By the time I finish writing this, it will officially be my fiftieth birthday. I got a card from my aunt. And so I know there is a lot more for me to do.
I took a longer than usual look in the mirror this morning on the last day of my 40s and I recognize that I have accomplished something in my life. That thing, which is elusive and becomes more solid only as I reflect and write it down, has something to do with a kind of impatience with the present.
When I was 21 and reading Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, a piece of doggerel sprang to life when I thought about my father. Live for tomorrow, today we are dead, a father to his young son once said. The idea became something of a principle and I believed in the future as much as any young man grown up on Heinlein, Bradbury and Asimov could. I saw a future, but not this one. Still, it was real to me, and foreign to the world. I never realized how much I had to make it happen as an exercise of will. I wasn't raised to think of myself in that way.
I used to believe that integrity was its own reward. I still do, but mostly because I have it and have decided to love that about myself. But a part of me knows better. The part of me that is fearless when not sober. That part of me that is defiant and stubborn and disrespectful. I forgot the word they used to beat it out of me in elementary school, back when I was reading third grade books at the age of five. I didn't ask to be a smartass, I just was and thought everybody wanted to be smart. Smart for me just means spending more time thinking than playing around. Anyone who listens to me speak knows that my brain doesn't work very swiftly, it just knows dark alley shortcuts that most people are afraid to walk down. Isolation is what you get for being a smartass. If you keep it up, you might forget how ordinary people think.
Nobody ever convinced me that I could do as much as I have done. I thought I would have to be a rebel just to get respect. I thought I would work twice as hard and get half as far. I thought nobody would or could ever understand what I've been through. It turns out that those were the very myths that held me back, and for what is still more than half my life I didn't care what people thought and didn't think I could ever convince people anything, except with science maybe. I was impatient to get on with the future.
I remember that I never did my homework. I just wanted to know. I didn't want to write a whole bunch on stuff down just to prove I knew. Ask me the question and I'll answer. See? I know. Homework is a waste of time. I could be knowing more. I didn't study, I just needed somebody who actually knew what the hell they were talking about to explain it to me. I get it. I always get it. What I don't get, and never got, is how to keep track of the collective irrationality of what people actually desire. I call it irrationality because I've got a lot of nerve.
So that is where I am today. I've done most of the doing people ever expected me to do. I've been looking to jump ahead and set up a toll plaza on the road everybody is going to figure out they must travel in order to progress. But I can't reckon that so well. As you get older and more 'set in your ways' you lose the ability to see things from other people's point of view. It doesn't mean that you're unsympathetic, but that it's mentally difficult not to take those dark alley shortcuts that your experience brings. You have to guess and imagine what you would think like if you didn't know what you know.
For that, I just look at my kids.
So I hope that what I do for them is what the world needs. Other than that I have to read books, and then I hit the wall. There's only so much you can know. A human being becomes something else out of balance by knowing too much. You then need to control too much. Nobody's jokes are funny and you only laugh at the truly perverse.
What I want is to live in truth, to never have to lie to myself or anyone else. I want to be wise and honorable. That means I have to figure out a way to be gracious in the presence of people who don't know what I know. It means letting other people say what they will say and do what they will do. It means avoiding their implosions and explosions. Maybe I live like an old farmer, because I'm not particularly addicted to power and I haven't schemed enough to get me some.
When I had my first child, somehow I intuitively knew that I would have to stop being a bohemian social critic. I knew there was a class of books that I had to put down and a new set I needed to start reading. I now have a similar sense that I have to watch my health, prepare for disaster, and say words over the dead. I will work another 15 years, I figure. I will downsize my life. I will render myself into certain perfections of character and behavior.
I am living in that unimaginable future and I live in the moment, never expecting much more than what is. I consider myself slightly paranoic, preparing to keep a cool head and steady hand in the face of disaster. I take comfort in small blessings knowing that things fall apart.
Today I was surprised. Somehow the bank made an error and deposited 20x my paycheck in my account. I'm not going to fly to Brazil, but figure out how to correct the mistake. I am becoming less impatient with the ways of the world. Perhaps life itself embodies justice.
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