This topic is also being covered by Leslie Farnsworth on her blog. You can find this and other insightful posts here: https://observingleslie.com/
Waking up in the dark as always and dangling my feet over the side of the bed, curling and uncurling my toes to wake up my feet before I stand up. My feet find it difficult to just hop up and go after sleeping. Before it was just on cold winter mornings but nowadays it seems to happen more and more. Walking unsteadily to my desktop to write this.
I’ve had a few blog ideas kicking round my head for the past couple of months. One idea was my thoughts about turning 49, another about how you only realize how healthy you were when you start losing your health and of course this, what’s changed about me in the decade of the 2010’s.
Taken one by one I doubt I would have enough material for a blog post and certainly not an interesting one. Taken together? Let’s see how it goes.
The nice thing about being born in 1970 is that you can pretty easily calculate your age. It’s 1986? Then you’re 16. 2003? 33. 2011? You’re obviously 41. Of course, I screwed that up by being a December baby so for most of the year I get to subtract 1 from the total like some 1971 baby.
I started the decade in the last year of my 30’s. By some metrics I was at the zenith of my life. I already owned a home, a car, and had money in the bank. My career had for the moment sorted itself out and I was assiduously applying myself to discovering and perfecting sales methods that I would successfully use for years to come.
More importantly, at least to me, I knew what lay ahead of me for the next few years. I had willingly committed myself to the path of taking care of my parents and I understood quite well what this would entail and that I would have to put some personal dreams and projects on hold for their sake.
But at least I knew that there was a plan. I just had to keep working and keep taking care of them and things would work out.
Back then I also had the feeling that things in the world would generally work out for the better rather than the worse. America had just narrowly avoided a worldwide depression, we had our first black president, things looked to be winding down in Iraq, everyone could now carry a pocket computer on their phone.
Sure there were still plenty of bad things going on in the world but little by little I felt that things would get better and that if not sooner then later we would all inherit that prosperous technological future that the sci-fi authors always went on about.
Physically I wasn’t in the best of shapes, but I had stopped smoking and begun taking short walks so maybe it would be possible that even I would improve slowly but surely.
Speaking about the physical I need to move a bit. Back in my 20s and 30s I could fold my leg under me while sitting and stay in that position for hours in front of the computer. Now not so much. Things, I’m not sure that they’re joints, but things in my legs sometimes pop and creak when I walk.
My eyesight has declined, particularly in the last decade. My hair though I never really cared about it is becoming more and more a suggestion rather than a fact and for someone that was once terrified of root canals I’ve now had 4 of them.
And to think I used to chew ice when I was a kid. It amazes me the amount of abuse that my body could take and never complain. To think that my pancreas could handle 4 or sometimes even 5 cola drinks a day and never utter a word in protest…
We never think about all that we have in this life and just think about the things that we don’t. But when some tiny but vital part of your body stops working or malfunctions then you get to thinking about all the abuse you put your body through or all the wasted opportunities that you squandered in your youth.
watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools
Worn-out tools. I used to love that poem. It gave me animus, intention, the will to keep building and rebuilding no matter what happened but what happens when you’re the worn-out tool?
I suppose something that I have gained in the last 10 years has been more empathy and appreciation for the circumstances and situation of others. When you want to accomplish or do something and due to your own physical condition or circumstance in life you can’t do it. You feel not just the frustration of not doing it but a disappointment in yourself.
I’ve watched someone that I cared about physically and then mentally deteriorate right in front of my eyes and was unable to arrest that descent in any meaningful way. Watched his mind struggle to speak the words that he wanted to but finally give up in frustration because he just couldn’t remember the correct word.
Of course, I’m nowhere near that but it gives you pause to think that this could happen to someone you knew as totally healthy and capable. It also reminds that me that just because something is easy for me that it’s not necessarily the same for others.
And empathy I notice has been on the decline in the last 10 years. Perhaps that’s at the root of what’s happened to the world in the latter half of the last decade. People have stopped caring. About each other or about the world in general. It’s no longer just about surviving but at prospering at someone else’s expense. It seems as if not just the system is breaking down but the underlying principles that are the basis of the system no longer apply. The thought frightens me as that vision of that prosperous future seems less and less sure with every new calamity.
Sometimes I just have to shut off the news and social media. Connecting the world one user to another seemed to be such a good idea. What could possibly go wrong when people talk directly to one another? Such beautiful naivete. Wish we could go back.
And I do go back, in my mind at least. I close my eyes and think of some of the happier moments in the last ten years. Remembering experiences, vacations, friends and I tell myself “you were happy once and you will be happy again.” And that has to tide me over till my next happy moment occurs.
Interregnums are such uncertain times.
Unlike the last decade the next decade greets me with uncertainty at all levels. Nothing calls to me or presents itself as my new path. Perhaps nothing will. For someone living with a plan or an idea of where he was going it’s difficult to adapt specially when the mind isn’t as nimble as it once was.
All I can do is look back when I’m 59 and see how I did.
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