Better Than Bitcoin

Old(er) age is uncharted territory for me. I’ve crossed that River Styx and entered foreign territory. Like ‘walking point’ in the Nam, it’s one cautious step after another and may the best man live…for another day.

Life investments have been made, squandered, lost, accumulated, divested and set aside. Some things worked out while others didn’t. Mostly what’s left is the residue of one’s collective wisdom and the luck or mistakes to live with for the rest of our lives. One of the few common denominators remaining is the enduring value of friendships.

It’s the best currency around and yet we’re seldom smart enough to recognize or appreciate what it brings into our lives. Who were those kids captured in that newspaper photo so many years ago? What did ‘finding the one’ mean for future friendships and life-long acquaintances?

It doesn’t seem that long ago when 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 sixty plus years since I turned twenty-one and shed my cloak of anonymity to adorn myself with the costume of adulthood. Now I, like so many others, am at a point in my life where reflection is more than a glass of chardonnay framed within a sunset or a cold brew among high school buddies.

My current life style is an accumulation of habits born at 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. 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. Living abroad, that first apartment and that first step in something called a career.

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.

Those random discoveries got me thinking about friendships; past and present, 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, the service 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.

The cliché that you can never have too many friends dissolves over the pages of Facebook where collecting friends can be a cybergame 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 own 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.

Maybe I’m just trying to replicate some of what I captured early in life when playground antics caught a reporter’s camera and made the front page and added to the serenity of those long-forgotten friendships. If it’s true that a life well-lived includes many friends, then I want continue adding to my roster.

They say true wealth is all about good health and friendships. If so, I’d like to be a very wealthy person.

Deposits and Withdrawls

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.

Seeking Closure

While sometimes things are better left unsaid, more often than not closure is a good thing. Closure brings finality to the end of a relationship, agreement, arrangement or understanding. It clears out the cobwebs of words left unspoken, gestures not returned and comments not made nor taken back. It leaves both parties with their questions answered or resolved. Or at best, it brings acceptance that some questions never will be or perhaps simply can never be answered. The end of a friendship can be like that. Like the friends I made in Europe who stayed in place while I moved back to the states.

Unfortunately, there have been a number of involvements in my life that ended rather abruptly or without closure. Recently, I wrote about ‘Ghosting’ in my November 12th blog. Those relationships, agreements, or arrangements ended rather abruptly and without a clear explanation of ‘what happened.’

Me and My Mother

With her strong German heritage and stoic parental upbringing, my mother never talked about ‘personal things.’ In another blog ‘Hilde and the Old Man,’ I explored my mother’s fascinating upbringing that I never knew anything about until late in her life. As the end got closer, my mother slowly started to reveal things about her life and background growing up. But by that time, she was too far gone (in terms of mental lucidness) to have a really clear, succinct grasp of her past. Her memory was slowly failing and her stories kept contradicting themselves and causing only more confusion and doubt.

Me and My Father

My father died when I was six years old and for twenty-one years his name was never mentioned in our home. I never knew anything about my father so there was nothing to bring closure to that relationship. No chance of ever figuring that connection out. Therefore, I never had closure with my Mother or my Father.

Me and Mickey

I’ve experienced that same ‘failure to close’ with some past relationships and partnerships. There were words left unspoken, feelings left unanswered and questions still dangling in space. Growing up, there were friends who slowly but surely went their own way. There were school mates who promised to be there forever until we both faced graduation. There were job partners who stuck around when I moved on to something better.

Wendy

Me with Pat

There were romantic entanglements that began in colorful hues and tints of spring. Then at some point gradually began to fade in the harshness of our collective conflicting feelings for each other and the future.

St. Thomas Yearbook

Maryland Center Gang

Then there have been a number of events and episodes in my life that came to a natural conclusion and it was a good final good-bye. Some past jobs simply ran their course and we parted on mutually agreeable terms. Phases in my life like real estate investments, producing, and marketing video programs and athletic endeavors all gradually ran their course and new opportunities took their place.

