The Best Times of Life

It’s one of those scenes in HIMYM that make you well up. Lily is upset that the captain said she’s just a kinder garden teacher. And Marshal can’t understand why she’s upset since that’s the truth. That’s when Lily clarifies that she feels bad that she gave up art and is truly “just a kinder garden teacher”. 

The very short exchange they have at this point is heart breaking and so true too. 

Marshal: I promise you, your best and your most exciting days are all ahead of you

Lily: I love you for saying that but there gets to be a point in life where that just stops being true 

I have watched it before too but this time it just stuck with me! I have had this feeling for years. The more settled you feel in life - something that you strive for - the less of the excitement there is to look forward to. 

Our 20’s are when we are looking at careers and potential life partners. We are young and full of potential. We have a crush on people and we enjoy the flush of first love. We feel on top of the world and the rush of hormones that give us the most happiness. A glorious future is still ahead of us. 

We spend out 30’s settling down. For some the glow of first love comes in late and may not be as bright. But then learning to love together with someone takes over. Creating a new home and feeling the wedded bliss. While this starts to get old come the pitter patter of little feet. At least that was the how the traditional ways of life worked. 

With kids, people are locked in for the next 20 years. The 40’s is about raising them and re-living the moments of your own childhood - hopefully create even better ones for them. We all have this urge to pass on our genes and the best of us to another generation. The empty nest syndrome is still a while away. From the first kinder garden class to the college graduation, there’s a lot to look forward to. 

For people who don’t have kids or choose not to have - I don’t think it makes a difference either ways - the 40’s are quieter. At least, in my experience. The rush of love is done and dusted. No more members coming into the family. It’s all settled, yet very quiet. And that’s “the point in life where that just stops being true”

The reason why all kinds of adventures are so popular is because for people who’ve reached this point, the only way to get on with life is to find new excitement. 

Jump off a cliff, travel, go wine tasting, take a cruise, have meals with friends, open the best bottles of wine! But guess what - life is till the same even as you reach the bottom of that bottle. You may sleep better with that high but the next morning is just going to be the same. 

You work and make money to afford a lot of things you couldn’t earlier - and one of them is insurance against boredom, activities that tell you still have a lot of life left and a lot of awesome in that life. If you ask me, a lot of these self help books that teach you to find your "why", hone in on your one thing, create schedules and getting done to chasing success are meant to fill your days with a semblance of purpose. Or what else would we do with the long years of life stretched ahead of us. 

My best friend just adopted a baby girl. At the fag end of their application deadline, they bagged a little angel. And while not everyone is blessed with such a huge change this late in life, I wonder how her purposeless life has been turned upside down. Her life centred around this angel - and she told me that it didn’t matter earlier but now she wants to make sure that she stays fine because she has this baby to raise. 

Must be nice to have something like that fill your days. For the rest of us, we work and leave in the pursuit of something exciting. But a lot of days are just days. I think of it with gratitude because no news is good news. But it does get lonely. And the worse part is - this is life! It’s going to be this way. Which can be good in a way since calm is better than upheavals. And there’s only so much excitement you can drum up every single day. 

So there does come a point in life when the best times of our lives are behind us. Maybe the later years bring out some other best times which are very different from the earlier ones, but I am guessing they don't match the earlier ones. They are more sombre in their quality or artificially coloured with excitement to try and match them with yesteryears in a desperate attempt to re-create youth. 

Have you felt this way? Do you feel that life settles into this calm or boredom - whatever you choose to call it - beyond a point? Is there really a way to make it meaningful without the deliberate and forced function of making it exciting? What have you tried to make things better? What do you do fill the void in life? Who do you populate your loneliness with?