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Getting Older

I played a game called "flugby" with my students last week, for two days. It's a game that combines soccer and rugby: you can kick the ball downfield, and you can catch the ball and run with it. What I noticed in the midst of these two games is that I'm slowing down. Maybe it was the fact that the first of the two days consisted of a full soccer-length match of one and one-half hours, or maybe it was because I'm now thirty-one and not as sprightly as I once was.

Regardless of the cause, I'm starting to get older. I've been in my career for nearly five years, and have myself set up in a lifestyle that is nothing less than routine. There have been small changes here and there, but on the whole, I'm experiencing time faster than I was.

It makes me think a little of how life is meant to be seen. In my mind, the ideal life is one in which youth, joined with strength and vigor, gives way to age, joined with wisdom and experience. That is, of course, the ideal. Life could easily-- though pessimistically-- be described as one that transpires in seasons, with the spring and summer of youth (meaning life, passion, strength) passing into the fall and winter of old age (meaning death, lethargy, and indifference). It could just as easily, depending on a person's station in life, be described as the ancient Egyptians described it. The consistent behavior of the Nile River led them (according to my history professor) to see life as cyclical, to believe the universe changed, only to return eventually to its previous condition.

One thing I still know to be true, though, is that a person's perspective on life will determine his or her behavior in it. If life is seen as a series of opportunities, the opportunist will be active in fulfilling his or her dreams or desires. In this case, life can go this way or that, depending on the choices of the people in it. If it is seen as a play, the protagonist will act out his or her drama according to the script in mind (in essence, an outcome that has already been determined and which it is only the actors' roles to play their particular parts).

To be honest, I'm finding a shift in my perspective from the first to the second view, as though I'm moving from one season in life to another. Life is less about seizing challenges and more about fulfilling responsibility. It's becoming less about free will-- taking advantage of those opportunities writ large across the palate of my mind-- and more about determinism, accommodating myself to the role I was meant to play in life.

Ironically, I can change this, and so prove that the first view is correct (or so I think, right?). I can simply look for new opportunities to grasp onto and rebuke my own poor attitude. I never believed in determinism, anyway. Life IS a series of opportunities. It is our job to keep that perspective alive, even when it's cold outside.

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