Meanings of Life Sept.

26 Youth, Age and Meaning

Life meanings change as people become older, and as the future becomes the present becomes the past.
In youth, life meanings are most generally tied to dreams of the future. In the prime of adulthood, life meanings
are generally tied to the present, whether as felt meanings or de facto meanings. In old age, life meaning, for
some, may recede into the past. “If your dreams and plans for the future come true, what will you be doing ten
years from now?”--this question may have much more meaning for the average twenty-year-old than for the
average forty-year-old, whose life has largely already been decided.

Reality intrudes into dreams and ambitions as one grows older. Grades and sports competitions, as well
as competition for boyfriends or girlfriends, show young people “where they stand,” and cause dreams to clash
with reality. Rarely, dreams succeed over “reality”: the young person really does become a famous actress or a
rock star. Almost always, however, this does not happen. Consider degrees of ambition--high, medium, and
low--and their different personal and social consequences.
--Some careers (professional athlete, mathematician) peak early; others (novelist, for example, or historian)
may peak late, allowing longer scope for dreams. Some people have no dreams; but typically, dreams give way
before reality: we forget or repress our dreams as reality intrudes. Think, for example, of the young people who
work or hang out on the streets instead of going to university. Or consider your own parents.
--Most people live vicariously: that’s why we’re so interested in the lives of celebrities, and so attuned to
movies and television. These are lives we can only dream of, as compared to our own “boring” lives.

Reality’s intrusions occur in different ways in different areas of life. In some areas, like sports or
business, measurement is constant: the athlete’s statistics; the salesperson’s sales figures: you always know
“how you are doing.” In other areas, the reality is unclear. Writers and artists may be ignored while alive, but
famous after death. In marriage, the reality of dissatisfaction may suddenly emerge, for example, with a request
for a divorce; at work, one may suddenly and unexpectedly get fired, or get promoted. Reality ultimately
intrudes with death: think of the fear of a doctor’s diagnosis, or an accident.
--Reality involves a succession of “tests as one becomes older. The complex meanings of “success” and
“failure”: who do you blame? The role of luck is essential. “A good life” is one in which these tests are largely
passed: you’ve had a reasonably successful career and a reasonably happy marriage, and your children are
successfully “on their own.” If one of these “tests” is failed, it may color one’s entire life. Surveys reveal that
people tend, on average, to become somewhat happier as they become older. This is because, while they may
have abandoned youthful dreams, they have more or less passed reality’s tests as they have grown older.

Old age may be a hard time in which to sustain life meaning. Retirement means that one can no longer
find meaning in work; children’s leaving home makes it more difficult to find meaning in family. Ideally, one can
find meaning in hobbies and ongoing family connections. Long life expectancy is new in history, creating
potential social problems as well as problems of individual meaning. Do people become wiser as they get
older? Or do they, in today’s world, become obsolete? Consider the difference between the “young old” and
the “old old” in this week’s reading: the “young old” may have roles to play, but the “old old” may withdraw.
--if you know you will die before long, then is anything worth doing? Aren’t hobbies just a way of “killing time”?
Perhaps; but if one has passed reality’s “tests” throughout one’s life, then perhaps old age can simply be
enjoyed. There is considerable importance to old people being actively involved in the world: but how? What
will your life be like when you are eighty?

Differences in culture as to meanings in youth and age: different societies are structured to encourage or
discourage the individual pursuit of one’s life’s meaning The U.S. is a land of “second chances”: one can easily
get divorced and remarried; one can go back to college at age forty or fifty, and change careers. This may or
may not be good for society, but it does enable the maximum individual “pursuit of happiness.” In Japan, most
people get only one chance: career change has been difficult, and divorce comparatively uncommon--although
divorce rates are rising. Hong Kong, with the possibility of emigration or the lure of China, is a bit more like the
U.S. than Japan: it tends to be flexible in terms of work and inflexible in terms of family. Consider other
societies as well. Largely because of technology, the world as a whole may be moving towards increasing
flexibility in the pursuit of personal meaning
--Differences in gender as to meanings in youth and age: how much does a society restrict men and women
to different gender roles in their pursuit of life meaning as they age, and how much is gender irrelevant?

“The generation gap” in the context of life meaning. Do you want to live the kind of life your parents lived?
“The generation gap” was a matter of lifecourse in the distant past, but a matter of history at present, because
of the rapidity of technological advance. Will you reproduce, reshape, or altogether reject the world of your
elders? This may be the sum of millions of individual choices… When you are forty-five, how will your life be
similar to or different from that of your parents at forty-five? Consider the current protests in Hong Kong in the
context of “generation gap”: every society is trying to shape its young in certain ways, but the young may resist.