The Human Odyssey

The Twelve Gifts of the Human Life Cycle

A guest blog I did appears today on Basil & Spice:

Which stage of life is the most important?   Some might claim that infancy is the key stage, when a baby’s brain is wide open to new experiences that will influence all the rest of its later life. Others might argue that it’s adolescence or young adulthood, when physical health is at its peak.  Many cultures around the world value late adulthood more than any other, arguing that it is at this stage that the human being has finally acquired the wisdom necessary to guide others.  Who is right?  The truth of the matter is that every stage of life is equally significant and necessary for the welfare of humanity.  In my book The Human Odyssey: Navigating the Twelve Stages of Life, I’ve written that each stage of life has its own unique “gift” to contribute to the world.  We need to value each one of these gifts if we are to truly support the deepest needs of human life.  Here are the twelve gifts of the human life cycle:

1.      Prebirth:  Potential – The child who has not yet been born could become anything – a Michaelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Martin Luther King – and thus holds for all of humanity the principle of what we all may yet become in our lives.

2.      Birth:  Hope – When a child is born, it instills in its parents and other caregivers a sense of optimism; a sense that this new life may bring something new and special into the world.  Hence, the newborn represents the sense of hope that we all nourish inside of ourselves to make the world a better place.

3.      Infancy (Ages 0-3):   Vitality – The infant is a vibrant and seemingly unlimited source of energy.  Babies thus represent the inner dynamo of humanity, ever fueling the fires of the human life cycle with new channels of psychic power.

4.      Early Childhood (Ages 3-6):  Playfulness – When young children play, they recreate the world anew.  They take what is and combine it with the what is possible to fashion events that have never been seen before in the history of the world.  As such, they embody the principle of innovation and transformation that underlies every single creative act that has occurred in the course of civilization.

5.      Middle Childhood (Ages 6-8):  Imagination – In middle childhoood, the sense of an inner subjective self develops for the first time, and this self is alive with images taken in from the outer world, and brought up from the depths of the unconscious.  This imagination serves as a source of creative inspiration in later life for artists, writers, scientists, and anyone else who finds their days and nights enriched for having nurtured a deep inner life.

6.      Late Childhood (Ages 9-11):  Ingenuity – Older children have acquired a wide range of social and technical skills that enable them to come up with marvelous strategies and inventive solutions for dealing with the increasing pressures that society places on them.  This principle of ingenuity lives on in that part of ourselves that ever seeks new ways to solve practical problems and cope with everyday responsibilities.

7.      Adolescence (Ages 12-20):  Passion -  The biological event of puberty unleashes a powerful set of changes in the adolescent body that reflect themselves in a teenager’s sexual, emotional, cultural, and/or spiritual passion.  Adolescence passion thus represents a significant touchstone for anyone who is seeking to reconnect with their deepest inner zeal for life.

8.      Early Adulthood (Ages 20-35):  Enterprise –  It takes enterprise for young adults to accomplish their many responsibilities, including finding a home and mate, establishing a family or circle of friends, and/or getting a good job.  This principle of enterprise thus serves us at any stage of life when we need to go out into the world and make our mark.

9.      Midlife (Ages 35-50):  Contemplation – After many years in young adulthood of following society’s scripts for creating a life, people in midlife often take a break from worldly responsibilities to reflect upon the deeper meaning of their lives, the better to forge ahead with new understanding.  This element of contemplation represents an important resource that we can all draw upon to deepen and enrich our lives at any age.

10.  Mature Adulthood (Ages 50-80): Benevolence – Those in mature adulthood have raised families, established themselves in their work life, and become contributors to the betterment of society through volunteerism, mentorships, and other forms of philanthropy.  All of humanity benefits from their benevolence.  Moreover, we all can learn from their example to give more of ourselves to others.

11.  Late Adulthood (Age 80+):  Wisdom – Those with long lives have acquired a rich repository of experiences that they can use to help guide others.  Elders thus represent the source of wisdom that exists in each of us, helping us to avoid the mistakes of the past while reaping the benefits of life’s lessons.

12.  Death & Dying:  Life – Those in our lives who are dying, or who have died, teach us about the value of living.  They remind us not to take our lives for granted, but to live each moment of life to its fullest, and to remember that our own small lives form of a part of a greater whole.

