It is commonplace to reflect on one's life on one's birthday; nevertheless I feel that today is a milestone that does bear commentary: every few years or so, one era gives way to another. I feel that this year marks one of those occasions. (First of all, as I write this I am sitting in a taqueria finishing a prodigiously large stein of Dos Equis, having arrived here after a ride around the lake and through town on the Nighthawk. This is the first time I've been here, but this "authentic" taq has supplanted in my mind the other two Mexican restaurants in town that I've visited. The salsa is amazing.)
I feel that this is the first year of my adult life. My twenty-second birthday was the first time I felt old—I specifically remember feeling as if I were going through a mid-life crisis, and reading Harrison's three novellas under the title Legends of the Fall, I never related more to the middle-aged protagonists—but it took the next four or so years to get through the mid-twenties miasma and into the trajectory that is shaping my future life and career. I began my doctoral program two months ago. I have left much that was important to my youth and young adulthood behind. I feel, as I meditate on the new year today, that I have broken with the previous decade and have entered into the one that will bring me to my thirty-seventh year—an age that is undeniably not "young." I am at peace with the fact that I will begin aging soon (more than I already have!); neither Meghan nor I will look the same in ten years as we do now. I feel more akin to my imagined seventy-year-old self than I do to my remembered twenty-year-old self.
I have finally entered into that vocation (cf. vocatio) which will define the pursuits of my public life. I see now how easy it is to give over all one's time to one's passion. Until now, I have worked at jobs that were always an imposition on life. I was never (or rarely) fully engaged or tempted to put in extra hours in the pursuit of excellence. My passions were elsewhere. Now, I see how I could gladly give over my evenings and weekends to my "work." And so it becomes increasingly clear that my desire to invest in my family will take continual conscious decisions.
At any rate. Bring on forty! I'm ready... meanwhile, I intend to live the next thirteen years with my eyes and my heart open. (And... Jos: you'll be sixteen! We'll find you a sweet old Bimmer.)
Oh... and name that allusion.
I know what you mean. Bilbo.
ReplyDeleteMatt