Fifteen years ago, being 20 years of age, the world glowed with possibility: not a child, not an adult, onward to new found freedom, a toe still in the nursery. How fast it all moved forward. Graduations, emancipations, new occupations. Bills. Real bills. Overdrafts. Relationships. Trips. And all that time, where was I really headed? Was there any particular place I was going? Each year adding on, notches on the post, a ring inside the tree, not noticing anything different, really; the same idyllic perspective as the year before.
And then: the middle. The real midlife, maybe? The: “I’m too young to start feeling older” and the “I’m too old to feel so immature.” The, “Holy shit, in 15 years I will be 50.” Fifteen years! A blip–no–a milliblip on the continuum. A half of a blink of an eye. In 15 years, let’s hope I’ve gone somewhere, maybe arrived in a place where 50 is the new 40 or even 30 or better, 20. The new 20: where childhood seems so far away, yet so deliciously close and real.
There may be flying cars or implanted screens and chips in our wrists then (hopefully not, but that would make things a hell of a lot easier and faster), or maybe there will be none of that and in 15 years we will be the same people we have been for the past 50, farting around, looking forward to our next meal, waiting for someone to squeeze us (our hand, our heart, our ass) in the dark and tell us that it’s okay. That it will be fine.
Why does it have to be this way?