Why Humans Should Be Born With An Owner's Manual

The older I get the more I wish I was born with an owner’s manual.

I think humans have been short-changed in the internal microchip department.

Look at nature in its entirety. It knows what it’s supposed to do! How does it know how its stuff works? It’s internal coding.

All of nature just knows what to do. Year round. Before global warming, everything worked on the same clock.

Okay, along comes humans….

No owner’s manual.

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I first started thinking about this a few years ago. Prior to that, I was like everybody else, I just winged it.

I grew up listening to and learning from the strangers who said they were my family. They told me I was theirs. They had photos and everything. Sometimes I wondered why they were mine, but that’s another story. LOL

My head was crammed with their do’s and don’ts as my solo input. I took it as gospel. Why shouldn’t I? I didn’t have an owner’s manual to consult after all.

Then I went to school.

More do’s and don’ts crammed into my head. Lots more for years, and years.

Is this all there is?

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Along the way, I’m growing. Getting taller and well, turning into something entirely different at puberty. Very little is explained at this stage. For some reason, the adults have little to say. However, there are a lot more don’ts that get jammed into my head.

I’m feeling weird and looking weird.

Gee, I wish I had an owner’s manual to read now.

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Suddenly you’re an adult. (Not so suddenly if you hated school years, LOL)

You get told you are, but you are not.

From 18-20+ you’re legally an adult but people don’t take you seriously.

You’ve been thrown into the deep end of humanhood with no instructions.

You discover adulting is your new vocation. For life!

Once again, you should have an owner’s manual.

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You enter the workforce, because you realize all those ideas you had about your future don’t pay the rent or feed you.

This is when you voluntarily become the property of an employer. No longer free to come and go as you wish.

This is the most difficult stage for the human.

There are still hopes and dreams in the mind.

Money is the slavemaster. You need things to survive.

Somewhere along the way…

You may have children, and/or your own family.

You have to work harder and longer.

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Years have gone by now.

Your body is not what it once was.

But your mind becomes something spectacular.

If you had an owner’s manual, you would have known this was coming.

It could have been the hope you needed to get through.

This is the breakthrough period for you

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You’ve entered your 50th year. It’s a shock to your system.

It’s like getting shoved through an invisible portal.

You pop out on the other side of this new world.

Your body aches, and your hunched-over frame tells you that you’ve entered a danger zone.

You’re “getting old!”

However…

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There’s all kinds of laughter going on.

Why are people laughing? What’s so funny about being old?

Outraged, you look around.

Other new 50-year-olds are equally confused.

Have we gone insane?

Suddenly, you see in the near distance 60, 70, and 80-year-olds congregating. Laughing and looking at you.

They seem to be delighting in your confusion.

Then they come over with arms open wide…

and give you a big hug, saying

“Welcome to the club. You now belong to the old people’s community. This is where society shoves us and makes us invisible. But we fool them all and are having the best party ever.”

You see, even though society throws away their old, the wisdom keeps growing. It’s lost to many who don’t seek it out. The old grow smarter well into their 90s. This is the time that humans become their best selves.

The body that was wasted in youth starts to break but the mind has transcended all of that. It has attained the sought-after freedom, joy, peace, love, and creativity of youth.

Wisdom has taught them to let things go, to forgive, to love freely, and most of all to forgive.

Forgive others and to forgive themselves.

Society thinks they’ve shunned the old, but it’s really the old who have forsaken the worldly to attain true liberation.

The only caveat: you must atone for your past.

If you had an owner’s manual, you would have lived a better life. However, that’s probably why we don’t come with one.

We need to make these horrible mistakes in order to grow wise.

** The moral of this story is

Every day of life is a blessing. Not all people are blessed with growing old. Many die young and with regret.

The Bible has this to say: Proverbs 16:31: "The gray head is a crown of glory; it is found in the way of righteousness." & Job 5:26: "He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouts of joy."