The Wrinkle of Life is Furrowed Deeply

It is harsh as one transitions from one age to another. In our halcion youth, we often see others and feel sorrow for them because of their age and their infirmity. Yet, as it begins to happen to you, you rail and fight against having that pitiful expression show in the faces of those younger than yourself.

I am only 40, but I can sense those changes starting to happen to me, and it makes me feel sad and somehow a failure to have acquired these changes. A stiffness in my back I had not felt previously, a soreness in my arms, the beginnings of wrinkles under and around the eyes, a hairline that is slowly but now noticably shrinking. I can never return to what I was, nor will I ever feel that same sense of passion about life again, the feeling of life being forever without question. It has been a long while since I felt that "foreverness" of life with any regularity [perhaps 10-12 years], but on really wonderful days I would still feel and experience glimpses of that "foreverness" feeling that is so utterly freeing and beautiful. For the past year or so (once I turned 40) that feeling has seemed utterly unatainable. I know it would be pretty much a mental infirmity if I now, at my advanced age, believed in a "foreverness". Yet, to not even be able to acquire those fleeting glimpses makes me feel morose.

I fear death, I fear infirmity, I fear so much that I sometimes cannot sleep because of the overwhelmingness of it all. Yet other times I fear life, I fear being physical, and I fear so much that all I can do is sleep, in a vain hope to ignore the fears. With two young children, I fear not being there for them, I fear that I may miss protecting them at some crucial moment when my head is turned another direction, I fear that I may not teach them well so as to become smart, thinking people, I fear they may choose paths in life that may not help them or help society, and I fear I may instill in them my own fears.

It is hard to be afraid.

Konrad