In Shakespeare's play As You Like It, he compares life to a play and all of us to players in it. He continues with a monologue about the Seven Ages of Man as we go through life. These seven stages: infancy, childhood, the lover, the soldier, the justice, old age and extreme old age are the landmarks that we experience as we go through life.
I remember someone saying to me that until you're thirty life keeps changing on you. It sometimes seems it is completely different between one day and the next. During this period, most of us are on our own for the first time, discovering new things, making our own decisions, and enjoying the freedom to choose what we like. It seems that we have limitless options, and a whole world is opening up before us, filled with endless possibilities.
I have passed on the same advice which I found so helpful when I was under thirty. I tell others that you will live a lot of lives in the course of your life. Before your thirties perhaps, you are likely to experience constant change and evolution probably because you are spontaneous and open to new ideas, places, people and things.
Later in life, usually however, there comes a point where we want to 'settle down', and build a base and a secure home for ourselves; a haven and refuge of sorts. Here we feel we can be ourselves, spend time with like minded friends and generally establish a foundation.
Subsequently, we pass through different milestones, marking our lives and the fairly logical order of the life cycle. What your life is like as you get older, may depend upon how willing we have been to experience and accept change.
For me, much of my adult life evolved organically, some out of necessity and a lot from seeing where the choices I made brought me.
Whenever, I felt anxiety, concern or distress, I knew that some of this comes into each of our lives. Very often, I found that life seemed much easier when I tried to see the 'pot of gold' at the end of the rainbow rather than the lightning and thunder in the middle of a bad storm.
Change, constant or periodic need not worry or even concern us unduly since it often brings a mixture of good and bad with it. Surprisingly in retrospect it has taken us in the 'right direction'.
I do not believe that our lives are predetermined. I also don't think that whatever we do is fine provided we like it and it feels good.
I don't think we need to be fatalistic or resigned that nothing we do matters because everything in our lives if foreordained. On the other hand, I don't think we are so interconnected that our every action impacts the universe in a butterfly effect.
I believe instead that we have choices we can make, that if we decide to treat others the way we want to be treated, and consistently try to make
things better; we are much more likely to be happy and less likely to feel guilt, regret and disappointment.
Small 'coincidences', feeling deja vu, acknowledging good and beauty when we see it, and generally making a decision to consistently do our best; will go a long way toward our being confident and comfortable with ourselves and other people around us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_world's_a_stage
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