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Take this month. By its end, conventional wisdom says I will be a year older. Yet I am still in my yesteryears! I map myself to events (I won't name them, as I may be beaten up by the people involved) that I still cherish, and I keep thinking of ways to reenact them. I know I cannot bring back the time when those things happened, so a reenactment would not even be a mirror image. But… the ones who are picky about words will pull me up for saying "yesteryears" while talking about staying at the same spot agewise. Frankly, now that I am 67, I don't give a damn!
This, again, is strange. For all practical purposes, my mind feels as young as it perceivably did 30 years ago. Yet when it comes to disenchantment and expressing displeasure, I never fail to use my age as a shield! That is a contradiction which needs to be resolved.
Here is another thing that has started stealing my sleep lately. When we say, "He is still young," are we actually measuring the temporal distance between his age now and his expected time of death? By that count, does one become old by proximity to one's end point?
The calendar age is like the distance on a car's meter: how many kilometres the car has travelled since it started rolling. In our case, it is the distance, by calendar, from the date of birth. But what about being old?
I started learning Spanish when I was 65. Now I get introduced at social events as the man who learnt Spanish in his very advanced years! Curious eyes instantly start measuring me up. "Wow! Look at that guy!" Yet at the same event, a youngster would perhaps be introduced as someone who speaks so many languages, Spanish included, with no reference to his age at all.
Now I know what they actually mean. They mean this guy is about to reach his last milepost in breathing, and he doesn't even realise it! Be that as it may, I now understand that the stage of your life is being measured by the distance to your expected time of death, and that is not something we should approve of.
Is anyone listening?
Pix: Gemini
