From the side of your eyes, nothing changed. For others looking at you, the changes are pretty remarkable.
Often, we’re the last ones to understand the impact of change on ourselves because we usually can’t see it.
As your body migrates south, the ultimate destiny being 30-inch ankles, we hope wisdom migrates north, accepting both the losses and the gains.
But in each landmark, our pace slows down a little bit of knowledge and experience and insight make us much more sure and creative.
For a long time, lifetime change is a whole world of trade-offs between the physical and the intellectual and if we celebrate what is going well and what is doing better, each of life’s seasons becomes enjoyable.
Twenty years ago, we could visit a medieval city and one day feel we’ve given it a review. Today, we’re lucky if we can get out of the main square in a day. We’d not really see more, but everything we see has much more meaning, kickstarts more thoughts and ideas, and reaches sideways to hold hands with many memories.
What we’re looking at hasn’t changed, but what we bring to the viewing has changed remarkably. Thoughtfulness replaced speed, and variety has changed, linking up memory chains.
So as we look at lifestyle change, the focus is not on deterioration and loss. Its expansion of capacities and gain new layers of experience in everything we see and do.
The fun quotient is either stable or goes up if we understand that sprinting is not the only way of moving through life. So, in personal appearance, we’ve come to move a little further up the index. In food, clarity of taste and presentation moves up the ladder past bulk and portability. In opinions, balance becomes more evident. In travel, comfort takes precedence over ticking boxes.
Research becomes as essential as a surprise—the search for meaning moves ahead of the need for new jolts of experience.
Life becomes much more satisfying and engaging as the constant need for fireworks abates. Marriage, the first children, college, their marriage, jobs, and grandchildren cause massive lifestyle changes. The anticipation of these events must always outweigh any sense of loss if we want to grow with the years.