AikinenOptimizing the Pieces Together

Date: January 1st, 2020

How Adapting to Change is Essential to a Long Productive Life

If we want to learn about something, we should pay attention to those who have been successful before us.

When we are about to journey out towards a destination we have never been to before. We gather together various resources. We gather maps, directions, tour books. We search the internet for relevant articles about what that destination is like and how to get there. But what we don't realize, and what most of us take for granted, is that for all the information to exist, which are in essence forms of experiential energy, someone at some point in the past had to go at it alone, without a map, or an internet article, and they journeyed into the unknown.

One thing in life that is certain, is that nothing, and I mean nothing, is certain. Whatever it is that you are counting on being there, well it may be there, and it might not be there in the future. Time and time again, some of oldest people who have lived, the centenarians (+100 years) and super centenarians (+110 years), have said again and again, be resilient, be open to change, don't get upset when things change, adapt well to the storms of life, be ever yielding to what life brings.

This is a lesson in flexibility. It is a lesson in detachment to any and all forms that are in our lives. When we become attached to something, whether it is a job, house, a spouse, or a pet, at some point in life, sometimes those attachments don't last, and the more we try to cling to what we are losing, the more pain we experience along the process of loss. Everyone in life will have both gain and loss. As humans, we are really, really good at handling gain, and we are all really, really bad at handling loss. But these old timers, took it all in stride, and actually learned how to handle loss, not necessarily easily, but with less attachment and a higher philosophical outlook than the rest of us mere under 100 year old mortals.

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