At what point in a person’s life do what should count in life really matter? This is not even a question to which there can be a universal answer, since no standards exist by which the right answer can even be determined. How can there be when no agreement exists on the things that matter in life? What matters to one doesn’t necessarily matter to another. One could, for example, assume that everyone agrees that all people have a right to live and breathe free air; or that everyone should be able to worship without being harassed, forcibly converted or killed by people who hate them; or that everyone deserves to love and be loved. To my mind, none of these is so far fetched as to invite the disagreements that they do in our world. Yet, the reality is that all around us are people who not only believe the contrary but actively deny others the right to live, worship freely and love who they love. Among the tragedies of this reality is not only that such people exist but that they, mostly adults, teach younger members of their families and communities the same values of hate and destructiveness that define their own existence. This fact makes it difficult to hope for a world in which peace, genuine love and mutual understanding reign over malice, bigotry and killings of the other. Why? The reason is because children who are taught to hate cannot become loving adults unless a very rare supernatural experience occurs at some point in their lives. Generally, hateful children grow into bigoted adults who bear false witness against those who they hate, deny them opportunities and/or kill them.
Perhaps the question to ask is: To what extent can one continue to hope as one lives with a sense of history and embraces the blessings of aging? Aging confers on one the ability to celebrate life’s continuity in the face of challenges and realities over which every human is powerless. However, aging also represents an accumulation of history that constitutes the main building blocks of a person’s life. Thanks to the image and memories that are formed by those blocks, aging positions the older person in a place where he/she does not only look back at the history of the life lived but can also, if he or she chooses to engage his/her abilities, get a glimpse into a future yet to come. This is possible because, not only does history not exist in a vacuum, it also informs the future. It is in this context that the aphorism of the old philosopher, George Santayana can be examined and understood – that “Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed To Repeat It”.
The process of self-discovery is a walk in which every individual should probably engage at some point in his or her life. It requires a certain degree of self-consciousness and a realization that one does not have everything, does not know everything and has not produced everything that one is capable of. Once engaged, the process of self-discovery is a very personal journey whose end the human mind cannot possibly determine from the beginning. For this reason, a very high degree of open-mindedness and questioning is required for a successful walk. The hope is that among the eventual outcomes of this journey would be increased understanding and acceptance of self and others, higher levels of knowledge, an ability to understand and listen to an expressed challenge of orthodoxy and a deeper ability to genuinely and passionately love self and others – even those that one might ordinarily consider impossible to love. At this point in one’s life, the ability to embrace and promote good is palpable and the willingness to challenge and shun bad is not only sincere but is effortless and consistent in its display. We cannot be as selfless, open and loving toward others as we ought to be unless we know and embrace who we are at a much deeper level.
If we can each become the same person in private that people see in public, if we can understand and accept that we are neither in fact superior or inferior to others, if we can love genuinely and embrace our own infallibility and work to make ourselves better humans, then we may actually be on our journey to self discovery. So let it be said of us!