Longings

If I ever started a literary journal, I think I would entitle it Long-ings. But since I will probably never do that, these two essays will have to suffice. They focus not on the classic discussion of the "five ages of man" (Hesiod) or the "four ages of man" (Ovid), referring to humanity's gradual descent from a golden to (our present) iron age, but rather the stages or periods of an individual's life. My contention is that the identification, calibration and realization of ambition is done in three "ages" of life--a youthful vision, a middle-aged submersion of the vision, and a mature challenge to rekindle the vision. I don't claim that everyone necessarily faces these stages or ages exactly as here, but it seems representative of many people I have met.

A Word on Shakespeare

We can't begin a discussion of life's "ages" or "stages" without a nod to the Bard, whose unforgettable description of life's seven ages from As You Like It (II.vii) invites some quotation. The first stage is the infant, "mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;" the second is a "whining schoolboy," who creeps "like snail/ Unwillingly to school." Then there is the "lover/ Sighing like furnace," followed by the "soldier," who seeks "the bubble reputation/Even in the cannon's mouth." A fifth stage is called "the justice," where the grave householder "in fair round belly" and "with eyes severe" is "full of wise saws and modern instances." The sixth age shifts "Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,/ With spectacles on nose and pouch on side," where the quickly declining man "Turns [turning in text] again toward childish treble, pipes/ And whistles in his sound." Finally, there "Is second childishness and mere oblivion/ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

We chuckle at his characterization, but recognize the truth of it and our participation in several of those stages already. It is our common story as humans, regardless of accomplishments, endowments or merits. But there is more to life than experiencing these stages since each of us, though sharing the same humanity with everyone, has a drive to live, love, accomplish and leave some kind of legacy or mark, even if it is with a small circle of people. That is what I call our "three stages of life."

Stage One: A Youthful Ambition

Like passwords to protect your privacy and valuables, so these stages of life can have been "weak, moderate, strong" for us, but the first one comes with the confusing co-kindling of love, desire and ambition for discovery of and accomplishment in life. I call it a "confusing co-kindling" because it consists of physical and hormonal changes, mental development, and inklings of accomplishment in the artistic, athletic, academic or other areas. Sometimes the rush of all these forces on us almost is too much to bear, and immature decisions and actions follow. Yet, beneath it all, in most cases, is a recognition of something deep in the self that makes us happy, that stimulates our heart, that makes us feel like we can get a handle on the universe through that avenue of our thought or action. Sometimes this feeling has a career instantiation--such as a young boy's desire to be a fireman and then, perhaps, an athlete, and then something else--but it is often driven by trying to make sense of the inner music, sometimes cacophony, that tells us who we are and sings us a sweet song of invitation. This early age is to be celebrated and appreciated, to be cultivated and feted, for often we get no further in life than the realization of a youthful ambition. Often we want or need not go further than this youthful ambition.

But the youthful ambition is, more often than not, inchoate. All of us admire, and often envy, those people who seemingly knew from age 10 that they wanted to be an artist or pilot or cop and ended up doing that very thing. For some people the road from youthful ambition to life accomplishment is a fairly linear one, but I think this is the exception--perhaps 10% of cases are like this. Most of us have a youthful ambition, but its edges aren't clear and its contours are ill-defined. For me it had something to do with learning the truth of things and representing that truth to people. I thought that organized religion was a good place to do this, since it proclaims it has some "truth," but in my middle years (more about that below), I saw that the quest could easily be separated from the institution, and the quest, to me, became even more sacred than the institution. But because the quest was caught up with so many other things in the rush of life, it was only imperfectly embraced and intermittently pursued. In my case, it led to a Ph. D. in the history of religions; I didn't realize, however, in my Ph. D. program that my quest and the program also didn't align perfectly. But I did well enough to make a life out of that field for a number of years.

So, let that be our first stage in life--youth's ambition. It is a confusing time, when we don't have enough information on the one hand about the world and we seemingly have too much information cloying our systems on the other. What would you say was your youthful ambition? What was the sweetest song of life that could have been sung to you between the ages of about 15 and 21? Did it take on clarity then? Does the earlier vision of you take on clarity now? I tried to reflect on the issue in my own life in an essay entitled "The Pleasures of Memory."

The next essay discusses stages two and three.

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