I'm not 50 years old yet. But in a couple more months, on January 31st to be exact, I will be. I don't want to be that person who bemoans this number for superficial reasons ... the graying hair, the issues with the skin, the vision, the memory, and on and on. I mean, none of that is really any fun but when it comes down to it, I'm grateful to be alive. I'm grateful that I've been able to experience all that I have up until now and that I have a few more decades to enjoy, learn, love, and contribute. (Knock on wood.) And knowing that it's so brief, I find every single moment to be so precious.
Today I listened to an interview that Marc Maron did on his WTF podcast with David Crosby (of Crosby Stills and Nash). There was one point in the interview where David said that if in fact the concept is true ... the concept that each person exists because that person is meant to do something ... then he's pretty sure that he exists because he is meant to make music. Marc agreed.
That exchange freaked me out. I mean, there's a part of me now who thinks I'm meant to be a painter. But at any other moment in my last several decades of life, I could have thought that I was meant to be a social worker ... a magazine editor ... a fundraiser ... because I have been all of that at one time or another. Which makes me I mourn for the musician that I never became. Or the poet. Or the chef. Or the professor, or the ... on and on and on. But maybe a good way to think of it right now, as I look at life's halftime that's coming my way ... is that I'm doing at this moment, what I'm meant to be doing. And I did back then what I was meant to be doing then. Who knows what I'll be doing 5 years from now? Maybe painting still. Maybe painting while singing. Or maybe painting while singing and reciting poetry ... in a cute little dress and sassy shoes. :-)
So I guess that's why every moment feels so urgent.
There was another interview I read about when Billy Graham was asked what had been the most surprising thing for him, about life. And he responded, "the brevity of it."
The brevity of it.
I resolve to not bemoan 50. I resolve to find it with an urgency to thoroughly, deeply, stylishly, and gratefully experience it.
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