As we get older we begin to see people and the world as it really is.
Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been to two reunions and a funeral.
The first reunion was back at the College I attended while the second one was with the group who took the same course as me (Biochemistry). The Funeral was that of one of my wife’s aunts.
Back in 1966 Biochemistry was a new subject. I wanted to do it because it said in John Wyndham’s “Trouble with Lichen” that it was the science of the future. So naturally I wanted some of that. As a discipline, it does seem to encourage lateral and independent thinking – since you look at the same set of issues from two different points of view at once – biological and chemical.
This seemed to have rubbed off on the group. There were 42 of us who had done the course in the first place and 27 turned up. Somewhat over half had made a career in Biochemistry – there were rather a lot of bearded Profs. around. The rest of us had carried out a really diverse set of careers, in sales, in music, in law and in business We even had one recently “retired” MP. But what was noticeable was that they pretty much all seemed to have managed to live their lives on their own terms and seemed to get a kick out of being alive. Needlless to say we all went off and committed musical atrocities in a pub. The Landlord let me out at 1 AM
The other reunion was mainly composed of people who had done what they were supposed to – civil servants, city, corporate life, the church. They seemed much more sedate and for a fair chunk of them it looked like whatever it was they’d been doing had sucked a lot of the life out of them.
So it’s really important to love what you do. Over the short run you can put up with doing something that’s second best – but let it run for 40 years and the difference becomes visible. It hits you like an axe between the eyes.
Which brings me to the funeral.
Image via Wikipedia
This was of the quietest of my wife’s Aunts, youngest of five children. Most of the tribe aren’t backward in coming forward – in fact en masse I’m sure we’re quite off putting. By contrast she had from the outside mainly kept home and her husband, who was a very quiet man was a Rolls Royce lifer. So they lived in Derby.
When I first met them as a callow know-all of 22 they seemed incredibly old and dull. But what you see at a funeral is the photographs of a lifetime put lovingly together by their children.
And in that montage you can see at last who they were. I was particularly struck by the photographs of this couple in the middle of their lives – a good 15 years younger than I am now. And what you can see in the faces of these two people is the same thing as I saw in my Biochemist chums. I see people who’ve made their choice to do what seems good to them – and who are happy with that choice. They are free to get on with being who they are.
Apart from picking the right person to spend your time with – choosing what to do is the most important decision we make. It seems to me that those who follow their own instincts and interests are the ones who make the right choices for the long run.
Alan
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