<hr /> <i>By Allen Edmonds, The Star Herald</i></p><p></p><p>For generations, we Americans have marked our stages of maturity in terms of age – we’re in our 20s, our 30s, our 40s and so on. And while it is true that we generally are wiser, more efficient and less impulsive in our 40s and 50s than we were in our teens and 20s, I find myself wondering if chronological age might be too much of an internal view.</p><p>More so than ever, we are affected greatly by the world around us. For America, the first decade of the new century was perhaps the most turbulent period of my lifetime.</p><p>The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York was, of course, the poster event for the decade. Perhaps more than any event since Pearl Harbor, 9-11 changed each of our lives in tangible ways. After a decade of free spending and economic growth, followed by the mostly false warnings associated with the Y2k computer code problems (Remember? Everything was going to shut down on cue at the stroke of midnight), we suddenly were hit with the harsh reality of lost investments, less freedom, fewer jobs and war – all due to that horrifying morning.</p><p>Very little of that has faded in the years since. We’re still edgy, still tighter with our money, still grateful for whatever jobs we have and still losing our youngsters in the Middle East. It’s been a chain of crises since then, for some culminating with last year’s near crash of our financial system.</p><p>And that affects our growth process on an individual basis – in a much more direct manner than by the simple act of having another birthday.</p><p>There is no doubt whatsoever that I’m a much different person today than the one that ushered in the year 2000 at the age of 37. But I don’t expect to change again in many major ways when I turn 50 early in 2012. My cycles of life have occurred much more in line with the decades of the calendar than the decades of my age and I’m not sure that isn’t the case with most of us in today’s world.</p><p>I spent the majority of the past decade paying in various ways for the sins, excesses and multiple mistakes of the 1990s. It’s a natural process and not one to get angry at or feel sorry for myself over. It is what it is.</p><p>But through that process of seasoning has emerged, in many ways, a different person – one that is more likely to spend an evening with a close friend or a good book than in finding the most “exciting” place to be, one that is slower to judge and quicker to listen, one that finds people truly more valuable than things.</p><p>At the beginning of this decade, I found it nearly impossible to sit at a table and play a family game. I just couldn’t sit that still for that long. Now, it’s an experience I treasure. I panicked at the thought of running short of cash before payday. Now it’s regular reality and I haven’t died of the experience yet. In fact, I haven’t even experienced much in the way of what I would call major discomfort on those occasions.</p><p>Is my credit score what it was in 2000? Of course not. Does that prevent me from procuring what I need for a happy and productive day-to-day existence? Again, the answer is no.</p><p>And there are tangible and beautiful signs that 2010 holds in store, at least on a personal level, the beginning of a healing process from the boot camp wounds of the last 10 years. With timing remarkably close to the actual turn of the decade, signs began to emerge that something I had waited all my life for could actually be coming distantly into view. Like the Emerald City on the horizon, it tantalizes and quickens the step.</p><p>Could that be just the type of encouragement that we, as a society, may need? Could the hard lessons of the 2000s actually take hold in a beneficial way? Could families be getting closer, communities more cohesive and responsibility more important?</p><p>Might we again look forward to a more patient and less divisive world?</p><p>Those are clearly tough orders to fill, and because we’re human, perfection is well beyond our capabilities as individuals or societies.</p><p>But with every step in the right direction, someone’s life gets a little better. And that’s all we can ask of 2010, isn’t it?