Another year and I’m still here.
Inspired as I was to answer, “…and what of getting older?”, I had at least the mental purchase to flash back across 35 years, most of them obscured by the Fog of War. With, perhaps, a flash of wisdom (as befitting my years) I realized that there is a proper answer to that ages-old rhetorical question:
Aging, I would now answer, is the realization that the body is temporary, but the mind is forever.
Having spent my youth flung across the pavements of Manhattan, and all the spoils and tribulations that would suggest, I have lately come to view those years of excess with a fondness, instead of regret. I now know (but hadn’t realized how long I had known it) that longing is merely memory mixed with stubbornness; given a dash of patience, perspective, and wisdom, regretful desire transmutes to fond appreciation.
Age is the metaphysical equivalent of the philosopher’s stone, turning lead-footed bitterness into gold.
As we used to worship in the temples of our bodies, so now we veterans hone the edge of our wit; my temple is now (and probably has always been) the intricacies of thought that accompany me. The singular power of the flesh (oh, how powerful) will falter, but a wry smile and a knowing countenance will not, bearing each of us toward the future.
If I could have known this when I was young and foolish, I probably would not have spent so many of my older years in similar foolishness; coupling and uncoupling, tilting at the windmills of change – of these things we would all have been relieved.
I am grateful to have traveled though these times with close compatriots, and they have my thanks. Each to his own, a road; for as George Michael once wrote, “All we have to see is that I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me.”
