Someone asked me a question

Someone asked me a question

It's the type of thing that happens so often that it has come to be the usual-not an unusual happening in people's lives. Someone asks you about a time in my life when you were best at a certain skill – better than at any time before or since. It often happens that it is between 18 and 25 years of age.

Many inventors think of their best ideas during that time period and spend the rest of their days trying to disprove their own theories. It is a time of education and enlightenment, combined with youthful energy and drive, with a promising future ahead and head filled with ideas. Explorers, statesmen and soldiers often peak early as well and sink into the back pages of history as they become more staid with domesticity or seek solace in financial and physical security.

However, as the years pass, many further their education, and leave off with youthful pursuits of discovery and innovation, weighed down with the pursuits of a steady, more settled lifestyle, the demands of marriage, child-raising and the 40hour work week.

And there are the naysayers out there as well… those who tell you day after day that you cannot do something or other, that you need to keep your nose to the grindstone and save your money, and keep your ideas to yourself if you want to become a solid citizen in society and productive member of the same.

It all tends to blunt the enthusiasm of a person.

Yet, there are many pursuits that I have followed that I could never have attained as a younger man. These would have to do with presence of mind and discipline that has taken years to achieve.

There have been opportunities for supervisory work, as well as complicated computer software jobs-and the computer and Internet were new when I was younger. All those skills I attained when more advanced in age.

I had the opportunity to take on political skills for several terms in an elected office, as well as just a few years ago… passing three lower-level Praxis tests as well as three higher-level Praxis tests… in order to attain a teacher's certificate for a time — all on the first try.

Writing and public speaking skills were next, just as were my opportunities to work with church choirs and as instrumental soloist for many years on church staffs.

For instance, this weekend on Sunday, I spent a couple of hours teaching myself to make a master CD from different sources by using a computer software program, without the benefit of written instructions.

I sincerely doubt that I would have had the patience to even attempt such a thing as a younger man.

And so, it can be seen that it isn't just in the intellectual field that one may excel as time goes by. There are considerable benefits that only come with growing longer in the tooth, such as an appreciation for the finer things in life and the comfort of being with people you prefer to have around you. Company comes in many forms, and having those about you who support your cause and your welfare is a great consolation.

Knowing you like tomato sauce with pasta instead of Alfredo sauce, might seem a small thing to a novice. But, to those in the know – those who have come to appreciate the small things – the nuances in life… they are important and valuable lessons.

Trivial though it might seem, it really is the small things in life that tend to really bug us the most. If you burn your toast, you throw away the toaster. When your clock is off, you toss it. When the car has gone the way of all clunkers, you trade it in.

Life is more than huge mansions and blue-chip stocks, furs or jewelry.

Don't get me wrong.

They are nice… if you go for that sort of thing.

Only, listen to folks talk and you hear them mention the little things much more often than not. The neighborhood dogs barking at night, the loud cars speeding by their house, the TV on the blink. Or a stubborn cold.

It gives one pause, doesn't it?

There are many things to take in as we mature.

And the best thing is an appreciation of a subjective view of the world, when we finally come to the realization that a purely objective view is impossible.

Simply said, we know what we like and what we don't like.

And that takes time figure out.

As well as to appreciate.

By Robert L. Hall