From the Memory Vault: changes over time come from a lifetime of accumulated experiences

Written July 8, 2001,
Updated April 30, 2026)


Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Gandhi


Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much. Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.

William Cowper

I need some words of wisdom today because I feel so unwise. I have need of some simple sentences that contain profound truths because I find myself in that endless regress that takes me round and round the pretty lake of my thoughts, actions, desires, and self-fulfilling fulminations, time and again, over a lifetime, observing the passing parade of life, the human comedy and tragedy, from a distance, thinking and pondering the “questions” (What is consciousness?), never actually speaking to anyone or conversing about all these things, but returning to my old self as if nothing much of a transformative nature had occurred.

You see, I like to think that one day during one of my walks at the park or gardens, peacefully indulging in the beauty and “everyday” sublimity of Nature, I will have an overwhelming moment of epiphany and suddenly achieve the superhuman resolve to live the life I keep meaning to live. The “Aha! Moment” of all time for me.

Okay. I can dream, but let’s examine those words, “keep meaning to live”

So much interferes with the meaningful, mindful way of life: “But I deserve this, I deserve that,” I say to myself. “I am this way. I am that way. Nothing can change that.”

I say and do things that are quite different from what I am thinking, and this is how I survive. This is how I think I keep my sanity when it is really just the opposite. I am courting the opposite of sanity. If I went out and did what I thought or imagined what I really wanted to do, and if I had succombed to this often enough in the past, I probably would not be here today, or else I would be on the road to not being here. Or, I would be a very different person today. But all that was not meant to be and never was. There is something to say for fear of consequences and holding on to your pride and dignity, even if inside you sometimes feel you have very little, so why not let a depressed state of mind take over? That way it’s easier to do the things you know are harmful to yourself, and to others by extension.

I have learned a lot over the course of my life. But I have achieved that degree of wisdom which is in need of further maturation because my actions and thoughts are not often enough in synchrony. Not harmonized. Sometimes they are, and when that happens I feel more at peace with myself. I experience little bits of what we call “real happiness,” although I have to say that is a term I am not too well acquainted with.

I have been at peace with the status quo often enough, but I have not been discipliined enough to effect lasting change. I need to earnestly and sincerely ask God for that change and seek it much more passionately, if that is even possible in a passionless state of mind, and even if it causes me to confront some fundamental things about myself and my identity, and in the process, learn finally how to live at peace with myself by seeking God within myself, not outside myself. I keep resisting this because it is very, very hard to achieve.

I wrote the above words almost 25 years ago. When I go back and re-read online journal entries from decades past, I sometimes am startled when I realize that the person who wrote those words is not the same person who is reading it now, these many years later.

How have I changed since then? I know I have in many subtle yet remarkable ways. But what have I done to further the elusive goal of achieving peace within myself? How much closer am I, really, to knowing who or what God is? Not enough, but much further along the path of wisdom than when I wrote the first part of this essay in 2001.

I have been through the life-altering experience that comes from caregiving for a loved one over many of those years, and from the life-changing transition from a job and career to retirement. That happened almost ten years ago, and I am a very different person today, unquestionably.

I am closer to the answers I seek. But I am still seeking, still questioning, but in a much more peaceful and less fearful or anxious frame of mind. I’m learning for learning’s sake, not for some means to an end.

I just turned 75. I am more confident in the person I am, but I think also I have reached another one of those plateaus in life and need to continue the journey up another hill, not a mountain, and onward to the peaceful valleys that lie ahead, waiting for me.

I think I write differently. Writing and posting online for 30 years has given me more of the mature wisdom in old age than I would otherwise have had. Writing has been my lifeline, But I still need to write more fearlessly and uninhibitedly. Or do I? Maybe that’s just for when you are young.

My online diary of personal essays has been a written recording of the middle stage of life merging into old age. As I’ve told people, “I cannot NOT write, but I never intended from the beginning to write uninhibitedly because I keep a lot of my life private. One could say hidden or secret. It’s all the same. And everybody is that way, except perhaps for the most fearless, shameless, or preternaturally honest writers among us. Is it worth the price to pay?

I have so many thoughts to ponder. But what I do know is that I have come to be who I am today through a very long and complex process of experiences and living.

Countless decisions have been made. Endless tormenting worry, regret and future indecision were the result of many of those bad decisions, which, looking back, is entirely understandable because of that bad luck, those bad choices, the wrong moves, and Fate all had severe consequences. But they were also key contributors to my personal spiritual growth and maturity. Suffering is the oldest form of wisdom.

Now, thankfully, the worst of the worries and fears of the past, and the seemingly endless self-punishing guilt over horribly mistaken decisions, have mostly dissolved and lost their psychic sting. That’s because I don’t have to prove anything anymore and I answer only to myself and God.

The worst of times are, however, still remembered in awful, but brief flashbacks, and later unconsciously restructured in bizarre and unsettling dreams which I forget, but which still have staying power. For the rest of my life? Probably.

Since I am on the final leg of the journey, this world has receded in importance, and the next one looms much larger on my horizon. I feel terribly sorry for those physicalists and materialists who claim with certainty that everything ends in death and that there is no soul that lives beyond death. My belief is that we are spiritual beings temporarily lodging with physical bodies. Why? Because consciousness never dies, nor is there any finitude about it.

I think as I get older it really boils down to this: the present moment is all I have. I do what I need and want to do now because there is no way I can ever anticipate the future, as when I was young. If I try to do so, and if I dwell on how my inexorable decline into old age has dramatically accelerated in the past year, horrible thoughts and terrible “what ifs” about the possibilities inherent in extreme aging and infirmity pop up and try to scare the wits out of me, dampening whatever feelings of peace and equanimity I have achieved at this stage of life. Despair can soon follow if it’s allowed entry.

How can we ever be free of our daily worries and our existential fears? By the realization that there is no tomorrow. Only now. Everything we have learned and have come to know and cherish, our friends, loved ones soulmates and kindred spirits, dwell with us in the present moment. It always has been this way.

One of my 8th grade students 43 years ago chose this for their graduation song. I’ll never forget it, and I’ve never seen any of them again. But, oh, how much I learned from them.

“Time” — The Alan Parsons Project