After having lived long, life looks so different. The intensity of youth is replaced with the calm of experience.
All of those sayings we hear during life are true. We hear don’t sweat the small stuff. But, juggling career, relationships, children, acquisitions, come to the forefront in adulthood and we just go and go. We don’t stop to smell the roses. Yes, the calm of experience allows the wisdom of age to make this Grandma appreciate what is really important in life: family and close friends, and good health and time to be able to share life passage events with those you love.
So much of what is so important in youth is absorbed the experience of years. However, I also now have the knowledge that you have to live the years yourself. I want to be the grandma who eases the stress and angst of life for those I love by sharing life lessons learned. For example, savor the good times. What brings worry and angst shall pass.
So many of what I heard from my parents has so much more relevancy now. Live in the present. My Holocaust survivor mother’s bedtime mantra was extreme in the context of America today. She always wanted to know I had been happy each day, because a Hitler might come again and I might not have a tomorrow. It is important to reflect on something that brings happiness each day.
My mother wanted to know if I had helped someone today because if others had not helped her and my father, they would not have survived the Holocaust. It is important to bring happiness to others each day.
She wanted to know if I used every moment of the day to the fullest, learning the most, accomplishing the most, because a Hitler might come again, and I would not have a tomorrow. I learned to appreciate and take advantage of the opportunities of being an American. I am proud of being an American and grateful for what I have been afforded by being an American. Hard work, focus, and goals were their immigrant example and I learned that work ethic and ethics are important to success in life.
My mother would repeat that if you don’t have your health you have nothing. We know now to be preventative is key. A lifetime of attention to what diseases might be familial is important. Familial means a disease or condition that runs in a family. It means having a colonoscopy at age 50 no matter how distasteful it might be because of a genetic code of problems.
Family is most important. My mother would say that we, the children and the grandchildren, are the priceless jewels in life to be cherished.
You cannot pick your family, and with life experience, we learn to be accepting of those in our close family circle. We learn the importance of family, and those intimate long (we never say old) friends who become like family. In our youth, we collect friends indiscriminately and our circle enlarges. Family becomes part of that large circle, and we fail to appreciate our family members. Conflict and differences are more apparent. With life experience, life passage events’ importance is amplified. We want to be part of life–weddings, celebrations, birthdays. Our circle gets smaller and we understand how special those in that circle are. The funerals will definitely be there.
My mother had so many sayings, it is hard to remember them all. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing. Fool me once, and you are the fool; fool me twice and the fool is me.
In youth, we are so ego-centric and think the world revolves about us. We think we have power beyond what is reality. We think the grass is greener in someone else’s yard. With years, I have learned how true is my Mother’s Yiddish/English saying, “keep your own Tzores.” Translated, it means keep your own troubles because other’s troubles are worse and foreign, and your own are familiar, so deal with your own troubles. How people treat us is more of a reflection of what is going on in their lives rather than ours. Have empathy and understanding that everyone has their own troubles.
Do not depend on others to make you happy. We become more comfortable and accepting of ourselves and our own foibles after long years. We now know you make your own happiness.
One of my mother’s more difficult sayings was, “life is hard and then you die.”
Makes you want to be present, smell the roses, and enjoy today’s
Joy,
Mema
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