I read a million years ago that ‘if you’re in a good place’ in your life now, then you can look back at all those things that worked and didn’t work. The goals accomplished and failures along the way. You can summarize your past openly, honestly and without regret because in the end, it just life playing itself out again. That’s where I’m at now.

As Woody Guthrie immortalized in a song, ‘So long, it’s been good to know ya.’ It’s been one heck of a wonderful trip thus far and I hope for many more miles to go.

Friendships Never Meant to Last

A movie title caught my attention a while back. At first I thought it was pretty dumb but upon further introspection I think they got it ‘spot on.’ The movie title was ‘She’s Just Not That into You.’ It was your classic New York romance about unrequited love, breakups and the eternal search for that ‘perfect’ someone…and in the end, one sided relationships. I thought it could easily fit another side of relationships - not the romantic kind, just plain simple friendships instead.

It sounds terribly harsh, haughty and perhaps even a bit cruel. I’m talking about people from your past who have since disappeared from your life. Friends and acquaintances who have faded away or didn’t live up to your expectations; real or otherwise. They may have been there for important milestones in your life but are no longer are even a smudge on the relationship radar. What happened to those folks? Perhaps they didn’t follow through or fell short of what you expected from them. Perhaps you failed them and the ending was mutual. As disappointing as their absence is, their memories can still bring a smile to my memory.

Of course, no one can make someone else their friend if they don’t want to be. It’s terribly subjective and handicapped by a less than thorough knowledge of their motives. Were there extraneous factors, whether recognized or not, that contributed to the demise of that friendship? Was it something you did or didn’t do? Was it something you said even in honesty that was taken the wrong way?

When I first came back from Europe, I lived on couches for a while. There was a guy from Tennessee who took me in. He was brilliant and funny and I thought we really hit it off. Then he suddenly announced one day that he was moving back home. He never wrote and that was that. The ancillary friends I met through him remained but he didn’t.

No matter what the contributing factors might have been, I came to the conclusion that whatever friendship I once had with that guy had now’ left the station.’ On one hand, it was sad. On the other, it was just life giving me a poke on the backside and reminding me that nothing and no one is perfect.

Some folks can be brutally honest in terms of their relationships. They separate family (with all those obligatory ties) from friends and acquaintances (where they get to decide whom they want to be associated with.) They pick and choose their friends based on connections, associations and tie-ins all for their own self-benefit and satisfaction. ‘It’s nothing personal,’ as my boss used to say, ‘it’s just business.’

Friendships and relationships can be by their very nature a very vapid and elusive bond to attain and hold on to. Fleeting friendships based on circumstance are easy to recognize. An MOS partnership in the Armed Forces evaporates as soon as discharge papers are served. That’s understood, accepted and welcomed for a return to civilian life. A close relationship in the classroom can wither away and die when outstate jobs or opportunities beckon. Neighbors and neighborhoods fade from memory after the moving van has arrived. It’s all part and parcel of the ebb and flow of normal life.

Photo Credit: Jerry Hoffman

But what about those friendships you thought were meant for greater things. Something special you wanted to hold on to but couldn’t…her fault or yours, it doesn’t matter anymore. The clichés are rampant when describing what happened or might have happened. ‘There were promises not met or kept.’ ‘We were moving along in life.’ ‘People change.’ ‘They/she just wasn’t that into you.’ And the one that best describes them all because it tells us nothing: ‘Things happen.’ Whatever once was had become vaporous and vague. Then like the morning mist wrapping itself around a tree trunk it slowly slipped away.

It seems to me that some folks go through life on autopilot. They never stop to question any-thing that life throws at them. Instead of designing their life as they would want it or like it or wish for it to be they simply accept what is lying there under the morning covers. I think that’s what happens to a lot of friendships. They’re taken for granted until those innocuous bonds that held it together have slowly unraveled and broken apart, leaving nothing but memories where a welcoming smile used to be.

A mental-meandering trip back in time usually reveals very little. So what happened to those folks? Did they change or did you? Whose expectations weren’t met? Was it your baggage or theirs? Did they move on or did you move on with your life and in the process leave behind what once was or might have been. Did they disappoint you or did you screw up and lose what might have been a wonderful friendship or relationship?

