In the fifth century B.C. the sage Confucius is purported to have said:
At 15, I set my heart on learning.
At 30 I know where I stand (my character has been formed).
At 40, I have no more doubts,
at 50, I know the will of Heaven,
at 60 my ears are attuned (i.e. my moral sense is well-developed),
at 70, I follow my heart’s desire without crossing the line (without breaking moral principles).
From the Analects – This excerpt swiped from http://bystander.homestead.com/Confucius_milestones.html
I prefer, however, to think of the philosophic words that were attributed to Kurt Vonnegut but actually written by Mary Schmich and Brenda Starr of the Chicago Tribune and formed the main text of the song “
Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen).”
“Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.”
That’s kind of comforting for a soon-to-be 45 year-old who is just winding up a late-commenced academic study. One more chapter is coming to a close and another one is about to begin.
And it’s been a trek and a half. Apart from the facts and figures (mainly years – maths is not my fortitude) studying for a degree has taught one two major lessons:
I love to learn.
I hate to sit down and study for the sake of it.
This is partially why I've dragged it out for so long: The reluctance to sit down and learn when there are a million other things to do. Another reason is my dissatisfaction with my written German. Oh, I can quatsch with the best of them in spoken German, but the complexities of German grammar and the need to sit down and learn them off by heart is... hard to do when the afore-mentioned million other things to do are there.
Yup, as my students will tell you (ah, another reason it’s taken a long time – I have to earn a crust and teaching English has been my bread and butter, or rather my rice and sweeet-sour for the better part of two decades) I get easily distracted.
Anyway, I have put a lot of things on the back-burner to finish my studies and now it’s time to pick up again from where I left off. So, is it another chapter opens or another chapter re-opens? In the last few months, I’ve been thinking about the things that I would have liked to have done in the last years, but never did because I should have been concentrating on my studies.
Two years ago, I started drawing again – something I looooved to do in my childhood. It was always my dream to be a cartoonist. And recently I have even sent strips to comics / magazines in Germany and the UK. The response was more promising in the UK and I sent in another strip, and another. Still not quite what they were looking for – but I should not be dispirited. I still have plenty of ideas in my noggin, but I need to sit down and put them on paper. (Did I mention how I’ve become averred to sitting down for longer periods of time?)
Those ideas in my head have been floating and brewing and building and growing for a while now. Now. Now is the important word. Probably it is the most important word. There is only now. The past is gone and cannot be changed. The future is not yet here and cannot be seen with 100%. All we have is now. That’s why I’ve decided to start this blog, now, here, today. Now is what I have and I aim to put into pixels what is in my head and get into the mode of putting myself out there. Out there, in the public eye, once more.
However things are getting ever-more serious and I need to push myself to do the things that are uncomfortable in order to afford myself comfort in later life – delayed gratification, eh? I’m married, there’s a mortgage to pay I can no longer afford to float semi-aimlessly along like some happy-go-lucky demented butterfly. (Doesn’t mean I can’t stop along the way and smell the flowers though.)
Here I go. I intend to keep on teaching – it’s what I really like. Sitting and talking with great people (and drinking coffee.) And I’ve been told I’m good at it (teaching,not coffee drinking). So there I get paid for doing something I really like.
But there’s more out there I could be doing. But some old fears hold me back. The same fears that held me back with my studies. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, etc...
Today I listened to an old cassette of motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. What he said about fear goes to the effect of ships are safe within the harbour, but that that is not what ships were built for. Aeroplanes are safest on the ground, but that’s not what they were built for. Safe does not equal potential. It’s time to set out and see what’s there. Not as I did whilst travelling in my twenties and thirties – although I hope to be doing that again too soon, but here in my neighbourhood with my unused potential. Doing more of what I could be doing – but so far am not doing.
It’s time to step out and see where other roads lie.
Another crossroads of my life.
Now where did I put my map?
