People who have lost their houses and cars and everything they’ve worked for all their lives may feel like giving up. Some do.
After 30 or 40 years, they don’t feel like they have it within them to rebuild and try again. Some have no choice but to live the life they’ve been handed. Financially, they don’t have an option.
I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Pikeville, Kentucky, talking to FEMA workers. Several of them were preparing to go to areas devastated by the East Kentucky floods. One of the men said, “We are trying to get everyone registered. There is some assistance available but it is small and limited in comparison to what they need. These families have nothing. They have lost everything. Many of them have no means to rebuild what they have lost.”
We all face and deal with “new normals” in life: Aching knees, death of a spouse, loss of friends who have moved or died. Financial changes and health challenges force us to reset our lives, but that is easier said than done. Too often, all we have is the energy to stare out the window, if we have a window.
Life’s disasters set us back. Mentally, physically, relationally and financially, and such an event may require another lifetime of building. Your remaining lifetime may be five or 10 years. If you are lucky, it will be more. It’s certainly a little easier to try to climb back up the mountain at the age of 35 than at 65, but to some extent you can if you have the will and physical ability to do so.
There is a time in life when you either quit or dramatically change gears.
You don’t feel like standing and teaching a class another 10 years. You can’t go back into the coal mine another five years. You’ve stood in the assembly line for 35 or 40 years and you are done.
There is nothing wrong with withdrawing from one life and resetting to do something else. This could simply be fishing, golf, traveling, walking by the river or lake or sleeping late every morning and enjoying your coffee late in the day.
The old Apostle Paul had been through a lot in his life. Shipwrecked, stoned and left for dead, nearly murdered, whipped cruelly and placed in a jail cell, his life was far less than glamorous. Yet he said, “Let us not get tired of well-doing, we will reap a harvest if we don’t quit.”
Many years ago, a friend of mine restarted his life at the age of 50. He had nothing to show for his years of work and life. Old age was looking grim. He and his wife found an old abandoned hamburger stand in a small town, rented the building for almost nothing, cleaned it up and worked 12 hours a day for the next 17 years, retiring with a couple of million dollars in the bank.
This would be out of reach for many today, but the pointe to keep in mind is, if you have the mental wherewithal to think it and the physical stamina to put it into action, you can reset your life.
Your current normal doesn’t have to be forever, if you don’t quit.
Mollette, of Newburgh, Indiana, is an American columnist, author and radio commentator. He may be contacted at GMollette@aol.com
