FORTY AND HOLDING
Tomorrow I'm 40 years old! Is this the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end? Is 40 the gateway to a cold winter's life of snow and thorns? Is forever lost in the autumn of life the scent of life's sweet roses in bloom that I cherish so?
Whatever, I have definitely passed the spring of my childhood and the summer of young adulthood. I stand on the threshold of middle age, the fall of life's seasons. It can't, it just can't be true that I've passed my physical peak and it's all downhill from here... or can it? I do feel a few more creaks than I can remember in days past, and the battle of the bulge is becoming an all out war, but I do know more than I've ever known... except what I've forgot, and I seem to be doing more of that lately.
Experience though! I do have more experience. It is said and it is true, that youth is wasted on the young... anyway, that's what my group sitting in the cool breezes under a large lilac tree says. I've often commented that if I knew in youth what I know now, youth would have been a lot more fun.
Fall... then come the ravages of old aged winter. I'm not ready for that yet, but then is anybody? My friends tell me that your 40th birthday marks the time you start to fall apart. They said the same thing at 30, but this time they are more definite... more final!
Ah!!! When I was young life seemed an eternity. I thought it would never end. Old age and death were so very far away. They were something that always happened to the other guy. I can recall sitting on my old grandfather's knee, never in the foggiest realms of my thinking believing that where he was I would someday be. He was old and so far away from me in years. The green, fragrant meadows of youth were too expansive for me to see the trees on the other side.
I later worked in Vietnam for my rich uncle, Uncle Sam, in his army. Death was so close I could taste it...but I came through it, and coming through it, thought I would surely live forever. Now... maybe it's my imagination, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel of my existence. It's still faint, but now it's there, where before it wasn't.
I don't have to look at it however, for I've long followed the policy that if you ignore old age it will go away. For several years now I've been going backwards in time with each passing birthday. I joke with friends that when I reached my 30th plateau I could see I was going the wrong way... there was no profit in where I was heading... I didn't like what I could see ahead. So I smartly executed a military-like about face, and have been getting younger every year. I think young, and try to do young things. By my calculations I'm now celebrating my 20th birthday... but who am I kidding.
The battle for youth is getting fiercer daily. Slowly but surely I can feel it slipping away. I can't run as fast as I once did. Bumps and bruises stay with me longer. I don't bounce back as energetically as I did in my more resilient past.
The birthday eve has passed! I am now officially 40 years old, whether I want it or not. Strange, but I don't feel the crumbling, the rapid decomposition from within I was told I could expect. Maybe my breakup is a time release mechanism, I don't know. But I feel almost the same as I did yesterday. I think... no, more than that, I know, middle and old age are figments of the imagination. You're as old as you think you are. If you think of slowing down and giving up, you can bet your boots you will. The physical aging process is a reality, but many succumb to the process of decrepit decay before their time. The sweet nectar of life is a constant struggle, and the closer the end comes the more intense the struggle must need be.
Keep telling yourself that, Jacobson. After all, the sun did come up this morning. Even the birds are still singing in tune where they have made a nest outside my window. I would even go so far as to bet that tomorrow will be much the same as yesterday... and the day after that... and the day after that. It's not the end of the world to be forty! There is, after all, life that continues after forty... discovery of discoveries. As Sonny and Cher used to sing it, "And the beat goes on" though most of the now generation probably don't even know who Sonny and Cher were. But then, I don't know much about who Glen Miller was either.