Aging Is Just All Right

"Do you know why women look away when you pass them on the street?"

"Why?"

"Because they're dazzled.  Why wouldn't they fall for you?  Don't you know how extraordinary you are?  Look at yourself, there's so much to see.  The older we get, the more precious we are.  That's what you've missed, you haven't understood that."

"Hadn't thought of it like that, no."

"Think of it that way.  It's the right way, the only way."

─An older man talking to a much older man, from the film, Man on the Train.

One Question

There are many answers.  Some insist there’s just one, for example:  Jesus Christ is the answer.

There are countless questions, but I long ago decided there’s just one:  Why?

An Insight into Inaction

Beginnings

Today is a new beginning.  

Our yesterdays were new beginnings.  Tomorrow, another.  And each day after, new beginnings all.  In a minute, too, another new beginning.  

Each past moment, those old new beginnings?  Gone.  And each future moment is a matter for speculation only.    At this time, this new beginning—this "now"—is all we have.  

So many second chances, piling on, one after one another.  We lose them all, utterly, failing time and again.  I mean we fail, because we can't possibly succeed in any one moment.  Unless we're dodging a bullet... and how often do we walk away unscathed when we dodge bullets?

It's up to each of us to consider this moment as our best chance, to make the most of it, in spite of the odds.

Identity

In 2009, author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) recorded a TED talk on nurturing creativity. It amounts to a surprising piece of practical advice for my fellow artists. Unlike her, I doubt there’s much of me outside of myself, but like her, I feel an elemental force within me, almost a separate entity.

My “genius”looks like Alec Guiness. When I was a boy, his name was Gopy (pronounced “Go pee”—which suggests his moniker’s etymology) , which became more formally “Alpha” when I became an adult. Alpha resides somewhere deep behind my eyes. Unlike Ms. Gilbert, I feel quite whole and self-contained, just not entirely of one mind.