A Surprise

Recently, a friend I thought I knew and could reliably predict surprised me. In a good way. And it made me think about how people can continue to change.

This is a very close friend; we’ve maintained our friendship for decades. We bonded over similar high school biology class projects and have remained friends since then. We’ve supported, shared, and laughed our way through life as we attended different colleges, had heartbreaking and hilarious adventures in dating, built careers, got married, and, most recently, both retired. So I know her extremely well. And that’s why I was so startled when she recently tried something new – something I told her very confidently that she would hate – and she liked it!

This was so unexpected that it jolted me free from the assumptions I had unknowingly built over the years about who she is. I had been confident that I knew her well enough to predict her likes and dislikes. But I was wrong.

This experience reminded me how important it is to stay curious. About the people in our lives who we often assume we know so well that they won’t ever surprise us. And even about ourselves.

Although we should never expect or demand it, I see that people change. My friend isn’t the same person she was at 16 or even a decade ago. Some of the experiences she’s lived through in the past few years have changed her. And that led me to an unexpected revelation – even in the second half of our life, we can still change. She has changed. And that helps me believe that I also can change.

Recognizing that we can continue to change brings a certain freedom to getting older. And with that freedom comes a measure of responsibility. We’re responsible for choosing whether we get more solidly set in our ways (of acting and thinking) or whether we become more open to curiosity and new experiences.

Joan Chittister (in The Gift of Years – Growing Older Gracefully) says, “In some ways, we are all just getting to be more of who and what we have always been. Which means, of course, that we can decide right now what we intend to be like when we’re eighty: approachable and lovable, or tyrannous and fractious…We are free now to choose the way we live in the world, the way we relate to the world around us, the attitudes we take to life, the meaning we get out of it, the gifts we put into it. And all of them can change.”

Remaining open and curious brings an inevitable vulnerability. But fortunately, getting older also brings perspectives that can help us manage that vulnerability. We have already experienced the disappointment of attempting to suppress who we really are to better “fit in” and conform. We’re more aware of the passing of time and realize our time and energy are finite. And now we’re less willing to spend those limited resources on things that don’t actually matter to us.

Hopefully, we can use those perspectives to encourage growth and change in the better parts of us – the part that looks for ways to help others, the part that is curious and still wants to learn, the part that believes we are more than our body and can remain active and interesting as we age. We may decide it’s finally time to forgive the hurts we have been holding onto for far too long. Or choose to stop judging ourselves harshly for not being some unobtainable, idealized version of ourselves we constructed in our mind years ago.

We can’t control many things as the years pass, but we can always choose our responses and attitudes. This means we have great power but also great responsibility for our happiness.

I hope that, like my friend, I sometimes surprise the people who love me. I hope they see changes in me that lead to openness to new experiences, an attitude of curiosity instead of fear, and a willingness to take risks and try new things that might create a richer, more meaningful second half of life.