Sixty

I'll be sixty years old this week. My grocer has already signed me up for the senior discount. It is yet another milestone. Six decades marked. I merely join the ranks as one more sexagenarian. There is a connection but with what I know not. It is only a day but seemingly connected now with an ending not a beginning. I feel at odds with my life as a whole; now, it is about the end. For a recognition of this change of perspective, I took my self down to the beach to a favorite restaurant for dinner.

Arriving early, before they opened actually, I retired to the beach and there saw a group of dolphins gathered in several small schools of three or four. I am unsure of the nomenclature, they were assembled in the shallows but gathered in small groups and so I say “schools.” Each small school, foraged in the shallows, fishing presumably, their dorsal fins bobbing as they fed. It being near low tide, the setting sun colored the miniscule waves with its dying rays.

I subsequently went to dinner; seafood is very good there but in deference to my fishing friends I deferred, opting instead for rack of lamb. It was really quite good. After my repast, I made my way home still contemplating my earlier collected thoughts. Of these, my change of perspective positioned front and center. I need little incentive to focus on the drawbacks of age. The stroke I experienced left me with unexpected frailties, chief among these my left side infirmity.

So this is it, an ending to all the beginnings. All remain undone. Undone until I manage to work things out. This is how it is, too, I suppose, beginnings without endings. Of course, I must guard against thinking about endings at the expense of all else. There is still a future, for me and for those for which I care. Without a doubt, life goes on in all its multi-layered complexity. I will discover new ways to live and new boundaries at which to foray.

Toward that end, I will continue. What more can I do? Hashing over how to live, what to eat, all the myriad decisions that constitute a modern life. It is these determinations to which I must turn my focus. After all, it is these choices that make up our formative years but later in life they allow us the measure we all need.  The vagaries of age force us to make deals with our better selves, or rather, deals with our lesser selves before our greater selves.

Enough is enough, this preoccupation with age is about time more than anything else. Time to judge our use of time. Time to re-assess our use of that time but most of all time to make better use of our time.  Time is of the essence as the old adage has it. Time is all we have. Let us turn time to our advantage. Enough with the platitudes. Let us use the instance, instead, to move the time along. Where would we be without grasping at straws?

(c) Stephen Alexander 2012