To be young

It’s amazing to me how little some things change as we get older. I’m always thinking that maybe I look younger than I am. I don’t feel and think of myself as “my age.” The interesting thing about this is that I’ve been viewing myself this way for many years, since high school probably. Today, approaching 50, reading those humorous books about turning 40 seems like ancient history, and that 40th birthday was quite a milestone and cause for a good bit of jesting from my co-workers at the time, including an over-the-hill type of birthday cake and black balloons. All in the name of fun. Something to gently mock the deadly serious passage of time.

This past weekend, I decided to take a walk around Colonial Lake, and started out as usual, only to make it half way before having to return home. I was just too tired and exhausted. I got home that night and could barely get out of my recliner chair. Just all the lack of sleep and busyness catching up with me in a big way.

Earlier in the week, I couldn’t help but notice the joggers and bicyclists making their way across the Connector (an elevated expressway and bridge over he Ashley River marshes and tidal creeks). It has rather imposing uphill and downhill gradients as it rises above the Ashley River and then makes its way down along a stretch about a mile long. I see people huffing and puffing across. They must be miserable. Just doing it for their “health.” Meantime, they’re breathing in all the fumes from the traffic and just enjoying themselves thoroughly from the looks of it. What body shapes and sizes! A regular carnival of exercise merrymakers.

Then there was the teenager who was running on the opposite side from the geezers. He was flying across that stretch of bridge on the wings of Mercury. Youthful. Fleet of foot and aware of it, too. The out-of-shape wrecks don’t seem to care what they look like, however.

What I’m saying is, you can’t turn back the hands of time. Youth has the advantage, no matter how the exercise mavens try to rationize it. They have the wind, the stronger hearts, the naturally leaner physiques.

All these pictures on the commercials of wrinkled, tan, happy, smiling senior citizens playing tennis at Sun City way past their prime… Well it is kind of comical, really. That’s all well and good, but really people are in denial.

Trouble with me is that I don’t know if I ever really considered myself young. When I was 29 and living in Columbia, I guess I thought I was some kind of sage, looking at life from the wizened perspective of my advanced years. College students seemed impossibly young to me at that time. You can imagine how they seem now. I had put some very bad experiences behind me, so that is partially why I felt the way I did, for I truly had aged mentally and emotionally. But at least I had the better part of my life still ahead of me. Now I’m very definitely on the other side of that equation.

This is what I wrote in my journal in May 1980 when I had just turned 29 :

Was on campus [University of South Carolina] for at least a short time every day this week. The old “Horseshoe” area (the original campus) is so beautiful this time of year. Great trees in a park-like area with students and others constantly coming and going. I like to just sit and observe the passing parade. Again, I’m struck forcibly with the idea of fleeting youth as I watch the college students in groups or singly, throwing frisbees or lying in the sun. Frisbee throwing is such a great spring pasttime in the afternoons. I love to sail them myself. It is such a youthful game or diversion, but I really can’t run around after them like I once could. It is entrancing to see the limber and graceful movements of students as they spin and leap and cast themselves into the air to catch those little plastic disks. I’m caught in a carefree interlude, ripe for moody ponderances on the flight of time. Here are these students in the prime of life. What use would they have for such ruminations?

(Written October 26, 1998)

even tho i may be in the young of my youth, i dont at all feel close to those aged around me, actually i enjoy talking to teachers rather than pupils…this was a lovely entry. in fact, i think i have now learned something new!

i just wanted to say that i thought this is a really beautiful entry. makes me think, and i’m only 18…

smiling at you here thinking about your age 🙂 ill be 47 in december….i saw lots of gray in the mirror today…it seems to be in a clump near the front…. ah well…i suppose that makes me brainy lookin 🙂

There’s a strange concept. A 50-year-old looking back on a 29-year-old who thought he was old. It has created all sorts of time warps in my mind. I wonder what you will think in another twenty or thirty years time. Someone once said, “Youth is lost on the young.” How true.

To have the beauty of youth would be to give up the wisdom of age. Not a fair trade as far as I am concerned.

