Thursday, February 21, 2013

A Well Respected Man


I'm getting old. We're all getting older, sure, but recently--it probably has to do with the fact that I just turned 28 last Wednesday--I've started being bothered by the idea. It never worried me before. I still look forward to going grey. I imagine I'll have whitish silver strands of luxurious hair to frame my wise face and that somehow, despite it all, I'll still feel young, as I do now.

But there are all these things that point to the contrary. I have loved ones close to me who I am forced to accept have passed on to another stage in their own lives. For one brief, glimmering moment all the members of my beloved immediate family were adults together. We lingered at dinner tables, drank wine in each other's presence, listened, attentively, to each other's outlooks and agreed, even if we disagreed, that they made a point.

I'm faced with death each day. I leave my apartment and am reminded--if I hadn't been by Ivan Ilyich, Rumi, or The Kinks--that peril, traffic, and age can creep up on you at street corners. In the week leading up to 13th, I spent a lot of time thinking about maturation and patina. In a city like New York, you're forced to evolve. There are so many aspects of life that can't be escaped. For the majority of us, that means learning how live with tough situations, the things that archetypes are made of. It tests your willingness to be open to the universe when a deranged man screams racist chants from the back of a subway car, but it can lead you to greater tolerance. It can widen your perspective and reveal your own list of necessary self-improvements. I wouldn't trade it for anything, not during this season of my life, but it

it all just seeems to happen so quickly.

"For what is passes so swiftly and irrevocably into what was..."