Finding Peace in Older Age

by compound complex 10 Replies latest jw friends

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  compound complex

  A cool sense of tranquility overtakes my troubled spirit.

  I emerge slowly from a deeply entrenched, lifelong nightmare and proceed into gentle reverie, into quiet wakefulness. Youthful ideals, embodied in vaporous form before me, are a black reminiscence, threatening to return as an untold want having neither name nor substance, only a niggling dig that skewers my soul.

  I shut it out, shut out all the noise in the head: irrational thought, excessive thinking that leads to depression, to insanity. Yet, I am hopeful that devils of the past are blocked approach to me by a portcullis that guards both heart and mind.

  I see but darkly my amorphous reflection and sense it is a phantom, not the real me. From behind scudding clouds comes an awakened moon that illumes my way and shows inner turmoil in a light once unfamiliar to me. I suffered a turbulent youth and truly do welcome the slow and spiraling descent into older age; I am not afraid . . .

  The black shadow of the walking dead, cast upon the asphalt by a gracious moon, shall be my companion.

  
  
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  waton

  No wordy response would dp justice
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  Perry

  I suffered a turbulent youth and truly do welcome the slow and spiraling descent into older age; I am not afraid . .

  Ditto that
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  stillin

  Very nice. Shine on, Coco
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  waton

  spiraling descent?, it is more like a rollercoaster, it has it's ups too.
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  compound complex

  Thanks, waton, Perry, and stillin.

  Your comments are appreciated.

  Rollercoaster is more like it, waton -- you're correct. Maybe, when I wrote that, I was going downhill, with no immediate thought I'd ever change direction.
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  waton

  CC, my words can not soar to your heights of expression.

  What gives me comfort is, that hopefully, when the day comes, I will not be fighting for my life, but feel it as a deserved stop, rest. I am in the last 10% of my life run, and the picture of a spiraling descent would be alarming to me, spins always end catastrophically, and I hope for the more common smooth landing, out of fuel, out of heights, or, not use my flying days' analogy, but surfing experience. --riding the last wave right onto the beach, as the sun sets.
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  compound complex

  I agree, waton.

  You express yourself very well and, given where we are in the last 10% of life, we want to sail into a beautiful, peaceful sunset.

  Many thanks.

  I
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  compound complex

  Where I was, poetically expressed, when in recovery, wondering where my life had gone.

  As a Bethelite, I dressed in hand-me-down clothes -- gotten out the clothes barrel at Bethel -- but I was earnest. Fellow Bethelites and I scoured the streets and hotels of New York City (Manhattan) for willing souls.

  In the foreign-language territory, there were many converts. We chatted up the Caribbean islanders (here, in the big city, earning money to send back home) in their native tongue and got lots of addresses. These humble people gladly welcomed us into their humble, crowded apartments.

  My much older, wiser and jaded shell of spent humanity gazes downward, through a pane of unwashed glass. I eye, with mixed emotions, my youthful, scrubbed ruddiness and earnestness. Though I am dressed in somewhat worn, hand-me-down threads, my tattered saintliness won over not a few souls.

  Little did I then realize that the inherent naturalness of youthful persuasion had been reeled in, unhooked, and shoved into the creel of rigid and uncompromising uniformity. Unwittingly, I had been selling my own soul while in the process of winning over the souls of trusting men, women, children.

  From my enlightened vantage point, I peer back in time. I look down at my beautiful, young manhood. From a darkened pane I see my reflection and despise what I have become.

  Strangely, a cool sense of tranquility washes over me as I come out of my reverie, my black reminiscence.
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  just fine

  Although your writings are more pleasing than mine, I agree wholeheartedly. I also think - who am I to ever have thought I could tell someone else the best way to live their life. What a waste - believing in a lie that I had all the answers. I am more comfortable now knowing I don't have to have all the answers, I don't have to be certain of anything, and I don't need to convince anyone of anything.❤️