Family Times
Dells Events
Feb. 16, 2002
There are many pleasures watching the winter Olympics and one of them is pure appreciation for the physically beautiful young athletes. In the prime of their lives, at top physical condition, their health and beauty shine forth. The lovely figure skaters, graceful and stunning, the speed skater who after the race, strips off his tight hood to reveal a shock of sandy colored hair, all are breathtakingly gorgeous. And they are gorgeous in a way that is not an icon, a decoration or an airbrushed photo shoot.
It got me thinking if there was any time in my life I was anywhere near like that. I think it was right before my first child, in my late teens, early 20s. I took my health and grace for granted, blessed with a slim and smoothly working body.
Our journey in life has several paths. The physical one peaks rather early. Brett Favre, our Wisconsin favorite, is now pushing the envelope of prime football age at 32. Most human beings are at their best physically in their late teens and 20s and literally it is all down hill from there. As Bette Midler said, “After thirty my body decided it wanted a life of its own.”
Heroic measures are attempted to stem this tide since sexual attractiveness is based, biologically, in “fecundity” – signs of ability to reproduce. The newest form of stemming the aging tide is something called Botox, a botulism neurotoxin that paralyses muscles and erases wrinkles leaving the face with the inability to scowl. Too bad, I say.
I prefer to consider other paths on this journey of life that peak at different times later in life.
The psychological journey, for example, I believe peaks somewhere about where I am right now. Finally, I have resolved those pesky childhood issues and learned to accept others and myself as we are imperfections as well as strengths. I am past expecting myself or others to be perfect. It is also the beginning of the time of life I notice married people seem to be happiest. One psychologist said that marriage is for finishing your childhood and if you finish your childhood you can live “happily ever after.”
The intellectual journey peaked for me somewhere earlier than now. I think it was maybe in my 40s when I learned new things rapidly, finding myself in situations where I needed a swift learning curve and I was up to it. Nowadays I don’t retain as much as I used to when reading things. More often now I forget where I¹ve placed something and find myself standing in a room not remembering why I’m there.
But I believe the peak of the spiritual journey is still ahead. One could see it as a preparation for death, but I prefer to see it as the time of life other things diminish in importance and we are faced with the primary issue of conscious humankind that more and more in the years ahead when my work-a-day world diminishes and I have more time to ponder and connect spiritually.
This is what it is to be human. Those beautiful young people, although we nearly worship them, are only one stage in this earthly life.