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.