Surviving

   

Sometimes just getting through the day is an achievement.

 

As a child, life often seems tough – we can’t quite physically do what our older sibling, cousin or schoolmate does.

 

As a teenager, everything is tough. We deal with life, friends, family all under the impulse of wildly swinging hormones.

 

As a young adult we struggle: again friendship, first, or permanent loves, putting a foot into the working world – or studying on in the hopes of achieving one’s life’s dream of becoming a doctor, a lawyer or any other profession taking years of studies, of concentration of “keeping one’s eyes on the goal”.

Then comes the middle years and the reponsbilities of not only jobs, but of spouses, children, aging parents, a fast-changing world. Of trying to foresee and prevent catastrophes, then having to deal with them anyway.

 

Then, all of a sudden, the career is 10 or 20 years old, the kids are starting to leave home, the spouse and oneself coming back together, or growing further apart due to the years, the attitudes, changes.

And then there’s the big leap into retirement, or not as more and more work well beyond. All of a sudden, if one retires, life is again kind of free, until the children marry, and start their own families.

Then the real worries begin: those of an ill spouse, those of those beloved grand children. Or the death of one’s parents, a sibling, close friends.

 

But, would I have it any other way: no! Life is worth living: sometimes, at the end of the day it is enough to have simply survived.