The Karma (Aging) of Our Lives

All that one does -- is the person they are, and become.  That is the significance of growing "old" -- or better and wiser.  Obviously, if one doesn't learn to live their lives better, they will suffer for it -- because there is a cause for everything, and is related to everything else -- and not that nothing is related to anything else, and so one can feel free to do anything they think they can get away with -- because nobody will know any difference.  Life doesn't work that way.  There are consequences to every action, thought and deed -- even if nobody else is watching (knows), because that has never been a requirement for why things happen.

The good or bad, is how well one ages.  It all comes home to roost, and take root, as the course of the rest of their days.  It does matter what one eats, how one exercises, the excesses one indulges in, the risks one takes, the damage they do, or the good nobody else witnesses -- that all becomes the person they are throughout life, and especially, at the end of it.

A few will know what to do -- to all the challenges of their lives, and continued viability and well-being, while many, will have no clue what to do with every incident (crisis) that arises in their lives.  They never learned how to solve a problem, and never thought it was important to -- because somebody else would do all those things for them.  That's when many lives unravel, or are revealed for what they truly are.

That's when the truth comes out -- what one has really been doing -- and not just what one would have others believe.   By then, it is too late and too overwhelming to undo all the damage one has done to their own lives -- if one continues as one always has.  But one can change what one always has done before -- and in that manner, create a whole new course for their lives.  But that change, will not come about just continuing to do what one has always done before -- thinking there can be a different result than the one that always has been before.  That's not how life works.

Life works in the way we make it work -- as the practice and conditioning of our lives.  We get good at what we actually do -- and practice.  If that is merely to make life harder and more difficult for ourselves and others -- then being around such a person, will not be pleasant and avoided by most people.  So of course the eventual result of "conditioning" activities that make every effort harder and more difficult, is not to make one stronger -- but to make one not do it, especially when healthful activities and movements (conditioning) would be most beneficial -- when even a little would go a long way, while doing nothing, is the problem, and makes it worse.  But such people don't know how to make what they have to do possible; they only know how to make it more difficult, and therefore, impossible, not to mention painful.

They convince themselves that the ONLY way to learn, or do anything, is the hard way, and to make it increasingly harder and more difficult, as though somehow at the end, everything they know to be true, is miraculously reversed -- as though that was the way of the world.  So they believe to achieve anything in life, one has to do the opposite -- as though that was some guarantee of anything, and are surprised, when nothing turns out as it should -- and that is what they think life is, just a random crapshoot -- in which nothing happens as they would like it to -- and that is what "getting old" is all about.

In such societies, there obviously are no (role) models for successful aging -- but everyone inevitably and invariably turns into monsters -- and as the old "fairy tales" had them, they ate young children who were careless or foolish enough to venture near them.  The wise simply avoided them.  Hopefully, we live in a more enlightened time when we can make better discriminations of those who aren't so predatory on others BECAUSE they exhibit great independence and self-sufficiency not to suck on the lifeblood of the young and vital -- as the only way they know how to be.

That is the future that makes longevity meaningful and fulfilling, and not just getting invariably and incessantly worse -- without any prospects for life getting any better.  The ultimate test of all that one has learned, is the preparation for this life at full maturity -- when they each must go their own way, answering to themselves more than any others.  All of life before then, is just a preparation for a life in maturity.  The end of immaturity, is not the end of life -- but the beginning of this new way of being, which every society in history, has hoped to create and manifest.

It is not simply the continuation of the old way of doing anything -- at any stage of life.  It is to create something wholly, and wonderfully new and different -- as the fulfillment of that society.  So obviously, it is not just going back to the old ways of a hundred years ago, or as some pride themselves, in going back to the cave-man era -- as though they knew everything there was to know back then, and worth knowing.  All those people lived short, brutal lives -- so that is no blueprint for a future of extended lives of unimagined fulfillment beyond foraging for their daily survival.

We've long passed that life at the constant brink -- to retain that as our highest ideal of what is now possible.  All this is built, on what has gone on before -- and what we hope to take to the next level.  Obviously, at this time, the great challenge for individuals as well as society, is how do we make the "golden years" of our lives, the best ever?  That is wholly possible -- and not simply, how do we make the best of what life has always been before, that always ends so sadly?  Can there be a different ending?  All signs point to it -- as the inevitable development of these times.