AKA – Getting Stuck In Our Ways

I like to think that I am a forward-looking guy who embraces change, but sometimes I am stuck in my ways simply because that’s what I have always done. That was probably the hardest lesson to learn 25 years ago when I left the corporate world. I couldn’t imagine what my life was going to be like now that my time was my own. And that is a lesson I continually am learning even today.

It took me a couple of years to realize that I was no longer needed in the same way. But that was Okay.

It’s not that I suddenly became useless, but my relevance took a severe shock. “What do I do now?” was a question I struggled with for a decade and to some much smaller extent even today. I have finally come to realize that it’s not that I am useless. It’s more like my role in the world changed.

That epiphany came when I stopped demanding to be needed and learned to observe instead. The past can be a place of comfort, but it can also trap you if you let it.

Growing old isn’t about staying who you were. It’s about learning how to be who you are now. It’s about being gentle with yourself, staying useful in other ways, and letting go of what no longer fits.

That is a hard lesson perhaps never fully learned.