Tonight, as I lay my head to sleep, I will close out my fourth decade on this planet. “That’s halfway through life!” said my grandpa, who is halfway through his tenth decade. He sounded proud of me when he said it, and I suppose it is a kind of accomplishment. Keeping oneself alive is a grave responsibility, and it has been largely mine for the last twenty years or so. I’m proud of me, too.
Pride is only one of the feelings I have about turning forty, of course. It would not be disingenuous to say that I am also excited, grateful, and ready to rock. It is here, however, that the list of positively-connoted emotions ends. The rest float somewhere in the realm of bone-jangling anxiety and nagging (if undefined) disappointment. Positive and negative, they all mix together in a non-alcoholic cocktail of momentousness.
I say “non-alcoholic” because I’m not getting any buzz. There is something inherently sobering about this milestone. I’m beginning to think that the only way one can comprehend the passage of time is by experiencing it. You first find out about death when you’re little, but then you keep finding out about it, intermittently, for the rest of your life. And, with your full cooperation, it will hit you like a ton of bricks every time.
It’s not like I ever thought that I would live forever, or that I would retain my youthful appearance well into my elder years, as if it were some virtue particular to my personage. But thinking is not feeling, and I feel all sorts of dubious things. I feel that I can go back in time, for example. Sometimes, when I am recalling a happy childhood memory, I get the sense that I am looking forward to it, like, “wow, I can’t wait to do that part again!” I don’t know why I can’t seem to get it through my skull that time only goes one way. Maybe I am actually a genius-level physicist.
People will tell you, almost in the same breath, that age is just a number and that life begins at forty; that it matters, and it doesn’t; that you’re still young, and you’re getting old; that your best years are ahead of you, and that there are no guarantees in life. I take this to mean that I am in some sort of sweet spot, my fingertips touching two worlds, one receding and the other unfolding, and that as long as I can keep my wits about me, there is a certain untold flavor waiting just around the corner–not the sweetness of sixteen, but the bittersweetness of life as it is–and that, as long as I savor it, I won’t choke. Not yet, anyway.
Faded beauty with “non-alcoholic” cocktail of contradictory feelings