Wanda's Ramblings

That age ...

I am realizing I am quickly approaching “that age” where things begin to make more sense and I am seeing the wisdom in the things my parents and especially grandparents said. It is like so many other things in life that something sneaks up on you and you do not realize it is happening until it has happened. Part of it is realizing that my actions are falling more and more in line with my beliefs. For the longest time, I felt like many of my beliefs were outdated and old-fashioned. But, I am beginning to see more and more how much sense they make.

Now I don’t know if this process has been the same for others or just for me. For, you see, my life has been a bit different than the average person. I grew up mostly in the streets surrounded by a mostly criminal element. We had different values and ideas than most folks. The idea of doing the right thing because it was the right thing just didn’t fit with our crowd. That was lame or uncool because everything we did was because it would benefit us somehow. The thought of helping someone else without the potential for gain was lost on us.

Life on the streets and a criminal lifestyle are hard to describe to the uninitiated. I know this because every once in a while, I will be discussing something from my past or throwing out an idea and realize that the person I am talking to is shocked. They can’t grasp the ideals surrounding the events I am describing. I forget sometimes that I didn't grow up like most folks and that they can’t see things from my worldview. I guess that is one of the reasons I enjoy living in a sober living home because most of the people I interact with have a similar lived experience.

Most of them have not gone to the depths that I did but we are still all in the same ballpark. There are a few, such as a dear friend I met when I first moved into sober living, that have enough similar lived experiences that we can be totally at peace and ease around each other. I guess that is part of being at “that age” because I am beginning to have that feeling about other more “normal” people my age. I used to think, and occasionally still do, that those people were naïve, square, or deluded and were missing out.

Today I realize that I was the one who was delusional and missing out. By believing that the world was wrong, cold, and out to get me I avoided so much that would have been beneficial and rewarding. After moving to San Antonio in 1985 I consequentially left that life and friends behind. That was when I began to realize that I was not “normal” and that my values did not line up with society in general. I still harbored those same thoughts though and just “went along to get along” for the most part to try to get by as best as possible.

I don’t know for sure what the people in my life saw and thought but I always felt like an imposter fearing that I would be exposed at any moment. Like most things in life, I didn’t realize how much that affected me until I began to shed that skin after getting sober. Getting sober and working a 12-step program let me see my fallacious thinking and how it had affected my life for all these years. It has still taken several years of living “as if” for the old thinking to fade away. That kind of thinking can still pop in from time to time and it seems to appear most when I am meeting new people that I will have to depend on or engage with. I still find myself sizing them up for what I can get out of them or what harm they could bring me.

The good news is that my defects today pretty much stay in my head and don’t escape. I can still find myself acting upon those thoughts, but those days are far less common and the actions milder than they once were. I’m not sure where I thought I would wind up but all of the working on myself, disciplining my thoughts, and staying sober has resulted in simply becoming a worker among workers, a friend among friends, or in other words a decent human being. I remember when I was younger thinking decency was for suckers, that “nice guys finish last”, and that if anyone had described me as a decent human being I would’ve been insulted.

I guess we all get here on different tracks and that most people have some degree of fallacious and errant thinking that keeps them from reaching self-actualization. To me, self-actualization is when my “go-to” thinking and beliefs are in alignment with my core beliefs and when those beliefs are in relative alignment with general society. I say relative because not all societal norms are good for all people and each person's morality is going to differ somewhat from their fellow. The key for me is when those differences bring harm to another. By harm, I mean true harm not perceived harm or ego bruising. For example, if my perceived morality causes me to try to remove a freedom or right from another because I think they are wrong then that is harmful.

This brings me back to the topic at hand – “that age”. I remember there was a point in their lives when my grandfather, then my father, and now finally mine where the tone softened, the words came slower, and the judgment lessened. I remember when all the wisdom that poured out of the mouths of my grandfather and father seemed so silly and demeaning. Now those words pour out of my mouth and guess what? These darn kids aren’t listening any more than I did. I see now why they didn’t push too hard because they saw what I see today, and they knew that, if I lived long enough, I would come to the same conclusions.

Things don’t change as much as we think they do.