Friday 3 October 2008

Grow up, would you?


Maybe it takes some of us who had a poor start our whole lives to grow up. It's been borne upon me in the past few weeks of stress and overwork that, although I don't find this any less wretched and exhausting than I ever did, my resources and resilience are a lot greater these days - maybe I'm finally becoming, not a happy or successful grown-up, more of a sad, fat, silly one, I'm afraid, but a grown-up all the same, a person with more of a centre (or do I mean a person needing less of a centre) who can flow with life's vicissitudes, despise and deplore them, feel anger and hopelessness, but hold (hold what? something) and come back from them, still able in the midst of it all to see the beauty and the humour and sometimes to connect, not disappear into my own scowling vortex of uncoping. Phew. 'Course, these times when you think you've arrived somewhere, you know that sooner or later you'll spot the real summit still there, far away through the mist.

10 comments:

Zhoen said...

(o)

Anonymous said...

Is it enough to say: I know just what you mean?

Rosie said...

yes...I have walked away from an impossible situation without guilt or sense of failure...that would have been impossible only a few years ago. why does it take so long? perhaps this is the only compensation for aging!

Peter Clothier said...

Oh, don't grow up. Keep struggling to do it, that's what the creative eye is all about. And yes, that infinite horizon. It just keeps popping up in the distance.

Anonymous said...

I don't think there is a summit - there's just the journey. Sometimes the path is bumpy and sometimes the path is smooth

Dale said...

I'm still hoping someday to grow up as much as you when I met you. Don't tell me there's more after that!

Lucy said...

Dear Jean!

Natalie d'Arbeloff said...

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh......

Dave King said...

I can connect with all of that, but I wouldn't have put it so well - which doesn't help, I know.

Anonymous said...

Perfect piece. Sums it up.