Entering the Curve

Summer is fading fast, although increasingly the passing of every summer seems shorter and even less-eventful than the previous one. The dogged pace of time feels like it's a gathering trajectory along a race course and I've entered the curve of the track where the momentum accelerates. Aging itself not only delivers one a perspective of reality and time that is opaque to youth, but it abridges one's experience of time and folds it inward - a sort of warping of existence within time. I'm more or less attempting with the broadest strokes possible, to explain a relativistic equation without the math or the physics. The inescapable processes of aging are hinting louder and louder now. The stresses and self-judgment around monetary uncertainty at 43 are more acute and harder to ignore than they once were. The sense of my vulnerability and physical limitation is insinnuating itself more. I can't help but reach for another convenient metaphor - the one that involves crossing the river of youth and age and I stare back at the other side and see arrogance, vanity and ingratitude. I can still readily locate these immodest attributes in me and can't quite wrap my mind around this separation because a rebellious and youthful spirit lingers inside that refuses to accept the world on its terms no matter how much common sense dictates otherwise. It may profit the artistic endeavour but it does little for the bank account. Young middle-age it seems, borders the confusion of youth with the reconciliation of age. The confusion lies in the fact that you feel like you're 30 but your actual vintage is reflected back at you by others around - the palpable vibe of disinterest from young women passing by and the implied disdain from those whose relative younger age bespeaks a certain entitlement complex. The cruel dictates of human biology and the laws of attraction ensure who gets voted off the island and how soon. Our society markets eternal youth by instilling a disgust and loathing at the alternative, and ageism is the last frontier where political correctness hasn't yet imposed its inquisition-like mandate. It is generally accepted behaviour for the young to manifest their obligatory resentment of the old. The contempt shown towards a person's maturity in years has become the clicheed norm in our youth obsessed culture and it is hardly met with the blink of an eye. So much of this is premised on an inarticulate anger from the children of the self-absorbed boomer generation. Borrowing from the pseudo-tenets of social darwinism, popular culture reflexively declares that anyone who's 22 is past their prime. As if one's personal development ends at the age when they are most likely to become more independent in their thinking and expand beyond the superficial loyalties to music and fashion that define adolescence. This is not a grown up culture because the commodified illusion is what slicks the gears of the economy. The selective, focus-group-tested fetishization of lifestyle and objects of status must not relent and the dedicated and ingenious hucksters and pimps of the American dream examine every margin of every negligible trend in prolonged strategy sessions to devise a new angle on an old practice. They are tasked with the conundrum of how to sell blue jeans in a fresher and bolder way that will compete for the four-point-one-second attention-span of the iPod and texting immersed "youth demographic." The branding of youth is sold like an exclusive membership to a gym or nightclub reserved for flawless specimens freshly emerged from the design laboratories of antiseptic childhood - a privileged club of looks and airs. The cult of youth has dominated our shallow cultural landscape for the last 30 years, and it's no wonder that puerile self-indulgence rules the era. The worship of youth guides the collective mythos and when it's taken away we hold fiercely to it because age is not allotted dignity or respect in the west than it is in other cultures where to live past a certain age up until recent times, was indicative of beating the genetic or environmental odds and therefore a worthy accomplishment in itself.
What perhaps brings me closer to understanding the shift between youth and age is the experience of loss and the closing in of mortality that one gains a more sober appreciation of when confronted with its unavoidable truth. People around you die, parents die, the stable adult figures in your young past who seemed so robust and ageless are shrunken and humbled before the ravages of age and become frail wards of middle-aged children. The inevitable pulse weakens and the bony clutches of mortality are mirrored back at us in the sickness and the passing of those around us. I lost a friend this summer to cancer. A cancer that was so unexpected and so cruel that it didn't give him time to linger around the exit. I found out about his passing after the months of not having communicated with him yet having the intention of wanting to call him up. The shock of this friend -- of similar age and sensibility -- being ripped from this world so mercilessly and unjustly, like a page out of a book, taught me more about the random and tenuous nature of existence. My own father's passing by comparison, while heavy and sad, at least allowed us time to grieve beforehand but my friend's life was snuffed out so suddenly and with so much yet to accomplish that it further attenuates my belief in the existence of a benevolent divine presence. It did serve to remind me of what a precious gift life is, despite being annoyed by the idiocy, hypocrisy and misguided priorities of the world around me. The "life is short" mantra as hackneyed as it sounds, is hackneyed because it's been overused, it's been overused because it's true. Life is really a short race to the finish and it's best to get on with it.