‘Never volunteer’
At what age should we give ourselves personal report cards? For myself, I’d say now, and every year hereafter.
Well, I refer only to myself because it seems only now that I feel capable of objective introspection.
In any case, I believe everyone about my age would benefit from a yearly graded life, if only to warn ourselves that we’re not squandering time, energy, and resources, we’re not acting for no good and definite purpose, we’re not too self-centered. In fact, if I had done it earlier, I might have spared myself from a serious fall at 80, to be precise.
I guess I had forgotten my practical teacher in life, Dad, who repeated the warning that one is never too old to make a fool of oneself. Age, indeed, is no excuse for mistakes.
Perhaps sensing my character flaw, he left me a few basic rules. “Never volunteer,” and he proceeded to jokingly demonstrate how those who did so in war movies die early, never to be seen again on screen.
My favorite is his warning about people passing their problems to others instead of solving them. He also alerted me to people who come up with all sorts of excuses, instead of getting their own jobs done.
I have myself observed that it’s never too late to ruin everything one has built all one’s life, but then neither is it too late to change course. But then again, changing courses is a detour, a likely waste of time when you’re running out of it. Better to watch your step. One fall can do it for us at our age, and not just physically. Recovery, if possible at all, takes much longer. We’re more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of life; we’re less in control if not altogether out of control.
Looking not too far back, I realize I have failed to heed Dad’s simple wisdoms and now face the consequences—on my bonus years yet, when I should be spending residual time, means, and energy enjoyably. Four years ago I took on a job meant for someone else, and made its consequent problems my own. I didn’t even ask for it, yet gave my all. Now I hear Dad’s haunting voice too late: Never volunteer. I may have as well had volunteered, indeed!
Trust
I couldn’t turn my back on an innocent child, a granddaughter, thinking it was an engagement for only a limited term, even for which I hardly had the time or capability. I was returning to mothering in my 80s, a job, a responsibility, a problem definitely not mine to bear, but my son’s. In the end, it gave me illnesses and heartaches.
And as in an earlier episode when I was swindled by a relatively new friend who had built my trust for three years, Dad again, would be unsympathetic, and would probably rub it in: “Who else could swindle you, kiddo, but someone you trust?”
True enough, that someone I chose to trust has swindled me out of my retirement years. Worse, it’s his child’s turn to be swindled, her responsibility taken from me and left in unknown hands during his habitual long absences.
Thus, the complications are multiplied. It seems the nature of a problem to seek its deserved bearer. For one thing, the issue goes to court for proper adjudication of guardianship and parental support. I may not be entirely out of it, but the problem is being passed around so that the lesson is learned all around as it is meant.
Obviously, this year I can’t give myself a high grade, but I think I’ll pass myself—having been saved by keeping the faith that God will take care of the child in His own way, and that the mortal court, by God’s will, too, will decide what’s best for the child, for me, and everybody else.
In the end, I trust that everything happens for the best.
