"We're 41, right?" she yelled from the other room.
Does it reallllly matter our age? Well, when you are no longer looking forward to being old enough to drive or vote or being older enough to be President (35 btw) but instead looking when we have to get our first colonoscopy...
Age is a number. And a number is a word. Words helps us convey ideas quickly without an extensive explanation as to what we are trying to say. The better our vocabulary, the fewer words we need to convey messages and thus efficiently arrive at our goal of communication. Provided the recipient has a similar vocabulary.
Today, my oldest daughter turned 11. She still thinks Santa is the bee knees. There will be a time (in the near-future likely) when that magic is gone. But instead of dreading that transition from magic to understanding that Mom has been around doing her best to create the magic for 2+ months, as parents -- 41-year-old parents -- we can embrace a new phase where she is helping create the magic herself for her younger sister.
So whether we are 41 or 11, the words we speak to ourselves are critical and the phases in life that we transition through will have someone that can relate to us.
We have never been as old as we are right now. But we will never be as young as we are right now. Don't choose one or the other. Embrace both. Sage wisdom brimming with energy and possibility.
I took a sneak peek at the quotes below and the first one talks of transitions. Come! Join me in the next section!
What is death? Either a transition or an end. I am not afraid of coming to an end, this being the same as never having begun, nor of transition, for I shall never be in confinement quite so cramped anywhere else as I am here.
— -- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
If the triggers for happy moments are so ordinary and so accessible, why does “finding “happiness remain such a big challenge for so many people? And why, when we “find “it, does it so easily slip away? Happiness happens when life seems to be going your way. You feel happy when life behaves the way you want it to.
— -- Mo Gawdat, Solve for Happy
Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
— -- Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Rads Take
How horrible was it before you were born? Not horrible? Perhaps a state of complete unawareness? Well that's not eternal torture.
Alternatively, a better, more freeing state could be what Seneca conjectures with a more transcendental experience that removes the shackles of a body -- the constant cleaning, exercising, eating...as Seinfeld said, if your body was a car, you wouldn't buy it. The Stoics fully acknowledge that we are not in full control of our bodies. They are an external whereas our mind is the internal essence of us.
So to be free of that wouldn't be so bad either!
Now Seneca is a guy that was dead long, long, long before any of our great-grandparents were born. But as we read his words above, he continues to live and his ideas that he felt strongly enough about to write continue to live. If he has reached some transcendental plane and is observing my typing this right now, ya gotta think he'd be happy. And if he just ain't, I am glad he left us with some good thoughts to consider as we do our best to be happy.
Speaking of happy, are we allowed to find happiness in external events? Yes. Should we be relying on external events to transition us from a state of depression, anger, or ennui? No. So......what the crap?
I am reading Ego is the Enemy now. A quote kicked off a chapter from Hillel stating that essentially you have to stick up for yourself because you can't rely on others to do it for you. But you also can't be self-focused, self-centered or self-interested.
If you want to stay on the horse, don't learn too far to the right and too far to the left. Do that, and you'll be just fine.
Temperance.
And to Frankl, taking responsibility. Being productive. Not letting it defeat you. Expecting challenges. Finding solutions. That's what life is about.
I say that when it comes to AI best practices, good prompting is "the diet and exercise" of AI. It isn't more complicated but we make it up in our mind to be more complicated. "There's gotta be something more."
What if it's about just doing your best and making life better for those around you? Is that enough for you?