Toward a Meaning Life

 

Toward a Meaningful Life

            “Meaningful” in dictionary was defined as significant, purposeful, consequential, important carrying great weight, essential, relevant and worthwhile.     

            It was complete but too complicated.  We all longed for having a meaningful life.  My definition was something you did not have to do, but you did it not because of necessity but because of accepting the challenge to prove yourself.  You fulfilled your life to make it meaningful, significant, purposeful, consequential, important carrying great weight, essential, relevant and worthwhile.

            I struggled most of my life.  After a relaxing, peaceful, pleasant and successful life during the high school years, I set my goals to achieve my impossible dreams to be further educated.  I struggled to save money from my low pay government job for my college.  I struggled to complete my college and obtained my degree with the language I was not familiar with, and with the funding to pay the expenses while I barely had enough to survive.  I struggled to protect me from the unexpected company politics.  I struggled to prove myself to make it a highly successful career.

            After the turbulent forty years, I retired.

            Had I built up a meaningful life?  It appeared that way from those sitting at the side line.  However, I did not accept that as the legit way toward a meaningful life as they were done not by choice but by necessity.

            After I set my goal to quit the government job for further education, I had established my path.  I had chosen my life for the next forty years.  After I learnt my family financially incapable to support me abroad, I had no choice but finding ways myself, regardless how little I could save and how many side jobs I required to reach my needs.  After I selected Berkeley, one of the top ten colleges, I had to add additional effort to compensate my language handicap.  After I was offended from the company politics, I had to find ways to protect myself.  After the career set, I had to follow the career path to prove I was a decent performer.  So even though it appeared that I had been having a meaningful life, in fact, the path was set at the very beginning and I just followed it.

            Now I retired.

            Logically, after so many years of stressful life, when I had the opportunity, I should completely relax and do nothing.  Instead of getting up at six thirty in the morning, I could sleep until nine, have a relaxing hearty breakfast, then settle in front of the television set, or grab a book, have a cup of coffee, and read.  In fact, quite a few retirees did exactly like that.  They felt that after years of hard work they deserved that kind of life.

            I did that too, at the beginning.  The first day was different.  I sat down in the kitchen, had my cup of coffee.  So relaxing!  I did not have to worry about any job problems.  I was staring at the ceiling watching the bugs and ants at the corners of the room.  Then I thought, was that the way a retiree supposed to do, watching bugs and ants at the ceiling?  Or should I do something more meaningful?  What happened to the hobby list?  Did that mean anything?  There were items of activity I wanted but never had time to do it, such as playing piano, creating a painting and among other hobbies.  But then, why?!  As a retiree, I was supposed to just relax, not work.  Was I thinking in the right path that put me to work as working, though in a different path?

            Then I thought about the meaningful life.  This was the right time to do it.  I made plan to start projects that I did not have to do.  I was doing them better than looking for the bugs and ants at the ceiling, but something worthwhile, something meaningful.

            I finally decided to do something ridiculous.  I struggled in college to earn my degree to start my career, and now, at the end of my career, I decided to go back to college.  I enrolled in the nearby community school, and looked for the available classes I felt I was qualified to get into.  Then I found out something unexpected being an elder.  The college encouraged us not to stay home as all the senior citizens had tuition free.  They only would pay for the incidental fees.  That meant the saving of the majority of the total costs.  

However, seniors had only one day to register, the day after all the paid students’ registration.  That meant the senior could get into the classes if the classes were not already filled up by the regular students.  This made sense as the seniors were taking the classes for hobby while the youngsters were doing that for their future career.

Another unexpected surprised me.  Since seniors had only one day to register, all those wanted to take classes showed up the same morning.  I met all my retired co-workers and friends in that morning.  Since the class sizes were flexible, we never had problems to get into any desired classes.  That morning, after we registered we moved to the school cafeteria to have our get-together party, talked about the good old days, the time since last time we met, and exchanged addresses, telephone numbers.  It was a worthwhile morning after my retirement.

So it started well.  I took classes including learning basic sketch, water color, pastel painting, programming with internet language HTML, disassembling and re-assembling a computer, computer graphic and programming package Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash, journalism classes how to write and sell manuscripts, and many others.  Also from the adult education, I added Chinese brush painting, piano playing and other computer related, art related classes.

I did not feel out of place and was proud to realize that I was the only sixty plus years old student together with the teens and twenties.  The teachers, all of them were younger than me, treated me somewhere between a student, friend, or side observer attending the classes.  Even I tried to behave just as another student they could not help to give me respects as an elder.  Wasn’t life fun?!

