i am still perplexed by this thing we call "turning 50". i have never in my life run up against something this perplexing! everybody told me that after a while, life would just continue on as it had before, but how long before "a while" has passed? cuz i am here to tell ya that life is not as it was before. damned perplexing, it is.
tonight i was planning to attend a "bike night" at the hammer museum in westwood.
it was part of the los angeles "bike to work week" that occurred this week. it sounded fun! there was going to be all kinds of bike related activities" photos with you and your bike, t-shirts made, new products, art, films, and lots and lots of people on bikes. just look at how crazy fun the poster looks!
now when i have to go someplace, i have to pedal there. with my legs and with my feet. true, i rarely have to wait for anyone, but i don't move unless i exert effort. physical effort. and must i remind you that i am 50?
well, the effort to get to westwood tonight was just too too much for me to think about, despite the premise of fun that potentially awaited me. but let's face it, who wants to be around a bunch of fun folks when the eyes are drooping? not me, kids!
the funny thing is that i would have fit in just fine there, despite the fact that most of the attendees would have been half my age or more. because i just don't "look" 50, at least as far as people expect 50 to look.
 |
| couple years ago at a bike event |
 |
| a year ago for halloween--i apologize for NOTHING! |
.jpg) |
| a few months ago at work |
and that is the rub. i seem to be aging "backwards" from the way most people age. most people, it seems, lose the body and the face and the youthful appearance WAY before they lose the youthful way of thinking.
and that sucks. who wants to be in an older body with the thoughts and desires of a younger man? (think woody allen in "manhattan") i, on the other hand, seem to be reclining into the thoughts of an older man, while retaining my youthful body and such. in other words, imagine having a perfectly working order espresso maker, but you no longer want to drink coffee. what becomes of the appliance? you can't throw an expensive item away, so you keep it on the counter, and friends come over to your house and comment on how beautiful it is and how great it is to have it, to which you respond, "yeah, it is nice, but i really have no use for it anymore, so it just sits there, unused".
get the picture?
i am not ready to start thinking like an older man. tonight, i did not "think" like a man of 50, i "thought" like a man of 60, or at least how i imagine a man of 60 would think. and meanwhile, my "appliance" sits there, in fantastic condition, unused. i am aging backwards.
I've never embraced the adage that we're only as old as we feel. Hell, I felt 50 when I was 30.
ReplyDeleteNow that I'm a little older than 50, I find myself behaving like I'm 30. Or 20.
For a long time I looked much younger than I was. Now I'm beginning to look my age, so I avoid mirrors.
Life is a perpetual piss......
mirrors are overrated, jon. sometimes imagination is so much more fun...
DeleteFrom one 50yo man to another: welcome!
ReplyDeleteMay this next decade be your best one yet!
i do hear that most people find their 50's the best decade of their lives, michael, so that is the upside!
DeleteWait until you turn 70 my friend, Now THAT is an experience. You have no idea.
ReplyDeleteRetired in Delaware
i will take your word for it, ron, and wait. but i am also preparing for it in the best way i know how.
DeleteI will turn 60 next year. people assume I am in my mid to upper 40s. it's all about ATTITUDE, not a number, baybee!
ReplyDeleteI like to say to people "this is what 60 looks like and it's FABULOUS!"
so rock on with your handsome bad self! :)
anne marie, i don't think ANYONE would debate that you are FABULOUS!
DeleteI can only dream that I'd look as good as you do at 50. And kudos to biking more than driving; if I didn't live 20 miles from work -- and owned a functioning bike -- I would give it a try myself. My life is too sedentary.
ReplyDeletethanks, greg! i am a freak of nature, or so they tell me! it is never too late though! i do notice that most people's desire to be healthy is stronger than their will to do something about it...depends on what is important to you! nothing is easy!
DeleteHello. My compliments on an enjoyable post, an energetic blog and positive outlook. Following.
ReplyDeletethank you, geo!
Deletehey Tony! Great to see to see how bustling you are on here!
ReplyDeleteSo now that I myself am in my mid thirties, my thoughts have been somewhat nostalgic and perhaps a tad regretful of my twenties...(lol)... I often regret that i didn't do enough in my twenties, mainly, quite frankly, because I was pretty much married from 20 til almost thirty... and by late twenties I was so down and out I could barely do anything but work... but the irony is similar to yours: while, yes, mid thirties is not 50, there's still the feeling like you've surpassed some bridge and aren't turning back... but i really look like I'm in my twenties and people still act/react to me like I am... and being that I have my own busines and such it's not always for the better that I'm treated like a twenty year old (lol)... but if you remember me well enough you also know that I pretty much think like an 80 yr old or so I like to joke... i'm often myself too tired to do this or that (and i drive!) and/or not too interested in things that I was interested in as a kid... I often wonder how others have so much energy to waste their time on pointless things... I have a partner now, been awhile actually and happily so, and my interest in getting attention from others even isn't very high. My concerns are more adult, more interests in how and why society culture behaves this way or that way, not so much in the fervor of those eager college students wanting to go out and change the world, but more about how to accept and understand the world having now experience more than 3 decades of what can be changed about life and cannot be...
Yet, to many I look like a whatever 20 yr old who may what? wants to go drink, hang out with people you just met and do nothing for hours and hours, worry about why someone doesn't like me back, or have sex all the time, go see bands, go drink some more... then i read about that actor who gets a oscar by 20 or 21, or that young architect who opens an acclaimed office by late twenties, or that artist who gets in the whitney bienniel by mid-twenties... and I well get kinda sad... it's the disjoint between looking young and not feeling/acting/thinking young that is disconcerting... like you, its great to know i have an appliance in great condition, but to let it sit around unused is definitely, well, perplexing... but my answer to this goes against what may be at the core of ideology that has dominated the last century and this one (re eonomy and capital)... not everything we have must be used, and if things are unused than how can anything be wasted...
anyway so... getting older presents a situation of a complicated set of feelings... and in these complications i feel is where we find a bit of peace. now older, there should be an understanding that you can't turn back time, that bygones are bygones, that to this point there's absolutely nothing you can or should change. and with this "understanding" I found myself really refreshed and new, almost really like I was "young" again... it's what makes youth liberating in theory, the freshness of being new.
This is what I think is fascinating about being older, you can be old AND young, or, young AND old. You can be it all, as previous posters here can prove... and when you're young you can only really be young, and ironically being young is in the end very limiting to being...
perhaps i went off a bit too much ;P
glad to have read that you had decided to stay... as you recall, I like it here very much so don't disagree with the decision...
now THAT is a comment!!! so good to see you here, ol' friend! glad that things are going better for you. i always liked your way of thinking.
Delete