Aging with Grace

Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect.

Margaret Mitchell

Th Dome Des Invalides houses the tomb of Napoleon. The tomb, itself is not very large. He was a small man with a high opinion of himself. Hence the term, Napoleon complex. Napoleon suffered many set backs in his life time. I can picture him shrugging his shoulders and saying,”C’est la vie.” As I mentioned in a previous post, “It is what it is .”, is a phrase I overuse. I would add, “That’s life .” “C’est la vie .”

In my opinion, it’s not a bad philosophy. I have given up on railing against those things I can’t change. It’s a waste of energy. These day I choose to focus my strength on where I can make a difference. Some of that insight comes with age. I wish I could have back some of the time and effort I spent on concerns I would never resolve. I wonder if I shared some of Napoleon’s arrogance in thinking I could change the unchangeable.

Women want to fix things. It’s in our DNA. That’s why women are often successful in politics. Many Men, on the other hand, like to break things. Our current government crisis illustrates that. I realize it’s a generalization. However, historically often true.

We might do better to realize we can’t fix everything. We would be better off using our energy in more constructive ways. Maybe, men are right. Maybe, we should break more things. Looking at it, I doubt that’s the answer either. The best we can do would be to focus our strength were we can make a difference.

If this comes across as cynical, that not my intention. It’s just realistic. We are given a finite number of minutes, hours, days in our lifetime. Imagine what we could accomplish if all that energy was channeled into something that would show positive results?