Sunday, April 21, 2013

Amateur philosophising on the occasion of my 55th trip around the sun



I've never been that good at looking into the future. The next couple of weeks are somewhat clear to me, but after that it's completely fuzzy. I'm not talking about goals. We can all pack some imaginative details around our goals so that they become palpable, allowing us to daydream about this or that vacation or career change. But that's not seeing the future. Sometimes, when I look at my reflection and find an extra set of lines around my eyes, or see the way the skin under my chin is starting to droop, I think I can see it, but that's not the future either. That's the present. Still the mirror seems like a good place to start. Where else could you expect to find it?

Today is my birthday. This is my fifty-fifth year of being a distinct, conscious, living and breathing person. A fact that is somehow still unimaginable, no matter how I try. I don't know what it means to be 55, but it seems like it ought to mean something. So far, all of the big emblematic birthdays: 30, 40, 50, have all turned out to be false alarms. I've dreaded each of them in turn, because like all of us, I was taught to; supposing each of those ages were milestones on a march into inevitable irrelevance. But like Y2K, they are just days you look back on and feel silly for fussing over, if anything. 

I may be wandering into pure B.S. here, but for the possible benefit of the one or two young people still indulging me, I will offer the only thing I have in the way of insight about aging. It's nothing close to wisdom, just a sort of spoiler alert. It is this: The person you are right now is the same person who will wake up in a 55 year old body someday (hopefully), and you will not be prepared for it, despite your best efforts. Sure, you'll adjust to your bad knees, or the extra 15 pounds, or the increased frequency of getting up to pee at night. And by sheer discipline, you may even decide that you "accept" the effects of aging. Good for you. Nonetheless, one day you will wake up and realize you are finally middle-aged, and this realization will feel sudden, even if you've seen it coming. It may also leave you feeling insulted, because you have never stopped thinking of yourself as being vital, and in-the-moment, and because the core self is entirely unallied with any age or point in time.

When I was three years old my mom caught me melting Crayola crayons onto a register grate on our kitchen floor. It turned out that was a bad thing, but in the moments before I was made aware of that, I experienced the pure joy of exploration. I can still feel the amazement of watching the crayons slowly sagging across the grate then dripping down into the blackness. One by one I melted them onto the register until they were gone, and the smell of wax alerted my mom to the fact that I'd been left alone too long. In fundamental ways, I'm still melting crayons on a register.

Each of us crafts a sense of self from the sum of all our experiences. I am still that curious toddler and also the insecure 12-year old who can't yet talk to a girl AND also the know-it-all 25-year old who can't stop talking, plus whoever else I've been since then. We don't progress through life stages as much as we accumulate them, and each stage in turn informs our sense of self. But the thing that is fundamentally "you" - your core self - transcends age and experience. It sits at the root level of your personality and simply observes, like an unblinking eye. Everything we decide to do, consciously or unconsciously, is in reaction to those core observations. Our habits and passions, our coping strategies, creative proclivities, even our humor proceeds from that inner observer, the true self.

The first time I realized there was a more fundamental sort of self that sat back further in the depths of my own psyche than the conscious mind, was when I was recovering from amnesia several years ago. I had been hit by a speeding drunk driver while riding my bicycle in Chicago. I was briefly hospitalized with a concussion and amnesia. Hospital staff would have let me go home sooner, but they needed to release me into someone's custody who could keep an eye on me for a couple of days. The trouble was, I couldn't remember the names or phone numbers of any of my friends or family, and because I didn't yet have a mobile phone, none of that was at my fingertips. Eventually I was able to think of a friend to come claim me. When I was given the release form to check out of the hospital, I was terrified to realize I had no idea what my signature should look like. Memory recovery was sporadic over the next couple of weeks. One day I panicked to discover I was riding a CTA bus with no idea where I was going or even what street I was on. I jumped off at the next stop and stood there staring at the street sign trying to make it mean something. Slowly the world came into focus and I remembered where I had been headed, and why. I wrote it down on a scrap of paper: "going to work," then waited for the next bus. It was a depressing time. Each blank spot came as a terrifying chasm of loss, no matter how trivial the missing memory would otherwise have been. The effect was brief but overwhelming. Each time it happened I was aware that it was happening, which meant some core aspect of my self was doing critical assessment and seeking to re-integrate, even if I couldn't have told you my name. That's the core self I'm talking about. The Me that's in charge of being Me. And its more than a little bemused by this whole aging business. I don't expect that will change any time soon, but since I'm in good health overall, then there's no rush to accept it. Not yet at least. It's also comforting to know about that unblinking eye at the center of me, who could care less about age, and whose job it is to simply watch, and discover, and to be amazed.