Actor Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a new podcast out called "Wiser Than Me," on which she digs deep in interviews with older women she admires. Her first guest was a legend who, although controversial to some, has had an extraordinary career and life and who also has no intention of slowing down at 85.
And while I could name the guest, I won't because I don't want that to distract from some of the heavy nuggets of wisdom she dropped during the interview. A philosophy she has developed over the years is that life is composed of three acts: Act 1 is from birth to around age 30, Act 2 is from 30 to around 60, and Act 3 is from 60 on. According to her, Act 1 is the hardest - being young is HARD because we're trying to figure out who were are while being forced into roles of we're expected to hold. Act 2 is where we develop ourselves, maybe start families, firm up our professional lives. Act 3, though, is where things get good: Act 3 is where we can slow down, re-examine our lives to date, and become who we were meant to be all along.
I can't even begin to express how much I love this. I've long felt that the adoration of youth is off-the-mark; sure, younger people may be physically beautiful (if that's what we're prizing, and that's a whole nother debate), but so many are too busy beating themselves up to know it. In our youth, we're constantly being compared to others, both overtly and tacitly, so that we rarely harness our true talents and potential. Instead,we fall into a life of discontent because it's slightly or very off from what we really want.
Personally, I've always been far happier as an adult than I ever was as a child. I always hated people telling me what to do; as a child, it's necessary just to keep you alive but that doesn't mean I liked it. And maybe it's because loss has forced me to rethink so much about my life up until that point, but it's really interesting to be able to step out of myself and look at my life objectively: what did I learn so early on? How did that impact my decisions? And how did those decisions frame the path to where I am now?
The good news is that we do have the ability to perform that life examination and make corrections where we can. We all might leave this life with some regrets, but do we want those to be big ones? Or do we want to do what we can while we can to forge the path we want?
Maybe I'm not chronologically at Act 3 yet, but hell, that's even better: I have more time to dig in and untangle what needs to be in order to correct the course.
Comments