It’s my birthday, I’ll muse if I want to.
I think it’s just in the past few years
…that I began to understand how life passes us by. We’re young, and time seems like a theoretical thing. We miss a Halloween, no big deal, there’ll be one next year, and dozens after that. We miss a party, no big deal, we miss a concert, an adventure, whatever. Time seems generous.
And then, when we’re young, old people seem like a breed apart–they seem like old people. It’s only later, now, that we begin to see that old people are young people who’ve lived many years, and that those years are made up of events and cool summer evenings and work and relationships and bike rides, just as our days are.
It’s only recently that I see, that I feel, no longer theoretically, that I am who I was, a young man, a boy. And that who I am is who I will be, an old man (if I am lucky enough not to get hit and killed by a texting driver before my time).
It’s hard to talk about this stuff, because it’s obvious, and profound, and yet it’s silly. And yet–this is the part of life where we realize we are a part of the unfolding generations of not only human history but sentient existence, of interdependence, of ordinary magic, and that we are a part of this universe, not a starring story within it. And that is how death must feel, I imagine–a complete subsuming into the river that is existence, time, history, life and death.
But for now I’ll just say what every other wising-up idiot has ever said: that every day matters and that life is not short, but it only happens once, and that while we’re here it’s best to serve others and live kindly and confront conflict with learning and healing not further warfare.
I turn 45 tomorrow, an impossibly old age for a young man—I’m not sure how I got here.
But I feel good and as if I’m living and serving fully, though not helping near enough–and that makes me sad, and hopeless, as if the inspiration I share with others from the deep well of Dharma that I have been given is being used as mere confectionary powered sugar, instead of healing salve.
May the next turn around the sun be a time of service that actually helps this earth, all sentient beings, instead of more “trying.”
May I be lucky enough to fall in love, again, and learn further, and perhaps get to raise a family. I want that, but I come up short.
May I continue to get to travel, still so new at it, after so many years of being so broke and so busy–now I have enough money and time to do so, and grow up and learn and celebrate out of it.
May Elephant not only continue to survive the Google/Youtube/Facebook/Instagram/Amazon/Audible monopolizing blackhole, in which most other independent media has died, but flower in the Ecosystem we’ve been trying and now succeeding in building for 9 years, now—may we emerge to billions of readers and writers a month, so that we may actually fully help this wonderful, heartbreaking, fragile world we’re lucky enough to enjoy one life upon.
If you’d like to give me a birthday present, for free, please help Elephant get there—to that place where we can be of service to billions—the most effective, free way to do so is to do this one thing. Get our daily newsletter, and read the articles in it, or one of ’em, and leave a comment, and share something, or heart it, and help an author win and get paid by Elephant.
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