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From: chris@pyuxc.UUCP (R. Hollenbeck)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: Pushing 40: On Getting Older (LONG)
Message-ID: <666@pyuxc.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 17:12:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxc.666
Posted: Mon Aug 26 17:12:41 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Aug-85 20:44:54 EDT
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>Well, to get another topic
>rolling in this group that might involve some of us Old Farts in
>topics of relevance to us at this stage in our lives, I'm posting the
>following meditation on what life at 38 means to me. Note please that
>I'm reporting my own thoughts and making no claims that this is the
>way things should be or that things are this way for everyone
>approaching middle age. Oh, yes, you youngsters out there feel free to
>chime in if you want to, too. :-)
>
>                           -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly

I'm glad you brought this up.  I too sometimes find it hard to relate
to some of the topics in this group because of my age vs. the
apparent younger age of most of those posting.
I enjoyed reading your "meditation on ... life at 38."
If I may, I'd like to share my thoughts.

Disclaimers/caveats:

1. Some of my thoughts on "middle age" differ from yours, but
this should not be misconstrued as "disagreeing" with your
views or questioning them.  (How could anyone disagree with
someone's impression of their own life?)

2. I'm 34, older than many on the net, a few years younger than
you.  This may or may not account for some differences in my feelings.
(Guess I'll know in 4 years.) 

3. I guess I was a bit of a late bloomer, which may account for
my preferring 34 to 20.

That said, here goes:

I find that life at 34 is considerably better than life at 24, or 20,
or most any other age I've been.  I have all the freedom I ever
wanted and couldn't have when I was younger, plus a bit of money
to enjoy it with.  I find I'm more secure emotionally/psychically,
more active socially, and just generally happier.  

I don't find that I've slowed down much.  I still go out until
4 in the morning on weekends (not on weekdays, though;  then again,
I wasn't much good at staying up until 4 and going to work
the next day when I was 20 either).

I still have a part-time rock & roll band, and still play the
same music I loved when I was 14 (old Rolling Stones,
Beatles, Yardbirds, etc.).  I'm just better at it now
than I was then.  The biggest difference is that fewer people
(young people) know that music now, so, while it's foreign
to them at first (or else it's vaguely familiar, because
their "older brother/sister had that album"), I have
the pleasure of turning many of them on to it for the first time.
(I confess, though, that I have even less patience with lugging
amplifiers around at 4 a.m. than I did when I was younger.)

In fact, the only time I'm really aware of being older is when 
I go to bars and clubs, and notice that most of the people around
me have just reached legal drinking age.  Or when I date someone
in their early 20s and find myself an unofficial historian of
the 60s (yes, there are people who don't know McCartney
had a group before Wings).
 
You say "you're facing the second half of your life; the limitless
possibilities you saw at 20 are restricted now."
In my case, just the opposite is true; life seemed much more difficult
at 20 than it does now. (While the idea of becoming a rock & roll star
[my life-long dream] at 34 seems strange to me, it nonetheless seems
more possible than it did at 20.  If there's any difference in my
attitude now, it's that now it won't devastate me if it never happens;
at 20 I was sure I'd die miserable if I wasn't Mick Jagger.)

I find that my politics are even more radical than they were
at 20.  My religion has changed only in that I've converted
from devout atheism to agnosticism.  I find that I still
have no desire to "grow up," i.e., to have a wife, kids,
mortgage, well-trimmed front lawn, etc.  I find
that friends who have opted for those things bore me now;
I still love them, but I can't spend much time with them
anymore, because I can't hack a discussion of mortgage rates.
(I also thought the people in "The Big Chill" were boring,
but then, I don't think I would have chosen those people as
friends in college either.)

On the topic of love (why else does anyone read this group),
you say "Your first love is 25 years behind you. In the interim, you've done it
all, experienced unexpected sex, everyday sex, obsessive
relationships, detached relationships, periods in which relationships
were the farthest thing from your mind. Love that would never end:
love, love, oh careless love. And what you've come to is this: you
like and respect yourself as much as anyone you've met in this life,
and you're as pleased spending time with yourself as with your closest
friends. Your life is centered and relatively calm. It's a good life."
You're right, it is a good life.
True, with that
first love "25 years [or whatever] behind you" 
the initial rush with each new love is not as intense as it was
that first time, nor is each successive love necessarily as
intense as the previous one. (Sometimes it is, sometimes
it's not.)  But that loss is balanced
by the security of knowing what mistakes you've made in the
past and how to avoid them, 
of knowing how to enhance a relationship, of having some
idea of what you want in life, so you don't waste time
doing what you don't want to do, and, for me at least,
the knowledge that the heart is capable of far more love,
and of loving more people, than we're all taught when we're
young.  Losing the "everyone has one true love"
illusion was for me a blessing; far better to recognize
that you can love many equally deeply, and be comfortable
with that knowledge. 
And far better to know that you can
live without love if necessary, and to know as well
that it will not
in fact be necessary to live without love forever.
Old loves will always be replaced eventually by new
if you give them a chance.

Thanks again for your posting,
Bill. I enjoyed reading it,
and I enjoyed replying/adding to it, even though I'm sure we're both in
for a bit of "what are these old farts doing
clogging up the net with their ramblings?"
Oh well, you know what they say about people who
can't take a joke.