Saturday, September 14, 2013

old man

Beyond a certain age, it's essential to see your friends frequently. When you're young, time doesn't matter. It doesn't pass; it's just an abstract concept. I was for the longest time convinced that the best friends were the ones you saw the least. Can there be a stronger connection than with someone you only see ever year or two and still feel closely connected with?

I used this rationale to feel good (or at least not suicidally bad) about not seeing friends I had left behind in various corners of the world for months or years at a time. I knew that my friends would always be there for me – and I for them – whenever necessity or opportunity arose.

Tonight, I went for drinks with a former colleague, a friend I had worked with for years. Two years ago, after too many years in London, he took his family and went back home. Tonight, he was back for the first time, for just about a day.

It was good to see him again and to chat about how things had developed for him, how life is where's living it, how work is progressing and a career shaping up. He had missed fish and chips and was happy to dig in, never mind the pub we went to wasn't exactly haute cuisine. Fish and chips isn't haute cuisine anyway. It was good to catch up with him and hang out having fun.

The good times took a while. My first impression was one of mild shock. My friend had aged. He didn't look the kid he used to be. Wrinkles in his face, lines around his eyes, bits of grey in his hair, skin grooved by age – he probably looked as old as he was, but he didn't look the guy I remember.

The mild shock about my friend's appearance was followed by a much more profound shock, an eye-opener, a turning point possibly, a shock that hit home in the most painful way. If he looks like this to me after a couple of years, I must look the same to him. I couldn't deny the evidence in front of my eyes. I'm not immune to age – no matter how I burst about the football pitch – and time is gnawing down my edges.

I've always considered myself a kid, young at heart with a body to match. In grad school a senior student told me that it's downhill beyond 25. Another friends was petrified at the thought of turning 30. I've always laughed it off. Not anymore. It seems that forty is a turning point. Eternity is suddenly not a vehicle for debauchery anymore but a void that holds the unmentionable horrors of old age.

The post could end here but it would be odd. There's no connection to the start, and it's the sentiment expressed in the first paragraph that made me write all this. Tonight I realized that time isn't measured in minutes or hours or years but in the faces of your friends. I have to make sure to see my friends again before it all falls apart, and see them again and again to soften the blow of the passage of time.

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