Life's Endgame

My mother is 97 years old. As I have watched her over the last 10 years I have noted a phenomena that happens to people as they get older. Whatever sort of person they were in the earlier years of their lives, the people they will remain that sort of person, only to a more profound extent. My mother was always a strong-willed person and someone who was very often sn especially difficult person to be around. Now she has become an almost impossible person to be around for very long.

So that old adage, "Know thyself," begins to have special meaning for us. If we know that we have less than endearing qualities, we now have a reason to make changes in the person who we are. We have to revise our thinking about how we treat others and what we hold to be important for our lives. And this is not about things that we can buy or sell. This is referring to the fragile relationships that we form during our lives. If a particular habit or attitude or a particular way of talking to others tends to put others off and isolate us, than we need to do something about the situation. And to lose bad habits and attitudes... in short, changing some aspect of who we are as a person, is probably one of the most difficult, gut-wrenching things we may have to do. But sometimes making such changes in ourselves may be exactly what is required in the situation, if we are to grow and evolve into a better person.

I took a long look at myself about two years ago, plunked myself into psychological counselling and I simply did what I had to do to salvage my life. That stint in therapy was gut-wrenching. It is not easy to confront our fears, our anger and our own personal demons. But I did and somehow managed to survive all that. If you have never tried to do that, you would be absolutely amazed at how extraordinarily difficult it is to change some fundamental aspect of your personality or your attitudes.

However difficult that may be to do, most of us have little choice but to do exactly that. Without confronting the very issues in our lives that cause us problems and effecting the necessary changes, we may very well drive off the people who care the most about us... we may end up very lonely, disappointed and unhappy as we play out life's endgame.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston,Texas.