On the occasion of my 50th birthday I am inclined to reflect. I want to look backwards for lessons on how to proceed. I want to look inwards to take stock and ensure I am listening to my best self. I want to look forward to envision the outcomes I need.
It is easy to say it is just a number but the point is people age differently. Some battle ailments and maladies. Others enjoy pristine health. Some age gracefully, adapting easily as they go while always projecting cool satisfaction to the world. Others bite and hiss and moan and scowl their days away. In a gray world nobody does it perfectly and nobody fully fails.
As for me my values can be understood best by viewing them through the lens of how I can explain them to my children. For the sake of balance I will alternate between the good and the bad.
I have many regrets and I have come to terms with all of them, (excepting perhaps this one on which I continue to process.) My children live in an apartment. They live in an apartment, (two, really,) because I am something of an economic or financial failure. It is not that I have failed to earn an income or even failed to earn a viable income. It is that I have lived a life to this point of indulgence.
Sometime in my late 20s or early 30s I recall considering the idea of saving money and living a life of frugality, temperance, chastity, prudence and austerity. I had friends embarking on such a lifestyle but for me it seemed so hollow. In some ways I had a difficult childhood and so the idea of enjoying and getting something in my adult life in the form of experience and understanding was attractive to me. For me Henry Miller’s quote rang true: “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
In order to be aware I needed to experience. In order to experience, I needed to indulge. So, indulge I did. Thus far in life I have had things my way for the most part. I became financially stable around 30-years-old. (My 20s were good but filled with periods of intense character development.) My way has been marked by low levels of self-discipline and high levels of instant gratitude. It is embarrassing and yet, I have walked my walk in large part as a product of my environment. And now you know my deepest, darkest secret. (If it is true a man is only as sick as his secrets, well I suppose I just took a step toward better health.) That I live in an apartment in a great location is not in any way bad for me. That my two children live in an apartment without a backyard to play in, without the love of a dog for a pet, without a parent who is comfortable allowing them to invite their friends and their friends parents over for virtually any occasion, is a deep and enduring regret for me. I haven’t given up but this is not the sort of thing one recovers from or resolves overnight.
The positive side of my self-indulgent ways is manifested by my world-view, which is informed by my experience, (which is manifold.) People have lived much richer lives and relatively poor lives as well. There is value in my experience that transcends me and reaches my children in large part. I suffered physical, mental and emotional abuse as a child. These gave me perspective, understanding and empathy. I was raised by a variety of relatives. The variety had positive and negative effects. I spent my teens in Americana, in the back yard swimming and barbecuing with my brother, and an Aunt and Uncle as Mother and Father figures and a cousin as a sister. We were actively involved in a fundamentalist, (colorfully Pentecostal,) church scene, which also had its plus signs and its minuses. I attended several higher learning institutions, always getting more from them than what I gave them, eventually studying Journalism. I spent four years in the USAF. I lived in Japan for two years and thankfully, I ventured forth from the American base freely and often. I learned a great deal from that culture and those people and from being abroad. I was a fire fighter for six to seven years, (including those four years in the Air Force.) I worked in a bookstore for three years where a budding love of the written word was able to flourish into a full-blown affinity for knowledge and understanding. I built houses as a Contractor’s apprentice for two years. I became a CSR and embraced that work as my career, if as a default when other endeavors did not work out. (I dropped out of all of those colleges, after all.) I climbed slowly in the work place from CSR, to Lead CSR, to Trainer, to Supervisor, then off to a start-up company trying to teach English language to adult Spanish speakers using children’s Leap Pad technology, then to the unemployment line for seven months, then to a $5 million per year termite and pest control company managing the administrative part and helping manage virtually all of the rest of it, then back to the unemployment line for nine months, then back to Call Center Supervisor for a large corporation, then to Trainer again. I got married once. I had two children. I divorced after less than six years of marriage, and around 12 years of relationship. I drank. I smoked. I did drugs. I caroused and philandered. All of these with some caution. I visited South America. I embraced the internet from Day One. I am gregarious and enjoy meeting with and talking to and learning about people. I am open to hearing about my faults and I like to try to improve in those areas. I developed a tremendous affinity for sports as a child. I was addicted to reading every last word of the Sporting News and Sports Illustrated as well as the sports section of the LA Times and any other rag I could get my eyes on. I was a teenaged encyclopedia of sports knowledge. I played every sport, too. I loved basketball like I loved breathing. It was necessary for me. It was my therapy when I was afraid to go home at nine-years-old, and the game that allowed me to assimilate at schools. I played baseball, too, varsity as a Junior. In most organized sports I was a B+. I did not want to be the best because I wanted access to everyone. I did not want to put anyone off. I needed to be above average though for the respect of the most as well. I had other hobbies and endeavors as well. My life was and is full. I am pleased in retrospect at my level of engagement.
