Now begins the true middle age, the time period when I thicken and huff and puff climbing stairs and feel the creep of time on my very bones, the time when I rail against the loss of virility, and the time when I come to accept my own inevitable exit from existence.
And so I seek to find my comfort, my purpose, and my motivation in this new period where the old attitudes no longer fit, kind of like my clothes.
Shall I proceed to purchase a fast car or find a fetus girlfriend to "prove" my continued relevance in a youthful frame of mind, a kind of existential masturbation beneath people of my age but all too often fallen into.
Time was when I thought of my job as not self-defining; I'd be aghast at the mere thought of my going corporate, middle class, GENERIC. I wanted to be the unique one, the one who bucked all trends and led the world to new heights -- a legend in my own time, a Hemingway wrapped in a Roosevelt, wrapped in a Ghandi. Ahhh, the dreams of youth. . .
And so I arrive at my reality, perhaps a tad prior to my proper timing: Middle Age.
Yeah, I'm too young to be thinking this way, but I have always seen myself as older than my years. So it is not entirely inconceivable that I am thinking towards retirement, comfort, quiet contemplation, alienation from the major currents of history, favoring instead the softer pools of passed-by eddies leading nowhere --they can have their progress, dammit!
And what of purpose? Direction? Meaning? These questions plagued me for many years, but ever decreasingly.
This type of thinking has fallen away from me ever more with time, becoming irrelevant. In the end, there can be no answer to this that satisfies. Not to mention that it is a waste of time.
I am past the point of trying to recapture lost youth, although I do not discount the likelihood that these motivations will surface from time to time --such is the nature of aging, no more unusual than pimples on a teenager's face.
If anything, I am growing comfortable with my demise. Mind you, I do not wish to see it happen any time soon!
I have more I want to see and do. I can learn so much more, do so much more, grow in ways I cannot imagine. And that is the promise of the future.
Used to be that I wondered and despaired in the question: "Now what?" But I have come to see this question as an enticement.
What is over that next hill?
The purpose now is not in fabricating a purpose, a list of goals to be accomplished against all odds. I've done this already.
Nor is it to produce offspring. I have had to come to peace with this.
That wasn't very difficult.
No, now is to look ahead and release myself from past concerns the way a teen releases the toys of childhood.
I am a man.
No bravura in that statement. Just experience.
And I fully realize the limited scope of my own experience and abilities. Far from being the star of the movie, I am relegated to the role of background scenery. I'm not even an extra at this point. I realize now that my role has changed, and I am glad.
Perhaps I will take up painting?
I do not know what I will do or become, but I am standing here and looking ahead, not behind.
The world is new, and I see it now for what it is: Always new.

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