manage schizophrenia alongside the challenges of working full time, and living independently.

. I've survived violent abuse, and homelessness.

. I've published a total of 14 books, and had 5 articles published.

. I've won three writing competitions.

. I've built a loving, supportive, happy marriage.

. I've come through a major global pandemic, during which I was under full shielding protocols.

. I've had to navigate the reality of losing my sight.

That's...actually quite a lot, especially considering that roughly half of it, and all of the high impact negatives (except for the pandemic and the sight loss) happened before I was 30.

I then realised something else: 25 years from now, I will be 63. 

The likelihood, going by medical estimates, is that I will have been completely blind for around 13yrs at that point, but I'm working on creating a viable employment which will accommodate that - check out The Productive Pessimist Ltd, and see if anything resonates as something it would benefit you to pay for, so that you get what you need, and I actually get to have the 'viable' employment I need.

25 years from 2050, I'll be 88.

It's likely I could still be alive at that point - I don't smoke, I don't drink alcohol every day, I eat a fair amount of fresh food, including fruit and vegetables, I do strength, resistance, cardio, and flexibility workouts 3-5 times per week.  Within my family, people have died at ages ranging from 62-102 years old.  

Assuming the best-case scenario, that I am still alive at the age of 88, the perspective this revelation has given me is:
. I've spent the past 25 years building stability

. I can spend the next 25 years building success - my business, my reputation as a speaker and writer, the continuation of my marriage.

. I can spend the final (presumed) 25 years I assume I may get to enjoy building a legacy - the roadmap for those who'll come after me, have their own mid-life freakouts at how "far behind" their peers they are.

Of course, the world may end in the next 25 months.  And that will seriously mess with a lot of peoples' plans. But, if it ends completely, it won't matter to anyone.

If it ends in the usual, shambolic, partial, tattered way that worlds (or at least paradigms which created experienced worlds) have always ended up until now...well, that will be frustrating, but there will be less urgency or relevance to anyone's plans in the echo of that particular aftermath.

But we've been here before, many times, and, despite peoples' fears for the end of the world, the world has simply been reborn into something it turned out people could manage to live well in after all.

I've done a lot in the past 25 years.
Doing the things I've done in that 25 years has taken a lot out of me.
But I feel sufficiently recalibrated and re-resourced, and am ready to begin the work I can do in the next two stages of 25 years.

I've lived a lifetime in the past 25 years.
But I have at least two more lifetimes to create.