“Such men believe in luck, they watch for signs, and they conduct private rituals that structure their despair and mark their waiting. They are relatively easy to recognize but hard to know, especially during the years when a man is most dangerous to himself, which begins at about age thirty-five, when he starts to tally his losses as well as his wins, and ends at about fifty, when, if he has not destroyed himself, he has learned that the force of time is better caught softly, and in small pieces. Between those points, however, he’d better watch out, better guard against the dangerous journey that beckons to him -the siege, the quest, the grandiosity, the dream.” ~ Colin Harrison
Today I turn 47 years old, and, according to the magnificent writer whose work I just quoted, I have about three more years of danger in which I will do my best not to destroy myself. That’s not always easy, especially when there are decades of self-destructive tendencies in the not-so-recent past. Perhaps that’s why, aside from the gift-getting aspect, I’ve always been rather ambivalent when it comes to birthdays, and why I’d rather celebrate myself 364 days of the year instead of just this one. There, in a 47-year-old nutsack, is the conundrum of my essence. The life that is still within me to be spread, or the life that will unfurl whether I spread or not. These words are as deadly as they are laughable, and that’s another thing about birthdays that has always bothered me – I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Marking time has too often been my modus operandi – imparting meaning and impetus to every moment, lending shading and nuance to the ticking of the clock, and then believing that certain hours, certain days, and certain phases of heavenly bodies have any such bearing on how we live our lives. It’s a way of putting method to our madness, of trying to organize and make sense of a world that isn’t designed to make sense. Where is God in a world like this? How would God let all of this happen? Another reason I’ve not wholly embraced the birthday thing: too many philosophical questions come up when we confront another year of our lives, whether ahead or behind us, and it’s always one or both of the two.
The physical vessel in which I navigate the next half of my life has begun to show its wear, the corporeal pressing its early and physical triumph over the ethereal. That’s the race we’re all in, whether we want to compete or not – the battle of the body versus the spirit – and there comes a point when it’s no longer plausible to pick both sides. Someday, and no one knows what day it will be, the body will demand your undivided attention, and with it will go the mind. Whether any spirit survives beyond that point is the eternal question, and one which most of us cling stubbornly to in the mere hope of… well, hope.
And so it is that on this day, the day I turn irrevocably into a 47-year-old man, I ponder again what it all means, what little I have learned, what loads I have lost or let down, what love I have given and earned, and what might happen in the year to come. I ponder the shell that surrounds me, and all of the hollow and full places within. I sit in stillness, in silence, and try to feel the gratitude I should feel for everything – for everyone that is still in my life, for escaping from so many things that might have destroyed me had they hit on just a slightly different day, in the slightest different way. There is much for which to be grateful, and being here, being present, is but the beginning.
“There was something vulnerable and temporary about the moment, and I was attentive to it, for a man, let us agree, is a kind of shelled animal. There is the hardened surface he presents to the world, the face and the words and the behavior, but very often these do not correlate very well with the being inside the shell. By hardened I mean coherent, deflective of attack, and capable of being recognized by others; I don’t mean unchangeable – quite the opposite, in fact. But the shell is always there, growing outward from within, flaking and breaking away, and the quivering wet stuff inside remains largely hidden. Appearances are not deceiving so much as incomplete. What you see is what you get, but what you don’t see is also what you get.” ~ Colin Harrison