It’s still a shock to me when age rears it’s ugly head and reminds me that it’s a part of my life now. I tend to forget and the reminders are usually painful 🙁

Who among us, as we grow older, does not reflect upon the changes that age brings? I’ve always thought…and it’s proving to be true, I think…that I would be a much better old person than young person. It’s certainly not so much that I’ve acquired wisdom but that I’ve shed fears, inhibitions, fixations, and expectations. It’s extraordinarily liberating, allowing me to live more in the moment.

I read this almost breathless!Oh,how I wished I could express myself like this in your language! It “is” strange.I feel the same as when I was much younger, and my hikingtrips are keeping me fit maybe…but I don’t want to do jogging or fitness or whatever. To become part of our wonderful surrounding nature is what keeps me feel young.Our faces may be wrinkled, but our eyes and soul stay the same!

really good writing – loved the images. One of my assistants, however, belongs in said commercials, and at 70+, negotiated her hours by saying that she HAD to play tennis on Mondays… My new idol.

The horseshoe is very nice. I do sometimes wonder if I should have gone to USC and lived someplace more integrated with the community, instead of cloistered off as it is here…

Interesting ruminations on aging. I’m not sure I would agree that those older folks you mentioned are comical and in denial. Having active lives at that age is to be admired in my book. But you’re right, the younger ones sure have the advantage.

The idea of “aging and age” is, so much of it, psychological. But I was, too, kind of an “old” kid. I think I am getting younger now than I was back then. I am feeling MUCH, much better — terrific, actually — as if I suddenly was jarred into being in a more complete way. Sending love your way. Anna A.

Hey, us out-of-shape wrecks may still have a few rumba moves yet. Thanks for dropping by and saying “Hi”. Been thinking of moving to Charleston,S.C. for the beauty and weather and peace if it is still there.

Isn’t that funny. I think I have thought the same thing no matter what decade I have been in at the time. Now it is even more interesting to me that I feel even more above the rush and silliness…at the top of the tree. I wonder how I will feel in the next decade when I am beyond the tree. You always capture a thought that kicks me back in the chair, O. With love,

As Frank (of comic strip, Frank & Ernest) looks in the mirror, he says, “It’s certainly strange how little I look like me,” & that’s what I do when I look in a mirror. The way I feel, that reflexion shd. look 40! Ea. decade (as I look back from year, 80) is the best. I am in good health, not an awful lot of money, lots of good friends, & family that is supportive. I’m very active. [KeepSmili

You’e absolutely correct n this analyzation. Youth has the advantage. I too felt older than I ever was (John Prines’ verse always was my anthem (“Christ I’m so mixed up and lonely; I don’t even know where I’ve been. I’m too young to be where I’m going, too old to go back again”)Now that I am older, I don’t remember getting this way. Find myself checking out the clothes that I wore as a youth (c) [

since they are wearing them yet again. Then I will remember that “I’m too old for this…even if it came in my size”. I used to be in Columbia during that time period for the fair each year. I remember all the students in their marron and white…….Was a fun place.

Well – I’m 50 and am fortunate to have a good health, I’m fysical strong, can’t until now feel any major difference from before.. So I’m lucky. I hate jogging – but I love to feel that my body functions: dance, walk, etc If you are realtively healthy – age does not matter

Love your description of the people ruining themselves in the name of health. That always boggled me, as their generally the first to go. I’m always riding the fence as to how I perceive my own age. On one hand, I feel like I’m 15; on the other, I feel like I’m 55. Of course, I treat my body like a sewer. . . .

they are generally the first to go, I mean. damned typos.

Edelweis

November 1, 2002

I have been here before I noticed, but with an unsigned note! Wonder why I forgot to sign in so often!! I re-read this entry and I found myself smiling when reading the paragraph about people huffing and puffing to stay healthy! You describe it with such a wonderful sense of humor and I agree with what you say! But I also admire some aging persons who I know, for the wonderful courage they seem

Edelweis

November 1, 2002

to have. I think many, who are able to keep themselves busy whether with excercises ot other things, will be able to stay fit not only phisical but also psychical. But all the exaggeration with fintness and jogging is, for sure, not healthy at all. Have a very peaceful evening…the start of a free weekend?! Take care,