While I can say that I know quite a bit now about tracking and trapping raccoons, trimming goat hooves, the metabolism and digestive system of horses, recognizing coyote scat, the molting season of chickens and ducks, what to do when a dog has trouble pooping, how to nurse back a window-smacked bird, what a deer leg looks like--off the deer, the nocturnal patterns of feral cats, and much else that falls in between, I am still pages away from starting the next chapter.
I read this excerpt below and it struck me. To paraphrase what I had just said to someone 20+ years younger than I, "You are young and there are things you just don't know yet and it is just that way."
Someone 20+ years my senior may say the same to me.
"A life story is like an impressionist painting, a riot of tiny brushstrokes when viewed up close. There is a great deal we are unable to discern about our lives while we are still caught up in the small exertions of living. Getting older allows us to step back far enough to recognize the overall shape of things, the full picture that can only be seen from the distance of an elapsed lifetime."
~~~~~Wendy Lustbader, Life Gets Better: The Unexpected Pleasures of Growing Older
As your 20+ years older relative, I can assure you those words are so true. Sometimes I so wish I could just tell a younger person whom I care about, "because I've been in the same position, this is my experience with that situation." However, most of the time, they don't want to listen and probably that works for some. They just have to find out on their own. But I'm a real believer in not recreating the wheel and learning from others.
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