Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now

by Gordon Livingston MD

operate in the world mostly on autopilot, doing the same things today that didn’t work yesterday. One would think that a process of learning or maturation would cause us to alter our behavior in response to unpleasant consequences. Anyone who has watched an average golfer play knows that this is not true. In fact, it sometimes seems that we are so trapped in ineffectual life patterns that we are playing out the old military adage: If it doesn’t work, double it. The motivations and habit patterns that underlie most of our behavior are seldom logical; we are much more often driven by impulses, preconceptions, and emotions of which we are only dimly aware.

If most of our behavior is driven by our feelings, however unclear they may be, it follows that to change ourselves we must be able to identify our emotional needs and find ways of satisfying them that do not offend those upon whom our happiness depends. If we wish, as most of us do, to be treated with kindness and forbearance, we need to cultivate those qualities in ourselves.

The idea that we have to sit and talk about the problems we face and the things we have tried that have failed implies a slow and unwieldy process that has at its core an uncomfortable assumption: We are responsible for most of what happens to us.

It is misplaced kindness to offer only sympathy, even where it is clearly justified. It is hope that I’m really selling.

The successful treatment of alcoholism and other addictions has demonstrated that those who suffer from them are obligated to DO something, namely to refuse to drink or use other substances in order to control their condition. The most effective means to this end is through the group support provided by Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, organizations with the core belief that each addict has a responsibility to stop using that cannot be dodged, rationalized, or shifted to another person.

A problem emerges with the concept that in order to control our own lives we must exert control over the lives of others. We are then engaged in a zero-sum game in which we get what we want only at the expense of someone else. We live in a competitive society. We are forever dividing the world up into winners and losers: Republicans versus Democrats, good versus evil, our team versus their team. Our capitalist system is founded on competition; our legal system thrives on conflict and the pursuit of self-interest. Is it any wonder then that we often see the world through a win/lose, two-alternative lens? Such a view is, of course, disastrous for the delicate process of achieving intimacy with another human being.

Life is a gamble in which we don’t get to deal the cards, but are nevertheless obligated to play them to the best of our ability.

To take the risks necessary to achieve this goal is an act of courage. To refuse to take them, to protect our hearts against all loss, is an act of despair.

People mistake thoughts, wishes, and intentions for actual change. This confusion between words and actions clouds the therapeutic process. Confession may indeed be good for the soul, but unless it is accompanied by altered behavior, it remains only words in the air. We are a verbal species, fond of conveying our minutest thoughts. (Remember the last time you listened to someone talking into a cell phone?) We attach excessive importance to promises.

The disconnect between what we say and what we do is not merely a measure of hypocrisy, since we usually believe our statements of good intent. We simply pay too much attention to words—ours and others’—and not enough to the actions that really define us. The walls of our self-constructed prisons are made up in equal parts of our fear of risk and our dream that the world and the people in it will conform to our fondest wishes. It is hard to let go of a comforting illusion, but harder still to construct a happy life out of perceptions and beliefs that do not correspond to the world around us.

Think about a person so disabled by worry that he can no longer function comfortably in the world. Every decision must be measured against the probability that it will increase or decrease anxiety. To the degree that one’s choices become constrained by a need for anxiety avoidance, one’s life shrinks. As this happens, the anxiety is reinforced and soon the sufferer becomes fearful, not of anything external, but of anxiety itself. People become afraid to drive, to shop, sometimes even to leave their houses. At this point some patients feel their choices in life have become so constricted that they withdraw from human contact. This same withdrawal can be seen in severe depression.

Mark Twain, in “Eve’s Diary,” put these words in her mouth after the fall: “When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful, surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and I shall not see it any more. The Garden is lost, but I have found him, and am content.”

When we think about the things that alter our lives in a moment, nearly all of them are bad: phone calls in the night, accidents, loss of jobs or loved ones, conversations with doctors bearing awful news. In fact, apart from a last-second touchdown, unexpected inheritance, winning the lottery, or a visitation from God, it is hard to imagine sudden good news. Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: learning new things, changing old behaviors, building satisfying relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues.

This tension between simplicity and effort works itself out in our daily lives. If we believe in the sudden transformation, the big score, we are less likely to pursue the harder and less immediately satisfying work of becoming the people we wish to be. So here’s to the role of time, patience, and reflection in our lives. If we believe it is better to build than destroy, better to live and let live, better to be than to be seen, then we might have a chance, slowly, to find a satisfying way through life, this flicker of consciousness between two great silences.