            Since each stage of life has its own unique gift to give to humanity, we need to do whatever we can to support each stage, and to protect each stage from attempts to suppress its individual contribution to the human life cycle.  Thus, we need to be wary, for example, of attempts to thwart a young child’s need to play through the establishment high-pressure formal academic preschools.  We should protect the wisdom of aged from elder abuse.  We need to do what we can to help our adolescents at risk.  We need to advocate for prenatal education and services for poor mothers, and support safe and healthy birthing methods in third world countries. We ought to take the same attitude toward nurturing the human life cycle as we do toward saving the environment from global warming and industrial pollutants.  For by supporting each stage of the human life cycle, we will help to ensure that all of its members are given care and helped to blossom to their fullest degree.

To read my other blog entries on Basil & Spice.

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Are You a "Rememberer" or an "Adapter"?

I believe that there are two types of people in this world.  There are those who spend much of their lifetime trying to "remember" the essence of existence, their deepest origins, and the most profound meanings of life. These are the "rememberers."  On the other hand, there are those who focus most of their energies upon "adapting" to the circumstances around them, trying to get ahead in the world, meeting deadlines and goals, showing up the competition, and making it in the big world.  These are the "adapters."  Here's a little quiz to help you figure out if you're more of a "rememberer" or an "adapter."  Circle any item that applies to you.

1.  I like Bill Gates better than Deepak Chopra.

2.  I prefer to spend my time meditating than partying.

3.  I would rather attend a financial seminar than a workshop on personal transformation.

4.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the meaning of life.

5.  In school, I was more concerned with learning for its own sake than getting good grades.

6.  When I was a young child, I had non-ordinary visions, dreams, or other profound inner experiences.

7.  In history, I admire Napoleon more than the Buddha.

8.  I think a lot about the economy and where it's headed in the future.

9.  I think educational systems should focus more on getting kids to read, write, and do math, and less on art, history, or music.

10. I prefer to read science books over poetry or literature.

11. I'd rather be a writer than a political leader.

12. If I had my choice, I'd prefer living alone in a hut in the woods rather than with a lot of people in a big urban apartment.

13. For me, the spiritual life represents the best part of being alive.

14. I'm more concerned with getting ahead in my existing job, than in finding a new job that let's express more of my potential.

15. In my mind, an investment banker contributes more to society than a monk meditating on a mountain.

16. I believe that recent advances in technology have made our world a far better place to libe in than it was in the past.

17. I'd rather spend time with people who like to talk about the "big" questions of life (e.g. who are we? why are we here? why do bad things happen to good people? etc.) than with those who like to discuss this week's current events.

18. I would rather spend more time looking within myself for meaning in life, rather than looking outward to people and events to help me get ahead.

19. Some of my best moments are when I've had an idea that has practical significance or an insight that can make me more money.

20. I'd rather travel to Tibet or Bali than London or Paris.

If you circled more than five of these statements - 1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16, 19 - then you incline toward being an "adapter."

If you circled more than five of these statements - 2, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 20, then you have a proclivity toward being a "rememberer."

If you circled an equal number of "adapter" and "rememberer" statements, then you have a good balance of these two aspects of being human.

To learn more about "remembering" and "adapting," and how they fit into the whole scheme of human development, read The Human Odyssey:  Navigating the Twelve Stages of life.

Maps of the Human Life Cycle: Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development model represents probably the most well-known and highly regarded map of the human life cycle in contemporary western culture.  This theory was first articulated in 1950 in chapter seven ("The Eight Ages of Man") of his book Childhood and Society, and further developed in later books and articles. Erikson adapted Freud's theory of psychosexual development (oral, anal, phallic, genital) to a wider social-cultural sphere, and extended it beyond adolescence into early, middle, and late adulthood.  He referred to his theory as epigenetic, meaning that it traced the development of the human organism from an undifferentiated state of psychosocial organization through successive levels of differentiation from early childhood to adult maturity.  He also characterized each of the eight stages in terms of a conflict, struggle, or crisis occuring between two opposing psychosocial orientations (e.g. intimacy versus isolation), which in turn gave rise to specific psychosocial outcomes.  The eight stages are as follows:

1. INFANCY: Basic Trust vs. Basic Mistrust - the infant struggles with dependency on its mother for love, nurturing, and (oral) sustenance, in the course of which he may develop an underlying sense of hope concerning his place in the cosmos, or failing this, may withdraw from the world of relationships altogether.
2. EARLY CHILDHOOD: Autonomy vs. Shame, Doubt - the young child experiences a conflict related to other people (e.g. parents) controlling its bodily functions (anal, urethral), and may come out of this crisis with a developed sense of will or autonomy (the ability to take charge of one's own life), or alternatively, because of deep shame (a sense of being exposed), develop a defensive structure of compulsiveness that tries to control self and others in a manipulative or obsessive way.
3. PLAY AGE:  Initiative vs. Guilt - the child is now a part of the family matrix and struggles with oedipal desires (locomotion aggression toward the same sex parent, genital attraction toward the opposite sex parent), which may be channeled into a positive drive to take initiative in the social world, or alternatively, may turn in on itself and develop into a sense of pathological guilt related to sexual and aggressive feelings.
4. SCHOOL AGE:  Industry vs. Inferiority - here the psychosocial world expands to include the neighborhood and the school environment, where the child's efforts to sublimate the drives of the previous stage through work and enterprise (e.g. hobbies, schoolwork, projects, chores etc.), may result in the construction of a personality that feels a sense of competency and ability, or alternatively, may develop into a pervasive aura of inferiority in relationship to the efforts and achievements of others.
5. ADOLESCENCE: Identity vs. Identity Confusion - with the advent of puberty, the psychosocial scene focuses upon the teenager's peer group and other groups that model a range of possible identities, which the teen will try on (through intense one-to-one relationships and/or membership in cliques), and through which he will ultimately develop a coherent sense of identity, or alternatively, experience a diffused, undefined, or fragmented sense of self that may result in delinquency, psychosis, or more commonly, the inability to settle upon a occupational identity as he moves into adulthood.
6. YOUNG ADULTHOOD:  Intimacy vs. Isolation - now that the individual has hopefully developed a stable identity, she moves into the adult world seeking a partner with whom to share work, sex, friendship, and intimate feelings, failing which, she sinks into exclusivity, elitism, isolation, or other forms of non-intimate social relations.
7. ADULTHOOD: Generativity vs. Stagnation - once the adult has found a partner to share intimacy with, he now is faced with the challenge of raising a family, making positive contributions to the workplace and the community, and engaging in other forms of generativity and care, failing which, he will become rigid, inert, and rejecting on the job, in the family, and/or as a citizen, or fall into other forms of stagnation.
8. OLD AGE:  Integrity vs. Despair - as an adult reaches the end of her life, she looks back at what she has or hasn't accomplished, and feels a deep sense of fulfillment or at least an acceptance of the life she has lived (out of which will come wisdom), or alternatively, she descends into anguish or despair at having not lived a full and vital existence.

In Erikson's last book on the subject, The Life Cycle Completed, his wife, Joan M. Erikson, added a "ninth stage" that applied to people who had become very old (as they had).  In the book, she wrote:  "Old age in one's eighties and nineties brings with it new demands, reevaluations, and daily difficulties" (The Life Cycle Completed, p. 105).  According to Joan Erikson, in the ninth stage, the despair of stage eight is magnified by the experience of one's deteriorating body and mind, which results in a lowering of self-esteem and confidence. "To face down despair with faith and appropriate humility," she wrote, "is perhaps the wisest course" (The Life Cycle Completed, p. 106).

It should be emphasized that Erikson saw each polarity in his theory (e.g. integrity vs. despair), not as a "one side must win" battle, but rather as a necessary tension inherent in that stage of human development, through which struggle an individual would become a more integrated and whole human being.  As Joan Erikson noted: "It is important to remember that conflict and tension are sources of growth, strength, and commitment"  (The Life Cycle Completed, p. 106).

Click here to see a list of Erikson's books.

Click here to visit The Erikson Institute at Austen Riggs Center, where Erikson did much of his research.

Click here to visit The Erikson Institute:  A Graduate School in Child Development

Maps of the Human Life Cycle: Tibetan Buddhism

In the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the human life cycle is just that:  a cycle.  An individual soul is born, dies, and is reborn over and over again until it achieves liberation from all future rebirth.  At that point the cycle ends.  Until then, however, the cycle consists of six bardos or "transitional states."  The first three bardos occur "between" lifetimes (from the moment of death until the time of rebirth).  The Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) is essentially a guidebook to help the dying individual achieve liberation (or a favorable birth) as it moves through these "in between" states. The last three bardos occur after we have been reborn and are living as human beings on earth.