So during the years after my immediate retirement, I was in the right path toward a meaningful life.  I could have selected the path of watching the bugs and ants at the ceiling or I could have relaxed being a couch potato rather than getting up early in the morning to go back to school.  None of those learning were needed for life or for the career I preferred not to end.  I did that only to prove that I could achieve to please myself.  It was a good feeling when I reached those goals especially I had done that not by necessity.  I was doing that to make the life more meaningful.

Ten years gone by.  I started running out of courses I wanted to take.  Some faded away while a few still remained.  I was still active learning the piano playing.  I was continuing writing not just for the high school alumni publication in Hong Kong, also publishing in a couple of the webpages I created.  The painting stopped and the stamp collecting slowed down.  The interests for the rest of activities in the hobby list disappeared.

Then something expected I never thought of; I was getting old.  The aging not only affected me physically, also mentally.  I was feeling lonely that there were no relatives living close to me.  My children were in the other side of the country.  Due to the distance separating us, I was lucky to see them twice, or even once, a year.  I guessed it was normal that the older I got, the more I longed to be together with the close relatives, not living all by myself.

So the move was suggested.  Regardless how much I tried not to accept it; being an eighty-six old person, I was running out of option.  If I did not move then, I would be too old to move should I still want it later on.  It was now or never.  The children were excited about my move and I was excited when thinking about we would be in same area or even the same city.  So the move would create all around happiness.

Life was never perfect.  You might gain some, but the chances were that you would lose some.  When we thought about being together with the children at my old age brought me the ultimate happiness.  When we started planning the move, there were so many factors depressed me.  Just to start, we would leave the areas we lived most of our lives since we were in this country, and we would move away from the social circles we built up for the last forty years to an area we had very limited friends.  Even though I had never had problems making new friends, still that was when I was younger, not at the age of eighty six.  How difficult to start a new social circle when one was eighty six and going, it would be interesting to find out.

That was only the beginning.  One of the other factors was downsizing.  We were supposed to move to a smaller apartment.  With the smaller living spaces, we could not bring everything in the house.  Other than furniture and even personal belonging, I had to give up the less favorite hobbies.  I accepted the reality.  When I was getting older, my world was supposed to shrink smaller.  I was supposed to have less energy for anything and more time for relaxation.  I could not argue with that.  So the move was set to these criteria.

After the move, we settled down.  It was a drastic change in life.  All my life I was used to expand my horizon and not shrink my life style.  That had to be changed. I had to make myself to fit into the future, since this was the only future I had.

With the daily activity downed to minimum, life was boring and depressing.  I still played the piano only playing because I had too much free time.  It was completely different than before when I tried the impossible piano pieces to conquer the world.  I still wrote articles and kept the website active.  I was just like writing diary and not any creative writing as I used to write.  I could have started some paintings.  However after the painting was completed it would just go from the easel to a dead drawer.  The fun of painting was gone.

So the eagerness was not there anymore.  I used to have the excitement when I dreamed up and created new projects and the satisfaction when they were completed.  Now with all the limitations, I lost the desire to create something new.  Days ago, I was kidding to her if there was a community college in my new town as the one I enrolled before, should I enroll some classes, any classes, as what I did when I just retired?  I said it would catch eyes when an 86 year old student together with all teenagers.  Although I was just kidding, deep in my mind, I was desperately hoping if it might materialize.  Was I getting desperate!?

I needed that to energize my mood.  Then I thought, I just celebrated my 86^th birthday last month, was I trying to do the unrealistic?  Accepting the facts, whether I liked it or not, that when I aged, I should act like any other aged person.  Having a meaning life did not have to be doing something physical as teenagers. 

I had to convince myself that an eighty six person was not the same as an age sixty four person when I retired.  I had to make me to accept that, twenty two years after I retired, I should learn to change my life style, relaxing or walking around the park rather than acting as a jumping jack or skydiving, playing the piano just for fun than to prove I could do the impossible.

The definitions for the elders needed to be modified.  If the energy or the brain wave still allowed having creative writing, continued, otherwise it was logical to limit the writing and converted the time to read.  If I felt what I was achieving within my ability and I still feeling the accomplishment, I was making my life meaningful.

Had I been doing it correctly?  It was for others to judge and for me to accept it.  When one reached my age, life might be too short to feel regretful.

Don’t think about yesterday; don’t think about tomorrow; think about today, now, this minute.

[September 2022]