Recapturing My Youth

Thursday, October 22, 2015

So this evening I went to assist with the triennial survey of homelessness here in the state of Minnesota. I went to a location near downtown Minneapolis to assist in administering a survey to homeless people staying in a shelter environment. It’s a sobering experience to meet homeless people. You very well could become a homeless person. You quite possibly know at least one person in your vast network of friends whose housing situation is currently quite precarious.  You just might not be aware that this is true. Many people barely making it financially are not that far way from becoming homeless. All it takes is one catastrophic event to push many people down the “economic ladder” into destitution.

Many years have passed since the economic implosion of 2008. Regardless of what word choice is made to describe that time (Great Recession, etc) many, many people were harmed by that time. I wish I had been better prepared for that horrible time here in the United States. Had I been better prepared I might not have suffered some of the hardships I have experienced these last several years. Learning how to plan and manage the affairs of your life is a vital and mature task to commit to. It is sad that there are many people who lack the essential skills to manage their lives as adults. Others find themselves still making up for underdeveloped skills later in their lives. I definitely fit into the latter category.

As I left the site where I assisted with the survey I found myself aware of my great yearning to recapture my supposedly lost youth. Is it really lost? I don’t know. I have written about this idea of lost youth and lost time elsewhere in my blog. Some would argue it is possible for an individual to recapture earlier times in his life when that earlier phase of life unfolds in such a way that leaves him feeling seriously unfulfilled, alienated, disenchanted or all of the above. I do believe such revisiting of an under-enjoyed past is possible. The trick to successfully recapturing lost years seems to require the application of an adult attitude marked by patience, thoughtfulness and discernment.

My twenty-eight month journey with my current therapist has proven vital to my successful plunge into addressing and healing the deepest wounds of the earliest years of my life history. And yet it’s amazing how unsteady I can still sometimes feel even after doing so much work with the guidance of a therapist. It doesn’t help that I live in a nation marked by such dysfunction and backwardness. A mentality approximating that of a spoiled five-year old child seems to characterize much of the interactions in our government these days. One can see examples of this at the local, state and federal levels of government. It can be easy to want to recapture “lost youth” when it appears as if few other people who are of biological adult maturity nonetheless act petulant, selfish and downright mean. Why be a mature adult when it isn’t the “in thing” to do these days? Why indeed.

Despite the abundance of regressive and petty behavior one can read about in the daily life of the American nation I nonetheless feel fairly pleased with the state of my own life these days. I have been working full time for nearly three months now. I actually like my primary job! This is not a small thing. Many Americans hate their jobs…if they have one at all.

So what to do about the blog? Yes, I am still writing. And yes my life has evolved tremendously since June, 2013. It actually seems strangely surreal that the memories I have of that time in my life are actually of real experiences from my own life history. It no longer seems actually possible that I was as sick, disheartened and angry as I was that summer of 2013.

I am currently cultivating contacts to lead me in a new career direction in 2016. But actually the direction isn’t really that new. Instead I want to bring my life full circle and get back into the world of work involving marine policy, exploration and research. I feel that great things are going to open up to me in the coming years. And cultivating a healthy belief that such a wondrous life is indeed possible is a first and vital step to realizing such a dream!