• The Chi-Kha Bardo - this state occurs at the moment of death, when the dying person has the potential to perceive The Clear Light of Ultimate Reality, and recognize it as his own ultimate being.  If the soul does this, it merges with the light and no longer has to be reborn.  This encounter, however, is quite an overwhelming experience, to put it mildly, and the individual may shrink back from this Light in fear.   If it does so, then the weight of its own karma will pull it into the next bardo.
• The Chhos-Nyid Bardo - this part of the journey is where the soul encounters "Peaceful Deities" and "Wrathful Deities," which are outer projections of its karma, or past experiences over innumerable rebirths.  The soul is counselled not to become attracted or repulsed by these deities, but to regard them as emanations of its own illusory self.  If the soul can do this, it achieves liberation.  However, if the soul ends up getting "caught" by one of these entities, it may end up hanging out in one of six possible "lokas" or "worlds," including those of the hungry ghosts, the warrior demons, the devas (or angels), the hell dwellers, the bestial world of animals, or back into the world of human beings (see next bardo).
• The Sid-Pa Bardo - this is the state where the soul, driven by the winds of its own karma, begins to seek rebirth.  It encounters the Lord of Death, who subjects the soul to a kind of "Judgment Day" that can be quite a painful ordeal.  Eventually it observes pairs of couples copulating (potential future parents), and goes through a kind of pre-birth Oedipal complex where it feels anger toward the same sex parent and lust toward the opposite sex parent.  Since there is no chance for liberation at this point, the soul is counselled to choose a "womb" that will optimize its chances of getting a favorable incarnation for future attempts at freedom from rebirth.
• The Skyes-Nas Bardo ("Life" ) - this is the bardo of ordinary waking consciousness experienced by a soul during its incarnation as a human being.
• The Rmi-Lam Bardo ("Dream") - this is the bardo of dream consciousness that occurs when we are experiencing rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep, or when we are in a semi-waking state of active imagination during our waking hours.
• The Bsam-Gtan Bardo ("Meditation") - this is the bardo of "trance consciousness" when we are in a deep state of meditation during our waking hours.

For more information, there are any number of translations of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, including those by:

Gyurme Dorje

Robert Thurman

Frencesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa

W.Y. Evans-Wentz

See also, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

See an online exhibit at the University of Virginia based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead

What's Wrong With Aging?

There's been so much in the news lately about anti-aging remedies from anti-wrinkle cream to human growth hormone that I just wanted to speak for the pro-aging side.  What's wrong with aging?   I see the faces of elderly people who have decided to deny their aging with chin lifts, botox injections, and facial implants, and I get this creepy feeling inside.  Why are they avoiding the natural wrinkles, creases, bumps, and sags that come with growing old?  I've always felt that there's something beautiful about the faces of aging people.  When I was a child, I'd see these photos of older Native American leaders in the National Geographic, and even at that young age I felt a deep beauty in their faces.  I'd look at the faces of my grandmother and great-grandmother (who I was privileged to live with for a year), and be in awe.  In some ways, I get the same kind of feeling when I look at ancient trees.  It seems that people in our youth-oriented culture have lost touch with the deep meanings that collect around being old.  It's as if they wanted to eliminate autumn and winter from the four seasons.  It's as if they were saying "let's get rid of the hideous autumn foliage, and withered leaves, so everything can be green all the time."  There's a life-denying quality to those artificially stretched cheeks and foreheads; a kind of tension there that wants to pretend time doesn't exist.  But it does.  What a great honor it is to be a part of this mysterious life process that unfolds, that has been unfolding for as long as there have been living things!

For some incredible photos of aged people, see the exhibition by Mark Story "Living in Three Centuries:  The Face of Age"

The River of Life

The River of Life

by Thomas Campbell (1777-1824)

The more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,
Steals lingering like a river smooth
Along its grassy borders.

But as the careworn cheek grows wan,
And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,
Ye stars, that measure life to man,
Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath,
And life itself is vapid,
Why, as we reach the Falls of Death
Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange—yet who would change
Time's course to slower speeding,
When one by one our friends have gone,
And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;
And those of youth, a seeming length,
Proportion'd to their sweetness.

