Reverting to Type

It’s too dark to tell, but I’m hoping that today will be clear and smoke free. The smoke has been with us almost all week. All of the local counties have declared ‘air emergencies’…don’t go outside unless you have to. I haven’t mentioned it very much at all here and that’s simply because I’m tired of it. Tired of smelling smoke. Tired of looking at smoke. I want to see blue skies and puffy white clouds. Is that too much to ask?

The other day Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By asked the question, did our lives turn out as we expected or even planned? I think my answer was ‘It’s too soon to tell’ or something like that. Just a glib answer without any thought behind it. Seriously; do people have expectations for their lives? Wishes, yes. Expectations, no. I can’t help but believe that we are all held captive, to a certain degree, by our personality Types. Of course we strain against the confines of Type as we try to fit in at an early age and that changes us, somewhat. And if we’re successful in amending our Type, we can go through life looking and acting just like everyone else…sort of.

And then along comes elderhood. Retirement. We’re free. Free to be what our Type has been insisting on for all of those years. But now we have to struggle against ‘habit’. We’ve been acting a certain way for so long, it’s hard to undo those habits. If we made it this far, then the habits made us safe, or so we believe, and we don’t want to tempt fate by changing. Unfortunately, too many of us decide to play it safe. And those are the people who say that their lives turned out as expected.