August 18, 2019

50 (Or, Gatdam! I’m Old!)

I had meant to post everyday this month. Time has gotten away from me. Time slipping away seems to be the theme of my 50th birthday.

Henry’s drawing of me.

Here’s Bertrand Russell on how to grow old:

“ Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. ” — “How to Grow Old”

I like the river metaphor; Zeppelin echoes this in their song “Ten Years Gone”: “And though the course may change sometimes / Rivers always reach the sea.”

I’ve accomplished much in my 50 years, but still have more to go. I’m definitely in the fall of my life now, closer to that final winter day than I am to that first spring one. I’m at a pretty good place, too: good career, loving family, a (mostly) healthy lifestyle, and the ability to take the occasional trip. I hope to be debt-free by my 60th birthday and more minimal. My ambition is to travel with Autumn and Henry as much as possible. That should be able to start this decade. What’s more important?

As time will continue to speed up, I will continue to try to live in the moment, be mindful of what I have, and, in the words of Henry Miller, “keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical.” Or at least more so.