Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me

No, you can't always get what you want 

You can't always get what you want 

You can't always get what you want 

But if you try sometime you find 

You get what you need

The Rolling Stones, You Can't Always Get What You Want

So say the sages Jagger and Richards.

 

I posted this earlier today:

“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream . . ."

C. S. Lewis did not say.

That's right, that statement, frequently attributed to C. S. Lewis, is something he didn't say.

And that might be because you can indeed be too old to achieve a goal or dream.  And at some point, while you may dream it, it's a species of regret.

Not that we don't all have regrets, and indeed we should have regrets.  Edith Piaf did say "I don't regret anything", or rather sang it. . .in French. . . but that's not a very sound way of viewing things, quite frankly.  "I don't regret anything" might as well mean "I haven't learned anything", unless we don't regret our errors as we learned from them.  Even then, a person ought to rationally regret our trespasses, as the Lord's Prayer counsels that we do.

I have occasion to ponder it, and therefore I'm expanding on it.

One of the great American myths is that you are never too old to achieve goals.  Baloney.  Age closes doors on you without a doubt.  Depending on the goal, some close earlier than others.

You may have been a stand out high school baseball player.  After high school, if you figure yourself good enough to get into pro ball, you have a few years to do it. But let's face it, if you aren't picked up in those few years, you aren't going to be.  Age will close that door.

And the door closing won't necessarily be done so fairly.  There's a lot of reason that these things can happen. A person might have all the talent in the world and end up on a team where the coast is busy playing tetris all day and chooses never to field you.  Or your team might have a loosing record and therefore you are tainted with it.   

Lots of life is that way.  Sure, most people talents show through to some or indeed even a great degree, but that doesn't mean that they'll rise to the top even if a more just fate would have decreed that.  There are colonels who would be better generals than the generals serving at the top. There are city councilmen who would be better governors than their state's governors and governors would would make better Presidents than any one President.  The whims of fate keep them down. That and the operation of politics of all types, great and small.  Who you know remains a better indicator of success in many instances than what you know.  Your personal associates may believe in you and champion your call but that doesn't mean that they have the political muscle to see that you achieve what you should.  

Which brings us to another matter.

My wife is fond of saying "things happen for a reason".  And many things do happen for a reason.  Maybe all things happen for a reason.  But her simple Protestant faith on that varies considerably from my Catholic one.  Things may happen for a reason, but that doesn't mean that they're all beneficially decreed by God.  A lot of things happen for bad reasons.  In Catholic theology many would say that God allows these things to occur, and brings good ultimately out of them, but that doesn't mean that in all things God wills that they occur so then they do.  Conversely, all Christians would believe that God does cause some things to develop.  

Which brings us to the next thing, frustration.

God's ways and man's ways are not the same, and figuring out the mind of God is not something that human's can do.  Indeed, part of the proof of the smallness of the mind of man and the existence of the God is the vastness of all things and that something can't come out of nothing, but we close our minds to that so that we can grasp the tiny little sliver of that which we actually can slightly grasp.  It can be hard at times, however, not to question God on the direction of things, which of course puts us in the position of Job.

Indeed, in modern life, for average people, one of the most frustrating of all questions is to wonder why a person might have certain strong legitimate desires (we all have strong illegitimate desires) that a person cannot act on. Why would a person love baseball and not be able to become a baseball player? Why would a person desire their entire lives to be a farmer in the field and not be able to do it.  Why would a person have the talent to go to the top of their field and then be kept for doing so while lesser men and women surpass them. Why do some people get close to a goal again and again, and are urged to keep pursuing it only to have it repeatedly removed from their grasp?

Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding.

Well, I wasn't there and none of us have the understanding.

Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.

Sometimes, that's the answer in and of itself