The anguish of fading away…
Ancient. Well into the final months of his life, he approached me, all tubes and oxygen tanks, alone he walked, beneath the burden of his portable life-support system.
He glanced at me, young, before him. Images of his own youth flashed across the inside of his mind, the only part of him still feeling young, the only part that hadn’t visibly aged, interior self. My youth was a time-travel mirror-image in his eyes. Nostalgia hurts the old.
Visions of cherished memories, late-summer romances in near-forgotten years, the dreams, the hope life holds for the young, the hope life once held for him, faded now, vanquished, leaving the void only regret can ever fill, all brought back by our chance meeting, two strangers facing two human truths.
He stopped before me. Looked at me, beyond me.
”Ahh, if only I had your youth…”
I could feel his feeling of fleshly imprisonment, empathy, feeling his feeling of frustration at being trapped in his failing body, trapped with his young mind yearning for a body to match it, angry and powerless. Why does the body grow old just as the mind begins to learn to be young?
He saw a former self in me as I saw a future self in him. It scared us both, kept the rapid clock of sad age ticking.
Assert your own existence…
I’m surrounded by printed and digitally broadcast information. Archives and reruns, redundant and opiate, drawing me in. Stacks of books with pleasing colors on their covers, fancy fonts, compelling blurbs…all full of other peoples’ ideas.
Thoughts are more easily pondered than conveyed. You’ve got to push to communicate. Work and wine make you tired. Other human beings demand attention and validation.
Television and music distract us from our calling. Pondering the expressed thoughts of others is almost as fulfilling as expressing thoughts yourself. It certainly requires less work.
Don’t give in. You need to take the stage…command the stage…crowd the stage…your performance is all you have. Make it count. Make it meaningful. Assert your own existence.
