Self Realisation

Ageing is not for the weak

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“Aging is not for the weak. One day you wake up and realize that your youth is gone, but along with it, so go insecurity, haste, and the need to please… You learn to walk more slowly, but with greater certainty. You say goodbye without fear, and you cherish those who stay. Aging means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin… but in the story we carry inside us.”
– Meryl Streep

This is a beautiful reflection on aging that touches on several profound truths. The passage eloquently captures how aging brings not just physical changes, but also emotional and spiritual growth – a kind of wisdom that comes from life experience.

I particularly appreciate how it reframes aging as a process of gaining rather than just losing. While youth fades, the text suggests we gain valuable traits like:

  • Self-assurance that replaces insecurity
  • Patience that replaces haste
  • Authenticity that replaces people-pleasing
  • Wisdom in relationships – both in letting go and cherishing
  • A deeper understanding of beauty as something internal rather than external

The metaphor of walking “more slowly, but with greater certainty” is especially powerful – it captures how aging can bring a kind of confident deliberateness that youth often lacks.

Would you say this resonates with your own experiences or observations about aging? I am curious know how this perspective compares with common cultural narratives about getting older.

– One Tusk

Thought of the Week – 10th June 2024(2)

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Never enter a relationship without having first created value in that relationship. Never stop creating value and nurturing your relationships. Always ask “What’s in it for them?” rather than “What’s in it for me?” Know what the other person cares about. Get to know them, their context, and their goals. Give relevant value. Don’t waste their time. Do your homework. If you want to develop transformational relationships, then approach relationships in a transformational, rather than transactional, way. Bring a result to the table. Make the pie bigger for everyone involved. Don’t come with big promises of future results. Bring immediate results. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Be a generous giver who is truly committed to service and growth, not status. Be nice to the people you meet on the way up because they are the same people you meet on the way down. Be grateful in large and small ways to the people in your life and you’ll attract incredible abundance.

–Dan Sullivan

Put Down Those Rocks You’re Carrying

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Imagine that as a child you were issued a large backpack to wear at all times. At first you didn’t know what it was for, but then the adults around you started putting rocks in it that you then obediently carried around. After a while you followed their example and began to put rocks in there yourself. Over time, some of the rocks disappeared, but most didn’t, and by now that pack’s really, really heavy.

            You often pull out some of the rocks and look at them. They don’t make you happy. In fact they make you miserable. Some at the bottom you never pull out—you might not even remember you have them–but still you carry them. This seems inexplicable. Why would anyone voluntarily bear such a burden? 

Unfortunately these rocks are not chunks of shale or granite or sandstone. Those would be easy to get rid of! Instead they are bits of residual resentment, hatred, anger, guilt, and shame from injuries or injustices or mistakes you can’t or won’t or haven’t tried to let go of. The backpack is your mind; the weight of the load burdens not your back but your soul.

What follows are tips for cleaning out that backpack. If the pack’s stuffed full, it’ll take some mental elbow grease to do a good spring cleaning, but trust me, it’s worth it for the sunlight that will pour into your life. After that, there’ll be some ongoing maintenance to keep your pack light and your steps jaunty. Yes, there’ll be surprises. Rocks that you’ll swear you never picked up will somehow get in that backpack, and a few rocks will keep reappearing even after you put them down and down again. Still the effort’s worth it. 

So how to get rid of these rocks? The first step is to realize that anger, hatred, resentment, guilt, and shame are not just weight, they’re toxic, poisonous to a healthy life. They cloud your judgement; they sap your attention and energy. They lead to bitterness, depression and despair. If you feed these toxic emotions, the rocks will grow until they’re all you have left. At its most basic, carrying around these rocks is a form of self-harm.

Instead when these emotions arise, acknowledge them, learn from them. Take action if appropriate. And then let them go. This doesn’t mean you should allow people who’ve injured you to do so again. But caution, wisdom, and courage prevent injury better than anger and resentment.

~Karen Lynn Allen

The whole fragment of the book

https://karenlynnallen.blogspot.com/…/put-down-those…