Because it has been the topic of discussion lately...
"I grow old, I grow old... I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."It happens to all of us, I suppose. We get old. Once young, vibrant, alive, and full of vim and vigor, the cruel hand of fate sweeps in and wipes it all away and leaves behind aches and pains and the responsibilities of adulthood.
One thing I learned a long time ago is that age has nothing to do with candles on a birthday cake. Take a good look around you. People age at different rates. You'll take notice of it when you get together with your mates from high school. As you get twenty to thirty years removed from graduation you'll begin to notice that while you look in the mirror and appear 50 (when you're actually forty), your old playground comrade looks thirty-five.
We all have in us an inner clock that ticks away toward its final destination. Oh, you can try to fight it, and some of your battles will even be successful. Diet and exercise will retard the aging process, but the cold hard truth of hereditary genetics is the final judge.
So what do we do about it?
Nothing.
Be calm.
Be still.
It is a part of life, the aging and eventual dying. It is all part of the cycle. Why waste time on something inevitable? The simplest truth is that every one of us is born, we live and love, and we die. Fretting over our age and our headlong trek toward the great unknown is a waste of the time we do have.
So be calm. Be still. Enjoy each moment. Do you think for one second that in my mind I am not essentially the same twelve year old boy that was obsessed with the Knights of the Table Round and the spell-casting wizardry of Merlin? Am I all that different from the kid that thrilled at the sights and sounds of professional football, thundering rock and roll, and B-grade horror movies? Is not that youngster that poured over comic books, pulp literature, and esoterica still inside me?
You can bet your ass he is.
True age, for me, is the age of your heart and mind.
Me? I plan on being twelve years old until the day I die. ;)
posted by Bob Freeman at 7:22 AM
3 Comments:
I agree completely. When I look in the mirror, I don't see the same person that I recognize inside of me: That middle-aged, graying man looking out from the glass simply doesn't jibe with the inner 14-year-old I never stopped being.
Descent into old age is an interesting journey, one fraught with paradoxes and unexpected discoveries. It's worth taking--as long as the child holds our hand as we walk.
That was a terrific post, Bob. I agree with every word you and Trev wrote.
I'll be 38 my next birthday. I have days when I don't feel a bit of it. I still get carded when I buy wine and beer; people tell me I'm not old enough to have a 17 year old or a 15 year old. Then I have days when the back's out, each joint with arthritis screams, etc, etc, etc, and I feel well around 190.
Women in the Barton family age well, but we all end up rickety. Comes with the territory. ;-)
And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?"
And he answered:
You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons.
Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing.
Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space.
Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless?
And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds?
And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless?
But if in your thought you must measure time into seasons, let each season encircle all the other seasons,
And let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.
Kahlil Gibran - "The Prophet"
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