Squeeze a post in

Hey, I thought I'd try to squeeze a post in here (not that I'm really studying that hard). But still haven't had much time to write, and not sure what I would say.

I've been thinking for a while about writing about getting old. It's been bothering me, and I never thought that it would. For a while I thought I had it figured out as just losing athletic prowess and youthful skin. That definitely bothers me, but I had an epiphany today about what really is bothering me.

I'm not a kid anymore.

It took me a while to figure this out for a few reasons. First, I was never so naive to think that I would never grow old. Second, I accepted at least a couple of years ago that I'm fully and completely a grown up. I'm not mature mind you! But a grown up nonetheless. (Kat's grad school friends and the lack of kids has prolonged some sense of kid-dom, but I finally gave up the charade.) And third, I like being a grown up. I have pretty much as much fun as I want, and I definitely act like a kid when I feel like it.

So if I'm comfortable being a grown up, then why does it bother me to not be a kid anymore?

I'm going to die.


Let me digress for a minute. (the shock!) I figured out the meaning of life a long time ago (in my mind anyway). Sometime in high school. I wrote this awesome poem about it, which I subsequently left in an English book and got thrown out by accident. It was crazy, and nonsensical, and my English teacher looked at it and diplomatically said, "Why don't you set it aside and look at it again in a few months." Her way of saying "put down the pipe." It was about an old man that climbed a tree everyday. And from sunrise to sunset, he pondered the meaning of life...until he died. But (as I remember it) inside the cryptic message was the singular nugget of wisdom that I have found in my whole life. Since then I've lost all interest in philosophy as a pointless pursuit detracting from the world passing you by. Live life.

I'm going to die.

As a kid, you know it. It's a long way off. It's still a long way off. But I'm not a kid anymore. That phase of my life (and it's probably the most important phase) is over. I can't capture it again, slow the clock and stretch it further. It's gone. Now I'm on to the next phase of my life. I figure there's two left. Three at best. It's lasted so long. Lasted my whole life. It lasted so short. 5 years ago is 10 years ago is 20 years ago, all compressed on top of each other like the forest trees in my telephoto lens.

I want to slow down, savor every year and every day. Don't let it pass me by. I don't want to be the man in the tree, but I also don't want to be the one buried in his work or caught up in making it to the next weekend so he can enjoy his life. Life is now. A third of it has gone by. If I eat too many donuts, half of it!

I think tonight I'll get out the nice wine glasses, give my wife a passionate kiss, turn off the TV and savor every moment. We each have this time on earth. I miss the time gone by. I want to make what's left count.