I'm too tired tonight to share my soccer referree analogy. See you here tomorrow.............
Joe
I don't mind aging, it does work as a sort of seasoning. However, I would like time to take twice as long. It flits over the stones too damn fast.
I'm 23, and I noticed the clock when I came to an age which I had been wishing and wishing to reach; I had an illusion of what it would be like to be 21. When I reached 21 I noticed that it was not some magical dream age which I had been dreaming of and wishing to reach. It was another year. A year in which I learnt, and loved and enjoyed and cried. The same as the 16th year, or the 19th.
This was comforting to me, as I realised that each year has its own to offer, and no matter how much I pretend, I am getting older, and lets face it . . . would I really want to be 16, 17, or 18 again?
You've got it, Carrie. It goes by several many names, living in the moment, living in the now, but it is just living, to be alive, to be here.
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Here is my soccer analogy. It is half-baked, not quite formed, it may get better as I write it here.
Many years ago I was a soccer referee. It was a perfect sport for me, I didn't have to go to practices, I got a great view of the games and I got to run as much as I liked.
These were men's and women's league games played on grass fields where there was no game clock, the referee called the fouls, marked the scores and kept the time.
What I noticed about some games was that the last three minutes were played at a level of intensity that exceeded the previous 87 by a factor of ten. In other words, the teams, and individuals on those teams in particular, would loaf along through the first half, making lazy passes, taking half strides towards a out of bounds bound ball, generally acting like they had all the time in the world to get the job done, but as time drained down in the second half, and if I looked at my watch, the intensity would start to rise, especially for the team who was behind. Suddenly, every ball had to be trapped, every pass became critical, throw-ins became matters of strategic discussion.
And if I were to glance at my watch again, a shudder of anxiety would flow across the field.
I see people living their lives just like that. They know they are in their second half and for whatever reason they feel they are behind in the game or they act like it. They see the clock on the wall, but just like in a soccer game, the referee knows how much time is left but they don't.
There it is, my soccer game analogy. I don't what it says yet.
Joe
What a great analogy, Joe.
I've noticed the clock for a while back, though I still fear it.
Some weeks ago, a teacher of mine was talking about how it impacts people to look down the road of life and see their tombstone. It opened my eyes to mid-life crisis, to be the forty or fiftysomething teenager.
I've also noticed people around here deal with that by making jokes. Humor is a great medicine.
When I was in my twenties, the people just younger than me spoke of thirty as a place where you might as well not live.
And then the Rolling Stones turned thirty.
I remember when I was a medical assistant after my college classes, that there was an office nurse that I felt sorry for, because she was 26 and not married. The poor thing.
(Oh, if the older me could speak to the younger me....)
The secret closely held - at least I didn't get it until I got here - is that within every sixty year old is a child, a teen, a twenty year old, and so on.
Sometimes, of course, you have to dig deeper than others to find the teen or child.
You are so right Osso. If only we could do it all over again, with what we know now
The thing is they all told me,
Bob Dylan told me,
hell, Dylan Thomas told me,
Mr McMillan of San Angelo told me,
but I was twenty
and full of love and loveness
to pay them any mind.
I sought to see the daylight
the midlight to the midnight
squandering minutes like the pennies
throwing hours in the wind.
And years flew by like fenceposts
along the highway of the mind
and friends fell on the wayside
and still I cycled on
till one small morning on a hillside
I glanced out and up and on
a shadow passed me over
and in a whisper
I was gone.
I think it was Woody Allen who said:
"I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens!"
I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of how I will die ... now I don't mean to imply I think about this every waking moment, just when questions like this come up!