Neoteny: The Lost Fountain of Youth Rediscovered

Reflecting upon his scientific achievements, Albert Einstein once noted:  "I sometimes ask myself . . . how did it come that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity?  The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time.  These are things which he has thought of as a child.  But my intellectual development was retarded, [italics mine] as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up." (quoted in Einstein:  The LIfe and Times by Ronald Clark, p. 27).   Einstein "intellectually retarded"?  What he was referring to is neoteny (Latin for "holding youth"), a concept in developmental biology that refers to the retention of childlike characteristics into adulthood.  One of the best books on this subject is Ashley Montagu's Growing Young.  In the first half of the book, Montagu describes biological neoteny; how, for example, two traits - the rounded forehead and chin of an infant ape -  are "lost" as that ape grows into maturity (in the adult ape, the forehead recedes and the chin juts out sharply).  In this case, there is no neoteny - these youthful characteristics are not retained into maturity.  But with homo sapiens, the rounded forehead and chin of an infant child are retained into adulthood.  The adult may have gray hair, wear eyeglasses, and develop jowels, but those two infantile traits of chin-ness and forehead-ness have been largely preserved.  In this case, there is neoteny:  these two youthful traits have been retained into maturity. The great evolutionary thinker Stephen Jay Gould believed that human beings are just neoteous apes; in other words, the youthful characteristics of apes have, in the course of evolution, simply been held into adulthood in human beings.  According to Gould, this is the most important determination of human evolution (see his book Ontology and Phylogeny).  It was neoteny, for example, that slowed down the development of the human brain after birth so that it could continue to grow and develop in relationship to the specific environmental conditions around it.  This brain neoteny conferred an incredible capacity for adaptability onto humans, leading to increased chances for survival and the passing on of "neotenous genes." In the second half of Ashley Montagu's book, he talks specifically about psychological neoteny.  He examines several psychological traits of children - playfulness, curiosity, humor, creativity, sensitivity, and wonder, among many others - and suggests that these are also traits that need to be retained into adulthood (I have also explored the importance of retaining these childlike traits into adulthood in my book Awakening Genius in the Classroom).  What happens, for example, if the flexibility of childhood is lost in adulthood?  Then you have a situation where the world is full of inflexible adults.  Consider that some of these inflexible adults have their fingers on nuclear buttons around the world and are involved in major global disputes.  You can begin to appreciate how the presence or absence of  the childlike trait of flexibility may make all the difference between our species continuing to survive, or alternatively, our species blowing itself up in a nuclear war and becoming extinct.  Similarly, what happens when curiosity or creativity are lost as the child becomes an adult?  Then we develop a culture that cannot continue to adapt to changing conditions.  Fortunately, our species seems to retain these psychological youthful traits in at least some of its members; mostly, it seems, in creative artists, inventors, musicians, entrepreneurs, and other innovators of society.  Look, for example, at the boyish qualities and childlike enthusiasm of Bill Gates - there's a case of neoteny that has had a profound influence on technology.  Other examples of neotenous individuals might include Pablo Picasso, Ludwig van Beethoven, Isaac Newton (who said he felt like a child on the beach playing with ideas as if they were beautiful seashells), William Shakespeare (whose bawdy puns and insults offended the non-neotenous critics of his day) and many others.  It deserves mentioning here that the concept of neoteny puts a bit of a crimp in the concept of "immaturity" in psychiatry and psychology.  It turns out that being immature may not be such a bad thing after all!

For a self-help book based on neoteny called You're Only Young Twice, by Ronda Beaman, click here.

Maps of the Human Life Cycle: William Shakespeare

The English poet and playwright William Shakespeare was acutely aware of our passage through time.  This theme interpenetrates virtually all of his work. In Sonnet 60 he writes:  "Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore/So do our minutes hasten to their end."  In Sonnet 64 he writes:  "When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd/The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age..."  In MacBeth (V, v, 19), he has his eponymous hero saying: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow/Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/To the last syllable of recorded time;/And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death."   But it is in his play As You Like It (II, VII, 139-166), that Shakespeare reaches his height in articulating a vision of the human life cycle, when the melancholy Jacques delivers one of the most famous speeches in western literature:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."

