It is still the best of times..... because I'm alive

I know that I spend a lot time talking about mental health, mental illness and everything around those subjects. Today, I have a flight of whimsy I hope you’ll join me on. After all, the blog is called “Why aren’t we talking about this?” which leaves us a whole list of things to discuss.

I have finally realized the truth about middle age. It is not so much about an age or number but how your mind, spirit and body are on a route at different rates of time.

In my mind, I am still 16. I am passionate about many of the same things I was in high school. I become indignant about all the hateful things in this world that seem so easy to eradicate but never seem to go away – discrimination, hate, deceitfulness, and the basic corruption of a man’s soul. These things troubled me then and trouble me today.

And in other ways, I am still 16. Young men from the ages of 22 – 28 excited me then and today they still do. Back then they were “Older men” and today they are so much younger, it almost rankles on the edge of moral and spiritual indecency. But those young bodies full of promise and ripe with plans for future still are enticing, but maybe,… just maybe, slightly different reasons. Before there was the promise of pleasure and passion. Now, when I look at them I see the promise of life to be fulfilled and yet to be lived… and yes, I still see and feel passion… I said I was middle aged, not dead!

Physically, I know I can’t attract these vessels of masculinity like I once could. And I guess a part of me is relieved about that. What if this aging body with the young mind and spirit could not keep up? Would my spirit then wither and dry up and die away? Or is it the idea of what youth was and what it always will be that keeps my blood pumping and mind jumping with ideas? Another part of me is a bit aggravated that I can’t laugh and wink my way into their hearts. If these young men are no longer available for me t practice my flirtatious ways, where will I practice them now? Older men are tired – sometimes too tired for the game of flirtation or they’re so cranky they have even forgotten what flirting is about. Flirting is that harmless act of verbal banter that reminds us, in spite of all the things in this world that tries to makes us asexual, there really is a difference between the boys and the girls and that difference is wonderful.

So middle age is about the realization that once you have a lot of things figured out and can finally appreciate them, your don’t have the time or maybe even the energy or the resources to carry on in such a manner. And that makes all the things you hadn’t given thought to before, a major degree of importance that you may have been overlooking.

Conversations with old friends are now cherished instead of discarded as being superficial and regaled as “just not being enough to keep me interested”.
Courtesies from strangers such as a “thank you” or a holding open a door can oftentimes turn a sour day into one of appreciation and thanksgiving. Good manners, that things I once touted as being “regimented brainwashing” is now perceived as a strangers way of saying to me “I see you and you matter.” So I’ve developed an appreciation for the finer but at the same time simpler things in life at this point.
So middle age, while maybe not a period of time for celebration, it’s definitely not a time for mourning either. It is just a time to be… who you are, and to appreciate who you were and to look forward to who you will be.
As Mick well knows, “Time, time, time – is on my side, yes it is.” And he’s still singing it, wearing his orthopedic shoes. Rock on.