Originally published by Drunken Pen Writing on August 24th, 2022.
When giving advice about life, an old man tells a young man, “It goes fast.” The young man doesn’t believe him. He can’t.
I think that’s the cruelest joke life plays on us. We don’t appreciate our existence until it’s nearing its end. It’s not that we don’t understand aging when we’re young; we can conceptualize it; we can see it all around us. But to get old, to feel as if time is speeding up and sending us hurtling toward oblivion, that’s something we must experience for ourselves to truly comprehend its significance. Like love, sex, or having a child, aging is a deeply personal affair—or depending on how it transpires, an ordeal—and no words, anecdotes, or secondhand accounts can really encapsulate what it means to age.
Death is inevitable. It’s something all people before us have done and all people in the future will do. If we prefer, we can prepare ourselves for it. We can imagine it and we can accept what’s to come. But aging is different. Aging doesn’t necessarily occur the same for me as it might for you. You might embrace it and age gracefully. You might age terribly. You might not live long enough to age at all. Unlike death, there are few hard-line rules to aging. Death is inevitable, but aging is not.
I will turn 36 in November. Hardly old. But even though it’s still August as I write this, I know in the blink of an eye it’ll be my birthday and I’ll be one year older. In another blink, I’ll be 40. Hell, I might wake up tomorrow and realize I’m 50.
It goes fast.
As I said, I’m not old. Not yet. But my body is showing signs of aging: I unconsciously grunt sometimes when I stand up, I hurt more after workouts, and I go to bed earlier than I used to because I’m genuinely tired more often. The signs are there and I accept them. The physical changes aren’t what bothers me.
Lately, nostalgia has been seeping in like a saccharine gas. I often catch myself reminiscing on times long gone; daydreaming of what my life once was. This isn’t a conscious effort on my part. And it’s not like I’m dreaming of better times when life was sweet and the world seemed new. For the most part, I like my life now. Much more than I did 10+ years ago.
So why the nostalgia? Why do I often feel like I’m missing something? The answer is simple. I am missing something. What I’m missing is time.
I wasn’t being hyperbolic when I said my years are passing in a blink of an eye. It really feels as if time keeps speeding up. It used to be I’d say, “Man, this week went by fast.” At some point, it switched to, “Man, summer went by fast.” Now, it’s, “Man, this year went by fast.” I fear before I know it, it’ll be, “Man, this decade went by fast.” And for any younger people reading this who think that’s a bit of a stretch, at 36 I’ll be closer to 50 than to 20. Counting kindergarten, I’ll be out of school longer than I was in it.
Damn.
So how do you manage this passing of time? How do you come to terms with the fact things won’t slow down and you’re closer to the end than the beginning? Unfortunately, I don’t know. I wish I did.
I do know how to block out the nostalgia though. Or at least keep from succumbing to its sweet, life-stunting embrace. You have to find a purpose in your life. You have to have a reason to keep waking up.
I’m sure people with children understand this better than most. Well, people who actually care about their children and believe their purpose in life is to see their children succeed. Of course, nostalgia probably hits parents extra hard; I know I get hit with a severe dose of melancholy when I look at my 8-year-old dog and think back on when he was a cute little puppy. I can’t imagine what it would be like to see your little baby getting their driver’s license or graduating high school or getting married. What I’m saying is, you’ll never be free from nostalgia completely. But if you have a sense of purpose, more often than not you’re looking forward instead of backward.
I think we all sometimes wish to take a deep breath in and live in the moment. No worries about tomorrow or obsessing over the mistakes of yesterday. But even when you stop, when you take a moment to just be, time keeps on moving forward. It keeps making fools of us all, doesn’t it?
I’d like to impart some words of wisdom; to say something profound to make you feel better about getting older. Or at the very least, give you something you could take away from this piece that might make things feel alright. But there’s really only one truth I can give you. One bit of advice that you must decipher on your own and adjust your life accordingly. I bet you already know what that advice is, don’t you?
It goes fast.
Caleb James K. 