Take me to the river

[firecat]

There is an idea in the mainstream mind of an average/typical person, and that person is a particular age. But it doesn't make sense for the person to be a particular age because it's not like there are a huge number more people that age than any other age. I have also noticed that age goes along with particular outlooks on life.

So I have a picture of life as a flow, and each "stage" being itself, as opposed to picture of life being a hill where you are too young and then just right and then too old, where you are incomplete and then successful and then atrophying (implying that the people at the top of the hill -- average/typical people in their 30s or whatever -- are "best" somehow). Each "stage" (I don't think there really are stages, that is, not fixed ones, but I do think a bunch of people have certain tendencies at certain ages or with certain life experiences) has aspects that it's best at and that are more difficult at other stages, and each stage has aspects that it's bad at and that are easier to avoid at other stages. For example, adolescents think intensely and feel intensely and it's hard to recapture the intensity of this at later stages, but it can also lead to narrow-mindedness and destructive behavior. It's easier to be more easy-going as an adult but adults tend to worry about things a lot and have a hard time playing the way children do. Also, they often aren't necessarily searching. They're kind of in a rut of day to day living. I thought I would avoid this since I have chosen not to have children but I feel myself in a rut anyway, almost as if I am designed to be that at this age. Older people seem happier with simple things, but they also have a tendency to dismiss everyone else. Actually, I guess people in every stage have that tendency.