Another Year Older

In a few hours I turn 49. Not a milestone but a year closer to the big five-o. I can’t help but feel that the best my sad life has to offer is behind me. There are no more mountains to climb, no new adventures to chart. Not that I ever climbed any mountains or went on any real adventure. Spectacular things—if they were going to happen—would have or should have happened a long time ago. Now seems to feel like fast tracking towards the end. I am closer to death than to youth. The possibilities have come and gone. 

I have this friend who I’ve known since university. He’s maybe a year older than me. This November he turns fifty. Over thirty years I’ve known this guy. He took the same course in university as me and we bonded through our mutual love for pop culture–mainly superhero comics and science fiction. We also ended up writing for a living. We even got hired by the same company out of university doing the same thing, which is copywriting. 

We started in the same place but we could not be any more different now. I gave up superhero comics a decade ago. He doubled down on them. While my entertainment diet now consisted of slow-paced, methodical character studies in both books and movies-slash-television, he only fed himself with Marvel movies and franchise sequels and that ilk. I detest these least-common-denominator “content.” He thinks it’s the best time to be a comic book geek with even c-tier superheroes now having their own TV series or movie. And the spectacle. By Jove! The spectacle of it all!

Beyond that, he told me that the older he gets the less he cared about how he impacts other people. Whereas, again, I’m the opposite. The older I get the more I actually cared about how I affect others. 

I realize that I have changed. I used to be one of you guys. An edgy, march-to-the-beat-of-his-own-drums dancing, statement shirt wearing, unruly wavy hair having, unkempt splattering of half a beard sporting lost boy. I didn’t care what I looked like, I walked where I pleased and talked the way I wanted to talk.

This was me ten years ago:

Such a basement dweller.

There’s still some of that, of course. But it toned down considerably. It’s not enough that I’m comfortable, it’s also important that others are comfortable around me. I am not an island. I don’t exist in a vacuum. 

I just want to have a deeper relationship with the universe than I currently have. I know that sounds pretentious but I’m not pretending. I do want to be in the moment, as most people my age probably yearn to do. But being in the moment is so hard, I overthink so much. I have another friend–this time a woman–who is also the same age as me. She told me that being in the moment doesn’t mean loving the moment you currently occupy. It just means pausing to experience life, however it’s presented to you. If life is boring, it’s okay to be bored. You don’t have to search for excitement to exit the boredom. If life is sad, be sad. Just be. It all made sense at the time she told me, which was months ago. Now, those words seemed distant and thin and utterly pointless. I’m 49 years old. My daughter is in university, having the time of her life. And there’s me. Moment after moment of… existence. Just existing.

This year has been the worst year of my life. Then again, I said that last year. Yet this year feels worse. I won’t get into why. I wrote about my year extensively here and elsewhere.

But I am, surprising no one except maybe me, still breathing. What else can I do? Another year older, closer to the grave, and still figuring out what it all means. I just know that the meaning of life can’t possibly be another watch. God, how depressing would it all be if the only thing I can look forward to is just another tchotchke that tells the time?