Eighty-One is uncharted territory for me. In a
couple of months, I’ll cross that threshold and enter even more foreign
terrain. Like ‘walking point’ in the Nam, it’s one cautious step after another
and may the best man live…for another day.
Micky and Me (photo credit: Jerry Hoffman) |
It
doesn’t seem that long ago when we were all young and dumb and the world was a
rainbow landscape full of wonderous adventures and opportunities. Each of us
set out to become whatever we thought we should be…at the time. The world was
our oyster and we meant to have it all.
It’s
funny how reality evolves and our past lives and aspirations finally catch up
with us. That winding road called ‘life’ is either running smooth as asphalt or
rough like gravel. And yet none of us want to get off the road even if the ride
isn’t what we expected it to be after all these years.
It’s
been forty or fifty years since we turned twenty-one and shed our cloak of
anonymity to adorn ourselves with the costume of adulthood. Now we’re at a
point in our lives where re-flection is more than a glass of chardonnay framed
within a sunset or a cold brew among high school buddies.
Our
current life style is an accumulation of habits born long before our birth. For
some of us it was modeled after our parent’s pioneering excursion into life.
For others, it was a process of discovery, loss, acceptance and rejection. And finally,
our life style became us on a daily basis and we weren’t even aware of it. It’s
only now that the accumulation of excess and/or scarcity raises its hidden head.
Ernest
Hemingway is quoted as saying that life is like a bank account. How you use it
is solely your determination. You can withdraw it in a hurry and live a very
short life. Or you can be diligent with your withdrawals and live, hopefully,
much longer.
We
can always try to rectify some of our mistakes or enhance our positive steps
but age and reticence to change are usually huge obstacles to overcome. We’ve
let life’s ebb and flow (our gypsy muse) guide us in this rhythm of life. For
most of us, the process was organic and without a lot of thought. The first
apartment, the first job, first time camping overnight during a long Minnesota
winter.
And
now quite unexpectedly, we find ourselves both benefiting and/or suffering from
past investments of our youth. The things we did to ourselves, the deposits we
made on our bodies, our finances, our love life and our children. We’re now at
the stage of making withdrawals from our youthful decisions and indiscretions.
The
life investments have been made, squandered, lost, accumulated, divested, and
set aside. Some things worked out and some things didn’t. Now we have the
residue of our wisdom or luck or mistakes to live with for the rest of our
lives. And all those life steps are now just a memory.
A
career was hatched, grown and nurtured or changed many times over. That part of
our lives is over unless boredom and fear of retirement pushes us in a new
direction.
We
abused our body with youthful indiscretion or ignored it and kept the blood
flowing by never stopping. Now that investment or abuse is either paying back
dividends or punishing us with worn out body parts along with the inevitable
aging process.
My
bank account of friends isn’t the greatest. A reluctance to make an effort back
then, despite the chiding by my wife, has left me lacking in that area. Yet
what I do have in the vault is now priceless. One of my aspirations is to mine
those rich veins of past friendships to see if I might unearth more nuggets
there. Occasionally I’ll strike gold and rekindle a long lost almost forgotten friendship
from the dusty archives of my past. It’s a blast. And immensely satisfying.
Those
random discoveries got me thinking about other friendships; past and future,
strong and vapid, present, and omnipresent. I thought about the friends I’ve
had over the years. Some of them shared isolated points in my life; high
school, college and work. Some were but fleeting incisions in the tenderness of
my youth. Others were shared experiences like the military; isolated, vacuous,
and destined to crash with each discharge celebration where inane behavior in
the barracks seemed to make perfect sense back then.
Most
of those memories are lost now in that vacuum called life experiences. A few
were found again but most are just fragrant memories of a life well spent. Like
separating wheat from the shaft, I’d love to rekindle a few of those friendships
and nourish them back to the point of commonality we once shared. A kind of
harvesting from what I whimsically have called my Lost Years.
The
cliché that you can never have too many friends dissolves over the pages of
Facebook where collecting friends can be a cyber-game for some folks, devoid of
meaningful contact and concern. Having friends on Facebook isn’t the same as
having real friends who care and share and actually want to be somebody in your
life. Big difference there! For some folks it’s like grade school best friends.
I
guess that’s why I want to continue seeking out old friends and acquaintances
who might share my same values and interests. The past can’t be replicated nor
ignored. It can be accepted for what it was even if we couldn’t see it at the
time. It’s all cloaked in that most evolving, trans-lucent, vapid metaphor
called relationships. Together they fill our thoughts and dreams and
aspirations with dream-like illusions we’d like to believe in. It’s a game we
play on a daily basis as we go about the business of living.
But
there’s one group that isn’t into that game-playing. Children are the most transparent
of all relationships. No pretense, no pretending. They haven’t learned those
life lessons of pretend, illusion and facial facades. It’s all there in front
of us and easy to recognize.
So,
it all comes down to friends and family and the most honest among those two
groups.
I am
in a good place in my life. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore!
As an artist, I love creating stories in many different genres and I intend to
continue writing until my pen dries up or I go blind. I’d like to take my true
friends along on this journey of discovery of self and life and whatever else comes
my way.
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