 

Maps of the Human Life Cycle: Ancient Greece

Solon (ca. 638 B.C.E. - 558 B.C.E.) was one of the great law-makers of ancient Greece.  Among his many accomplishments were the repeal of draconian laws (literally, laws instituted by the Greek legislator Draco), the holding of a national census, the redistribution of political responsibilities, and the institution of the Aeropagus (Athenian Senate).  He was also something of a philosopher, and gave the western world one of its first stages of life models (alas, focused only on males; females were not accorded much liberty or identity in ancient Greece).  He divided the human life cycle into ten stages of seven years each:

0-7     -  A boy at first is the man; unripe; then he casts his teeth; milk-teeth befitting the child he sheds his 7th year;

7-14   -  Then to his seven years God adding another seven, signs of approaching manhood show in the bud;

14-21 -  Still, in the third of the sevens his limbs are growing; his chin touched with a fleecy down; the bloom of the cheek gone;

21-28  - Now in the 4th of the 7's ripen to greatest completeness the powers of the man and his worth becomes plain to see;

28-35  - In the fifth he bethinks him that this is the season for courting, bethinks him that sons will preserve and continue his line;

35-42  - Now in the 6th his mind, ever open to virtue, broadens, and never inspires him to profitless deeds;

42-56  - [Two stages combined] Seven times 7, and 8; the tongue and the mind for fourteen years together are now at their best;

56-63  - Still in the ninth is he able, but never so nimble in speech and in wit as he was in the days of his prime;

63-70  - Who to the tenth has attained, and has lived to complete it, has come to the time to depart on the ebb tide of death.

For more on ancient Greek perspectives on the life cycle, see:  The Eight-Fold Year and the Stages of Life

Maps of the Human Life Cycle: Confucius

In ancient China, the philosophical, religious and moral tone was set primarily by Confucius (551 B.C.E. - 497 B.C.E.) and his disciples.  Confucianism emphasized morality in government policy, proper social relationships, love of learning, and an attitude of kindness and sincerity.  His work is known to the modern world largely through The Analects (my favorite version is translated by Simon Leys), a collection of his aphorisms put together by his disciples.  In The Analects, Confucius provides us with one of the earliest maps of human development. 

The Master said, at 15 I set my heart upon learning

At 30, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.

At 40, I no longer suffered from perplexities.

At 50, I knew what were the biddings of heaven.

At 60, I heard them with docile ears.

At 70, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.

Confucius had it good.  Alas, if only it were that easy for the rest of us!

Crystallizing Experiences: Having Our Date with Destiny

When Albert Einstein was four, his father gave him a simple magnetic compass for his birthday.  Later on, in adulthood, Einstein wrote that this simple toy served to unlock his feelings of curiosity and wonder about the world   He said that from that time on he was filled with a desire to ferret out the secrets of the universe.

When Yehudi Menuhin was about the same age, his parents took him to hear the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.  After the violin performance, he told his parents that he wanted a violin for his birthday and that he wanted the man who performed on stage to be his teacher.  Not wealthy, his parents nevertheless obtained a violin for him, and persuaded the man on stage to give him lessons.

When Martha Graham was sixteen, her father took her to see the dancer Ruth St. Denis at the Mason Opera House in Los Angeles.  Thrilled by the performance, she decided to become a dancer and enrolled in an arts-oriented junior college.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Each of these experiences was what has been termed by researchers a "crystallizing experience."  These are experiences that can happen at any time of life, but often occur during the early years, when a seemingly simple experience--a toy, a concert, a conversation--unlocks a potential that has been just waiting around for something to start it rolling on its way towards high levels of achievement.  I like to call them "destiny experiences" because they represent a moment of time during human development when something seems to call from on high to remind an individual of their gifts and of what they are here on earth to accomplish.   A wonderful book that explores certain aspects of this kind of experience is James Hillman's The Soul's Code:  In Search of Character and Calling.

What were the destiny experiences in your life?

Great Quotes About the Human Life Cycle

"Babies haven't any hair.

Old men's heads are just as bare

Between the cradle and the grave

Lies a haircut and a shave."

------- Samuel Hoffenstein

"The first half of life consists of the capacity to enjoy without the chance; the last half consists of the chance without the capacity."

------- Mark Twain

"It is not true that life is one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over."

-------Edna St. Vincent Millay

"From the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first."

------- Berthold Brecht