All of this experience informs me and by proxy informs my children. I am hopeful the obvious drawbacks of my self-indulgence are offset in some part by the perspective gained. I am highly confident in my world view. When my children pose questions I typically feel eminently qualified to answer them. (I have been stumped once or twice but it’s been rare.) I am trying very hard to be a good Dad. I am not entirely pleased with my performance in that role thus far but I am aware of the areas I fall short in and I am trying to improve.
At 50 I do not feel irresponsible with this life. I feel like I have taken it seriously, accomplished some and learned much. I could die now without the regret of feeling as if I had squandered my time, in spite of the fact I have much I still want to do. I do not want to die now however. I want to live. I want to learn more. I want to share with my children and others. I want to use what I have learned to help others. (It is why I write.) I want to see how things turn out for me and for others. I want some time to make some things happen. I am nothing if not deliberate and so, I need time. I want and crave time. I am hopeful I have some more ahead of me.
I find at 50 I understand older people better. I have expressed a general dissatisfaction with the elderly for many years and nothing has really changed about that. I find older people, certainly older Americans, to be selfish and greedy, (among other things.) The idea of AARP has annoyed me for years though I admit it is no different than Scientology or the Masons or Objectivists or the Knights of Columbus. I just have less tolerance for those who have been living longer but have not learned, (or learned to practice,) life’s most basic and fundamental truths.
As I arrive in later years I am fully aware that 50 aint shit. The other day my eight-year-old son asked me the meaning of life. It’s a joke we play. We ask Siri this question on my iPhone from time to time and she seems to have a few colorful, fun answers programmed in. So Mark asked me straight out, as if emphasizing the is, in the question, like, “Dad, what IS the meaning of life?”
I thought about it for a few minutes then I answered. Some say life is absurd. It has no meaning, no rhyme, no reason. I disagree. I say we live for the future. I say we long not for immortality but innate goodness, which can only come from putting ourselves second to our species. The meaning of life is to learn through the course of it as soon as possible and then to act on this maxim: that which benefits humanity in the greatest possible way, represents that which is the best action. Action resulting in good consequences for our children and the future of our kind is the best. It is what we should aspire to. My answer to my son was not quite so succinct but if pressed to delve further I would add…
- Lighting the dimmest recesses of ignorance is noble, right action for our species. Spreading insight is innate goodness.
- Acting on behalf of the less privileged or underserved is goodness.
- Protecting the powerless from being taken advantage of should be viewed as a responsibility.
- Providing for the best possible environment, to include finding ways of improving it beyond what we can imagine, is righteous.
- Having the future of humanity as the basis for our heaviest decisions is important. (At the very least; Research>Treatment.)
But what of 50? What should it mean to me? What should it mean to the world?
In many ways I feel like I matured until I was 45, then I began to age. What I know for certain is that the ageing is undeniable. Lately these moments of ageing sneak up on me. I was getting a haircut a few days ago and I peered at myself in the mirror and the apron was tied around my neck tightly and I looked closely and noticed my neck sagging this way and that as I swiveled my head. The changing elasticity of my skin was also evident. Today it was my hands. I looked at my hand, clenched and unclenched my fist, and saw there the lines I had at my knuckles all of my life, now have lines framing them. The lines have multiplied from three per knuckle to seven, or eight. The elasticity of my skin on the top of my hand, again, has changed. It’s shiny and prone to wrinkle like old cellophane. When taut it looks much as it always has but as soon as it is in any way touched, moved or compromised, the years show themselves to the knowing eye, like animal tracks in sticks and moist earth.
