So, kind of a shopping spree. I've got a new computer, new software for the computer, some new books, and, a, new... Guitar!
That's right.
A new gal has joined the fold. I have a feeling her name is Alexis, but I'll know more info later.
Her arrival was just in time.
My friend Franco is on his last legs. All of the effects of aging have come to render him rather atonal. He's passed into his golden years and now will merely decorate my rather large and empty apartment. And this is as good as any segue into the topic of this week's Sentimental Sunday: aging.
What a drag it is to get old. You still feel the same, but your vessel, your body, withers and dies. There is no way around it either. This chapter of my consciousness — of everyone's — will end, whether its end comes as a grinding halt or drawn-out affair.
However, it's not the end that concerns me. It's what is done post grinding halt.
My squeeze Ms. Starchild is a few notches older than me. She somtimes suffers under a burden of aging, and sporadically notes its effects on her own vessel — though you'd not be inclined to think the woman would possess such thoughts if looking at her. Of course, I wonder about aging's effect on myself. While the lion's share of my experience is spent enjoying youth, the bitterness of aging I feel is laying ahead.
So far, my aging is more an exuberance than a burden. My question, then: When does this life change from exuberance to burdening? An instructor once said to me that the most sobering moment of his life was reading the newspaper obituaries and finding deceased individuals of the same age as he. My brother has said that his life is, for all intensive reason, over after 30. An old lover ("old" meaning past, not aged) once spoke of her desire to decay into wrinkles alongside her chosen suitor (not envisioned as me, of course).
These qualifiers are lost on me. My answer, which is still under construction, regards quality of life and acceptance of present reality. In summation, as long as my quality of life is not too drastically impared, and I remain focused on the undying present tense of reality, life is peaceful. The meat of that, of course, is the "drastically impared." Should I fret that my eyes are failing? Should I fret that my fingers aren't as fast as they used to be? Should Ms. Starchild fret over her crow's feet?
The basic answer is not really. We're both beautiful to the core. Everyone is. I'd like to think that growing old is a celebration, but my Westernized mind curtails this fantasy
tout de suite. I suppose this is the easy way out of what should be a probing question, but often the correct and best answers are the simplest. ... I don't know, I guess I'm rambling.
Until next week, find out what makes your life worth growing old, and grow old with that in your heart.
