How to Survive The Stages of Life
Getting though life is never easy. There are many speed bumps along the way no matter what age you are.
You can’t know what it’s like to be ten years old unless you’ve been ten years old. You can read about it, you can watch ten year olds but until you get to ten it’s just academic.
Elementary School K-8
There wasn’t anything called kindergarten when I was growing up. You were thrown in a very scary place with kids of all ages.
A building filled with kids age 6 to 13.
There were bullies everywhere until you reached the size that you could be the bully.
On top of everything else you had to learn to read, write, spell, and do math.
And in those days if you didn’t perform you were left behind to repeat that grade again.
No wonder we all have some kind of complex when we get older.
Your only defense — try to make friends with an older kid. Until you grow.
High School
High school was even worse — Children thrown in with pre-adults. Sex, drugs and Rock N’ Roll was on everyone’s mind.
How can you be expected to learn anything with that kind of pressure cooker environment?
Being a junior was probably the worst. You weren’t a senior yet so no respect from them. And you didn’t carry much weight with the freshman or sophomores either.
You were stuck in high school limbo.
Only the passage of time will get you through this one.
College
Finally the playing field gets a little more level. Age becomes less of an issue. You left all your lameness behind in high school.
Now when you go home you can finally thumb your nose at those lame seniors.
An engineering degree will probably afford you a great life. A liberal arts degree probably not so much.
25-45
You’re invincible. Life is good whether you’re broke or have money. Your ratty apartment was strewn with beer cans and stale pizza on the coffee table.
If you were lucky enough to have a coffee table.
You’re late for work almost every day.
By thirty or before you are usually married, maybe a couple of rug rats running around.
You’re burning the candle and both ends and are probably accumulating massive debt.
By 45 you wonder — “I’m 45? What the hell happened?”
45-65
This is where you start thinking about things you should have been thinking about when you were 25.
Things like saving for retirement, your kid’s college, reducing debt, etc.
If you’re not debt free by now you probably won’t be.
70+
People are living longer. It’s predicted by 2020 the complete knowledge of all medical knowledge will double ever 73 days. 73 DAYS!!
With no steady job what do you do to keep active and stay healthy? This is where everything starts breaking down.
All those pizzas and late night binge drinking are here to collect from your body that can’t do a third of what it used to do.
Something always hurts when you get up and something always hurts when you go to bed.
Some Final Thoughts
While there is good and bad in all stages of life there is one important lesson to get through all the stages.
Enjoy life no matter what stage you’re in. Live it to the fullest. I don’t have a clue what 80 feels like but I’d sure like to find out.
When I get there I’ll let you know what you have to look forward to.
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