Two pals from grade school

The Barracks Boys

Marie, A wonderful confidant in that Danish laundry

My Roommate in Danmark who we all called ‘Animal.’

A Danish University student who wanted to get close

A potter from Amsterdam

A painter from Amsterdam

A pen pal from Lincolnshire, England

Susan

It’s been several lifetimes since I’ve seen any of these folks. I assume I never will again. So I wish for all of them health and happiness and good memories just as mine are. It’s the Great Go-Around and in this Circle of Life a few old friends will occasionally reappear after fifty years. I guess that’s why reconnecting with old friends is so special.

Like most mysteries of life, there are no easy answers…if any at all. What once was is no longer relevant and if that bothers you then the onus is on you to make it better the next time around.

As the saying goes: “To have a friend you must first be a friend.” They’re still out there…those wonderful folks who could be your friend. You just have to be generous in kindness and spirit.

I guess we (or perhaps just I) have to make the effort and accept the fact that we might be disappointed in the process.

Nevertheless, it’s still worth the effort.

Male Friends as an Oxymoron

The Old Gang (Photo by Jerry Hoffman)

My wife has a theory, in fact, many of them. I think it’s indicative of that species that they somehow believe women have cornered the market on all the great wisdom of the world and are more than happy to share it with their hapless other half.

Army Foot Locker

PFC

“Men don’t have friends.” Sharon claims. “They have business associates, contacts, pals, acquaintances, fishing buddies and other males who share similar interests. But friends, true friends who would drop anything at a moment’s notice at help you…that’s something else entirely” …she claims.

She believes men aren’t programmed for such intimacy, such sharing and revealing, such openness. That, in turn, leaves us vulnerable (in our golden years) to reveal in fantasies of past accomplishments, old school glories and tempting reflections back on old relationships.

At first, I was offended by her seemingly casual yet caustic remark. But the more I thought about it the more it burrowed under my skin like an irritating itch that I couldn’t ignore. I came to the rather painful conclusion that she might be on to something there.

(Photo by Jerry Hoffman)

Reflecting on a lifetime of relationships, casual friendships, intimate feelings, and deep connections (or so I thought) there haven’t been many if any male friends that went the distance. It was probably my fault more than theirs. But I’m guessing that neither one of us was any the wiser about it…or because of it.

Micky and I (Photo by Jerry Hoffman)

I had a friend in grade school. We shared a lot, talked a lot and waxed philosophically about the future (high school and beyond.) Yet by high school we had both moved on to new friends, activities and interests. I lost track of him for a while, made contact again after college then lost it for good.

Joel, Peter, and I at prom

I had great friends in high school. We shared all the drama, trauma, first inkling of love, rejection, self-doubt and grand hopes for the future as all teen-agers do. Graduation severed those ties until years later (fifty to be exact) when we had matured to that stage of reminiscing and wondering what ever happened to?

There were buddies in the service. Casual, surface, momentary, tepid and vapid friends who vanished just as soon as their transfer papers arrived or they got discharged. There is nothing as anxious as a man whose time is nearly up in the service. Nothing and I mean nothing is more important than their return to ‘normal living.’ All the wonderful things shared in the service disappear with that plane ticket home.

When I was living in Europe my friendships were brief, intense, wonderful, and about as vapid as morning mist. It might be a weekend in Berlin or camping on the west coast of Denmark that brought us together but Monday morning that made it vanish in a flash. Of course, we promised to write and stay in touch. Of course, we never did.

Farewell party at Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting

KTCA television

By the time it came around to making friends in the business of television, film, and video, I was a married man and busy with my other life.

This inability to build up a portfolio of friendships during our working careers only increases with the demise of real work and what to do afterwards in retirement.

Let’s face it, friendship is hard work. Anyone who is in a marriage, committed relationship or shared space knows what it takes to make it tolerable, enjoyable, believable and rewarding. It is a daily challenge.

That aforementioned sooth sayer would say that men aren’t willing to do the hard work that it takes to create and keep a friendship. Who knows, she may have a point. I’m just trying to keep my head above water with a coffee or luncheon get-together whenever I can.