Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rti-sel.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!rti-sel!wfi
From: wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Pushing 40: On Getting Older (LONG)
Message-ID: <375@rti-sel.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 24-Aug-85 16:27:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: rti-sel.375
Posted: Sat Aug 24 16:27:00 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 14:04:15 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC
Lines: 99

I know there has to be a number of you out there in the same situation
as I am: pushing 40 by the calendar and wondering how you got here
from the tender age of 20. Reading about "hug party" fantasies and
"color analysis" and how bad it was to be a "nerd" in high school and
about postadolescent longings to get laid doesn't really have much 
relevance to your life right now, does it? Well, to get another topic
rolling in this group that might involve some of us Old Farts in
topics of relevance to us at this stage in our lives, I'm posting the
following meditation on what life at 38 means to me. Note please that
I'm reporting my own thoughts and making no claims that this is the
way things should be or that things are this way for everyone
approaching middle age. Oh, yes, you youngsters out there feel free to
chime in if you want to, too. :-)

                           -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly
----------------------------------------------------------------------

You know you're past the peak physically; although your health may
have its ups and downs from now on and you feel pretty good right now,
you'll never feel again the way you did at eighteen. Small physical
problems start cropping up: that touch of arthritis in your hand, the
way you have to start paying more attention to gum problems than new
cavities. Everything you eat nowadays seems to go straight to fat. And
what's that bump on your elbow? You find that you can't drink the way
you used to when you were younger, and find yourself looking forward
to an early bedtime. You start appreciating the simple pleasures in
life a little more.

You're facing the second half of your life; the limitless
possibilities you saw at 20 are restricted now. You'll probably never
finish that novel, walk on the moon, or run for Congress. Although
what you've accomplished may not look much like your youthful
expectations, you take a certain pride in just having gotten through
it all and a certain satisfaction in knowing that it all makes sense.

You start treasuring your memories. In part because there are so many
of them, but also because you've had to leave or have chosen to leave
so many friends and lovers behind. You start occasionally wondering
about the end of your life, what it will be like, and whether you will
approach it in dignity or in pain and fear. Time seems to be passing
at an ever-increasing rate, and you hope you can assess your life
positively when death finally comes.

The passions and intensity of youth are mostly behind you, or have
lessened. Your desire to meet new people and "get into their heads"
has abated: you've heard it all too many times before, the lies, the
truths, the grand stories, two-bit opinions and baroque philosophies,
true confessions and soul-sharing at 2 A.M. There is no thrill in
discovering what you've examined years ago and either discarded as
unworkable or integrated into your life. Paradise now is spending the
second half of your life with old and comfortable friends in a
familiar place.

Comfort and security. When you were burning alive with ideas and love
for humanity at 20 your parents told you your positions would become
more conservative as you matured. You denied it then; how could this
love of life and people, this certainty that Truth is Truth ever
change? But it did change, somewhere entre la jeunesse et la sagesse.
The middle-of-the-roaders among your friends became mostly
conservatives, the liberals became middle-of-the-roaders, and the
hottest radicals mellowed to liberalism or worse. At least most of
them. You even find yourself reexamining the religion you fell away
from 20 years ago and realize some of your youthful hostility to it
has vanished.

Your first love is 25 years behind you. In the interim, you've done it
all, experienced unexpected sex, everyday sex, obsessive
relationships, detached relationships, periods in which relationships
were the farthest thing from your mind. Love that would never end:
love, love, oh careless love. And what you've come to is this: you
like and respect yourself as much as anyone you've met in this life,
and you're as pleased spending time with yourself as with your closest
friends. Your life is centered and relatively calm. It's a good life.

You realize that if a relationship came along with a woman who was a
true friend, you could share your life with her. But life would be
just as sweet lived in relative celibacy with a small circle of
friends. It's mellow old agape that wins out in the end.

                         (envoy)

Friendship. You return each year through the winter skies to the small
midwestern town that formed your early memories. There's a foot of
snow on the ground when you land, and it's 10 below zero Fahrenheit
and pitch dark with a 35 mph wind blowing across the runway. Steve and
Mary Lou are there waiting for you with their two kids. You step down into
the cold and dark and walk into the airport terminal. Steve and Mary
Lou are both 20 pounds heavier, a little grayer, and the kids look 
about 6 inches taller than the last time you saw them. Suddenly you all
embrace and time seems to lurch backwards: hair springs back unseen on
balding pates, age lines disappear and youthful skin tone is restored,
and old behavior patterns reassert themselves. You walk arm in arm to
a warm car: it's a yearly ritual that somehow defines the bounds of
your life and at the same time reaffirms its meaning. It is like a
retelling in a private language of your own history together, a
measuring of the passage of time and a Covenant: take heart, we will
always be here when you return, and you will always return. The cold
snow blows into your face. You turn to your friends to tell them how
the past year has changed you.