Comptemplating that big 7-0 - Today!
So the years pile up. After the big 2-1, they become more insignificant. Their reoccurrence begins to become a matter of mild amusement. Eventually you feel somewhat like Gulliver watching one more thread lead to the hand of yet another Lilliputian. As succeeding years arrive, they become even more insignificant than the last one until another year becomes a matter of complete triviality and total inconsequence.
Yet they also become a ubiquitous nuisance. They accrue and accrete. They spill out of one’s pockets and are strewn in one’s path – one must occasionally take care to find firm footing amongst them and occasionally concentrate to find one’s way.
More and more often they interpose themselves between you and the object of your vision, requiring blinking and squinting to focus clearly. This would be bad enough if they were discrete objects like ping-pong balls or moths, something fixed and knowable, an understandable expiation for occasional confusion and stumbling, but years cannot really be seen themselves. Other people sometimes attribute our clever circumventing of these obstacles as apparent confusion on our part. Sometimes the progress through these subtle impediments require one to return to the beginning of your immediate quest just to get another start on another angle.
Getting older is not really all that bad in some ways, you don’t feel any different, not really - not deeply inside. You finally do get wise - much wiser than anyone else you know - but part of the attainment of wisdom is finding out that no one else understands it, appreciates it or even wants it. Therefore, it is of little use with the younger crowd. You can't even talk to them about it without seeming to babble.
Biggest problem with getting older? Easy. It happens too damn fast!
© John Womack, 2004. All Rights Reserved
