Scrooging of the Mind

I remember once reading that the wizard Merlin aged backwards.  He started out as an old man and aged to a newborn.  In real life, though, there is some basis for this.  We start out as helpless children, and as we age we revert back to being helpless children.  Exercise and eating right might help in keeping your mind sharp and your body relatively mobile, but the fact is that aging affects us both mentally and physically.

One symptom I notice that starts emerging around the mid-life crisis and continues to re-emerge from then on is "scrooging."  It doesn't surprise me that Ebenezer Scrooge, when he became elderly, was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past.  This is actually a very common occurrence--which I believe happens to everyone--though less dramatically and not precisely on Christmas Eve.  There comes a point, usually starting around the late 30's to early 40's, where our past starts to haunt us.  It continues to haunt us every decade from then on.  My mom was a hospice nurse, and often she had to deal with elderly patients who were screaming about how their sister--who had been dead for fifteen years--had ruined their favorite doll when they were six years old.  It isn't senility.

It can seem very ridiculous.  If a person is eighty years old, the offender is long dead, they hadn't thought about the doll in years...why are they harping on it now?  It is amazing, though, how painful these long suppressed memories can be.

I am 38 now.  I am just starting the beginning stages of the dreaded mid-life crisis, but the scrooging has already begun.  I remember when it first happened.  I was washing dishes, and suddenly I remembered a school friend I had in fifth grade.  I remembered a particular incident, and I suddenly realized the girl had lied to me.  I hadn't thought about this girl in years, and yet I was surprised at how indignant I was about it.  I also felt stupid that I hadn't realized she had lied until so many years later.

That is how it starts out.  Memories float up to your mind.  Sometimes you hear an old song from your childhood, and you suddenly recall a memory associated with it--like maybe a particularly hot Field Day when you were eating a melting ice cream.  Sometimes it can be pleasant, but often the stuff that floats up first is the painful aspects of your life.  Even if the memories themselves aren't really traumatic, they are uncomfortable because they bring us back to a time when we were helpless.

It can really mess you up mentally.  It can be really annoying, because another symptom of the mid-life crisis is the realization that half of your life has been wasted--the best part.  You often desire to make up for lost time, and then you get hit with emotional baggage that interferes with your plans.

I think even people who had good childhoods can find scrooging painful.  The fact is, growing up--even in the best of circumstances--involves going through painful experiences.  That is why it is probably called "growing pains."

However, if you had a bad childhood that involved abuse, then scrooging will be a particularly nasty thing to undergo...particularly if it uncovers blocked memories.  It is very common for people to often remember repressed memories of sexual or physical abuse when they hit their late thirties/early forties.  Regular memories can hit you like a wave, but blocked memories hit you like a tsunami.

I remember when I uncovered some blocked memories from my past.  I had reunited with family I hadn't seen in years.  I had shared a memory with my aunt that I had always thought was funny.  I had remembered as a child that I had seen the Easter Bunny, and I had grabbed his butt--which had felt like a bathrobe.  The bunny had disappeared.  When I woke up the next day, my Easter basket seemed to have less items in it than I had spied the night before.  I always thought the Easter Bunny had gotten offended at my sexual harassment and had taken back some things.  I had always dismissed this as a dream.

My aunt, though, had reacted very oddly.  She insisted that I always had nice Easters.  She sent me a bunch of photos, and on the photos she wrote, "Here is Jessica when she is two years old with her Easter basket.  So cute!"  Another photo, "Jessica on her swing set.  Happy times! Happy! Happy! Happy!"

I remembered thinking as I looked at the photos, "This is a little weird.  Why is she acting this way?"  And suddenly, a floodgate opened in my mind.  All these memories rushed forward, quickly darting from one to another in my mind.  I was so overwhelmed that I actually had to sit down because I was dizzy.  Part of me wondered if it was true.  Some of it seemed so crazy that it was hard to believe.  Yet, deep down, I knew this was the truth.  My aunt had reacted so oddly to that memory because it hadn't totally been a dream.  I must have been partly asleep, because some of it was a dream, but reality had been mixed in with the dream--and some of the events had happened.  It was devastating, and I wondered why it bothered to come up at all.  Why now?  All it did was make me unhappy and interfere with my life.  In most cases, the things you remember...it is long past the time that anything could be done about them.

I have come to realize that "growing pains" are a part of life, and they don't stop just because we become adults.  Scrooging is actually an important stage in human development.  For the first thirty-five years of our life, we collect experiences.  Though we continue to have experiences throughout our life, by the late thirties we start putting all the pieces together.  All the things that perplexed us, the misunderstandings that arose for reasons we could never understand, the blank gaps in our memory...the pieces often help us understand these things.  They shed light into the darkness and reveal something.  This is what leads to wisdom.

Is it fun?  Certainly not! It can range from annoying to opening up your own private hell.  It can mess up your present life.

The one thing that seems unfortunate is that we gain wisdom at a time in our life when it is sometimes too late to apply it.  How often do we wish that we knew then what we know now...how things could have been different for us?  We can't even always pass on this wisdom to the younger generation, who won't accept it and dismiss it as the ramblings of an old person.

I don't think we are meant to be gurus when we are young.  That time is meant to be used for other things--starting careers, having babies, etc.  If we knew then what we know now, perhaps our lives would have been different...but we may have not accomplished what we were supposed to be accomplishing at that period.  As for the younger generation, they must be left to make their own mistakes.

In many ways, I find this time to be very exciting...even though it is painful.  As pieces of the puzzle come together, I have a larger view of the world.  I have more of a capability to enjoy life now than I did when I was younger.  I understand people better.

Regret is a common thing to have when you are reflecting on your life.  We all squander opportunities.  However, I have come to realize that if you didn't take advantage of an opportunity, it was probably because you lacked a needed trait to seize it.  It may truly have not been the best time for the opportunity to happen.  You may feel bad when you see others who accomplished what you didn't, but in the end, everybody has to make sacrifices.  Perhaps someone got that college degree, even if they had a sick loved one at home...but you may have had an advantage in making your choice--one being that maybe you got to spend more time with a loved one.

Though some opportunities may be once-in-a-lifetime, the fact is that opportunities tend to appear at all stages of our life.  They may not be a particular type we failed to seize when we were younger, but that doesn't mean you can't find an equally fulfilling one.  I've never been one to be able to stay in college, despite my love for learning.  I failed, mostly due to lack of tenacity, to succeed in the initial careers I tried.  However, my failures lead me to a career that I find very satisfying and suits me better.

Scrooging is uncomfortable because it introduces you to who you truly are.  Sometimes this is not easy to face.  I didn't want to admit that I was a devout underachiever, and yet I am.  It was realizing that habit that I was, to some degree, able to minimize its influence over my life...though I will always be an underachiever by nature.  In the end, you will have to come to terms with your flaws.

Aging is not fun.  However, I have often found that for what you lose, there is something you gain.  I keep hoping that this will remain true, even as we get older.  What I really look forward to is perhaps putting all the pieces together and seeing a complete picture.