Sunday, March 6, 2011

BEWARE YOUR OWN HEART

When you get old like me, you will probably think you have bits of hard-earned wisdom you'd like to pass along to young people.

After all, you've lived a long time, and you have had 40 jobs and 50 affairs and raised a son and have five grandchildren. You have traveled in the U.S. and Mexico and Europe, and survived car crashes and mountain bike falls and a few police chases when you were a teenager. You have seen the business end of a Mojave Green rattlesnake up close and been busy but not afraid.

You have fired guns and ridden horses and climbed rock walls and loved women who were better than you and some that were worse. You have had friends and lovers and ideas that no one else seemed to have.

So you think you are wise. Maybe you are, maybe not.

A lot of young people say they would rather learn about life on their own. At a party, I was talking to a lovely woman in her 20s who said she would rather make her own mistakes. Too bad, I thought, I have so much to teach. Oh well.  Her loss.

Let them earn their own wisdom through hard knocks.

But here, anyway, is some advice, about things to do and not do, and things to look out for. So here goes nothin', as we used to say.

First, beware your own heart. I don't mean the physical organ that twitches like a man with his finger in a light socket inside your own chest. I mean your emotional center.

The biggest trouble I ever got myself in was following my heart.

Lots of folks will tell you that is the main thing to do in life, follow your heart. Well, OK, up to a point. But you have to realize that hearts are fickle, and emotions are fluid, at least mine always have been and still are.

Don't get carried away with your own emotions. Especially when you're young and think you know everything. Don't get married when you are head over apple pie in love. That is the worst time. Let your love grow, let it mature and ripen like fruit or flowers in a garden.

Don't sign anything for two years. Don't get married. Don't buy property. Love is an E-ticket ride for a year or so. Enjoy it, but realize your feelings might change. The Spaniards have a saying, “From barroom to bedroom to barroom in nine months.”

Take it seriously. The Spaniards know.

Young people think they can drink and drive. They can't. No one can. They also think they know their feelings and can trust them. They don't, and they can't. Most young people, hell most people of all ages, can't find their rear end with both hands and a road map. But they don't know that, and you can't tell 'em.

Lots of young people think it would be heaven to be rich, but being wealthy is not all it's cracked up to be. I grew up around rich people, and they were a miserable lot.

One guy I knew in high school, Jim, had parents who were rich alcoholics. His father owned the first gull-wing Mercedes sports car in Wichita. A mutual friend one time saw Jim's mother with two black eyes, which she tried to cover up with dark glasses and makeup. Her husband had worked her over.

Jim told me he heard his parents arguing once and found them in the master bathroom. Jim's dad was shoving his mom's face into the toilet bowl and flushing the toilet over and over and yelling, "I'm going to flush you down the toilet, you piece of shit."

Nice way to grow up. Jim had everything he ever wanted. Except decent parents.

Wealth is not all it's cracked up to be. Sometimes, it lets people get away with being stupid, or crazy, or trashy. If you're nuts anyway, the world will let you be twice as nuts if you're rich.

What are the values that matter in life? I always figured at the end of your days you want to look back and feel good about what you've done, that you've left the world a better place.

If you only care about yourself and think about yourself, you're going to be miserable and make others around you miserable.

That's no way to live.

The joy in life comes from devoting yourself to others, to children and family, and to something larger than yourself, a political cause, an art form, a profession.

If you can't do that, life can be tough sledding. That's my opinion. For what's it's worth. Of course that isn't all of it, but that's it for now.

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle



2 comments:

John said...

You sound like the old Guru at the top of the mountain, the sage philosopher. So soon old and so late smart. Seems almost all of us have to learn from our own mistakes and never listen to some of the things we should have. We are lucky to have made it this far and hope the best for the younger ones and hope they have a little more sense than we did.

Roger R. Angle said...

Well, they probably won't. But I wish them luck.