Do human beings expect too much? And do these expectations - or rather, these unfulfilled expectations - lead inexorably to discontent with life? Simply asking this question inspires numerous plot possibilities and themes for novels.
Why I am thinking about this anyway? Partly because I am currently participating in an intensive, upper intermediate German course in Darmstadt. The other participants are mostly in their early twenties. They represent a wide range of nationalities: Tunisian, Turkish, Indonesian, Syrian, Cameroonian, Rumanian and Ukrainian. And there is me, a 67-year-old Brit.
I am used to working with young people; after all, I was a university lecturer for many years, and I love being amongst these people. I love their sense of fun, their almost limitless possibilities and I love listening to their hopes and dreams and their arrogance and I wonder why so many people of my age (but not all) are jaded, have lost their sense of fun and adventure.
What went wrong with the lives of these older moaners? Was it a bad marriage, unrealistic hopes and dreams concerning that stellar career, the perfect children who never quite matched up to their expectations? Perhaps, it was unrealistic aims that set them on a bad course. Maybe society sets these goals for us and many of us are simply unable to reach them.
So, dissatisfied with the present, many oldies look back to find some solace in their own past - the good old days that probably never existed in the first place.
So - what is the answer to this problem of discontent? Or is discontent a kind of unrequited love that lies in the hearts of all men and women? But discontent, blaming and complaining can never be the basis of a fruitful future, can it? Perhaps, I discovered a possible answer to this problem just two nights ago while celebrating a friend's birthday on a hilltop near Heidelberg and watching the sun go down over the Rhine plain. My friend's 5-year-old daughter was enjoying every gleam of sunlight, she was in the here and now - nowhere else - enjoying the sight of the first bat, the first star and the sinking sun as though she had never seen these things before. She was now, here and now, and being in the present. Perhaps, this is the apparently simple answer I am looking for.
There are many books that deal with the meaning or purpose of life. My favourite in The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Second, The Meaning of Life by Will Durant and third, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff. It contains this wonderful line. “When we are green, still half-created, we believe that our dreams are rights, that the world is disposed to act in our best interests, and that falling and dying are for quitters. We live on the innocent and monstrous assurance that we alone, of all the people ever born, have a special arrangement whereby we will be allowed to stay green forever.” Now, you writers out there - beat that and be happy!
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