The truth may not make us free, but to lie to ourselves in the name of temporary comfort is the ultimate folly. Such deception appears to be a benign dishonesty. No one else is cheated or disadvantaged, but life decisions not based on reality are bound to be faulty. To see ourselves plainly is, perhaps, impossible; it’s hard to get through the day without a rationalization or two. It is when our dream of what we could be collides with the truth of what we are that the clang of cognitive dissonance both deafens and blinds us.

This is what passes for hope: those we have lost evoked in us feelings of love that we didn’t know we were capable of. These permanent changes are their legacies, their gifts to us. It is our task to transfer that love to those who still need us. In this way we remain faithful to their memories.

Of all the burdens that weigh on our lives, being responsible for ourselves and those we care for can be the most onerous. People endure numbing routines, jobs they hate, unsatisfying relationships, all in order to fulfill the expectations they have of themselves. When no other relief is available to us, some form of illness or disability is one of the few socially acceptable ways of relinquishing the weight of responsibility, if only for a little while. Instead of being expected to get up each morning and face tasks that we abhor, we are, when sick, told to “take it easy.” For some people, trapped on a treadmill of obligation, the disadvantages of diminished functioning and physical pain are counterbalanced by the relief of lowered expectations.

Though unpleasant to experience, fear can be an adaptive emotion if it results in actions that protect us from harm. For this to happen, however, threats must be identified realistically. This requires accurate information and the ability to integrate it into useful knowledge. If we are deceived by those we trust to inform us (our government), or if our sources of information have a stake in keeping us afraid (the news media), then it is little wonder that we spend our time worrying about remote threats like contaminated mail, while ignoring real risks such as global warming.

And so it is in our personal lives as well. Fear and desire are opposite sides of the same coin. Much of what we do is driven by fear of failure. A primary example is the pursuit of material wealth. This is also the engine that drives our economy and a way of “keeping score.” But this effort lacks ultimate meaning for most of us and distracts us from activities and people that provide more lasting pleasure and satisfaction. If it is true that no one on their deathbed wishes that they had spent more time in the office, what does that suggest for redirecting our efforts now?

Fear, while effective in the short term, is not useful in producing lasting change. The use of it as a motivator for behavior ignores the fact that there are no more powerful desires than the pursuit of happiness and the struggle for self-respect. If means can be found that move people in these directions: better jobs, education, the chance to improve one’s life, and a sense of fairness and opportunity, the seductive and short-lived bliss provided by drugs will lose its appeal. Punitive emphasis on the “supply side” has not worked. Reducing the demand by emphasizing treatment and social alternatives to hopelessness offers the only prospect of winning this struggle between transient pleasure and lasting satisfaction.

The sum of our fears is the knowledge of our vulnerability to random misfortune and the certainty of our eventual mortality. If we can take comfort and meaning from some religious belief with its promise of eternal life, so much the better. But even skeptics can learn to savor the moments of pleasure that our brief lives contain. It is not denial but courage that allows us to do this. That and an unwillingness to let the present moment be drained of joy by fear of the future or regret for the past.

Anxiety is contagious. Children sense it in their parents and are affected by it. This begins at an age when the child has no words for the emotions she experiences and senses in the people around her. For most new parents the process of bringing a child into their lives is complicated and fraught with uncertainty. The physical demands, especially the change in sleep patterns, are difficult. To worry about whether they are “doing it right” is natural. The sources of information and support are of variable quality. One’s own parents may or may not have anything useful to say, and the myriad books on parenting often contain conflicting advice (e.g., the enduring debate about “picking the baby up when she cries”).

I saw a patient with his wife recently. “He never laughs anymore,” she complained. The man agreed: “My sense of humor is gone.” They had recently been on a trip and she had lost her wallet and credit cards. “The same thing happened to my wife,” I said. “Her credit cards were stolen. But I haven’t reported it yet because the thief is spending less than she does.” The man laughed. My wife, when I told her the story, did not.

Somewhere between ignoring the past and wallowing in it there is a place where we can learn from what has happened to us, including the inevitable mistakes we have made, and integrate this knowledge into our plans for the future. Inevitably, this process requires some exercises in forgiveness—that is, giving up some grievance to which we are entitled.

Widely confused with forgetting or reconciliation, forgiveness is neither. It is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves. It exists, as does all true healing, at the intersection of love and justice.

Coming to terms with our past is inevitably a process of forgiveness, of letting go, the simplest and most difficult of all human endeavors. It is simultaneously an act of will and of surrender. And it often seems impossible until the moment you do it.