Stuff seething and simmering in my mind about the mysteries of youth and aging. The young man from three doors up walks past, returning from his paper round in a thick cream knitted cardigan. He is perhaps 17. In the year we have lived here, he has grown taller, wider, more solid. I don't know him, but I observe. There is C, day on day, moving through his life. He is young, and doesn't know it. When I was that age I had no idea how young I was. I wrote impassioned poetry about trees, kissing and drunkenness, felt all sorts of named and nameless longings, saw life stretching ahead of me, not requiring me to make choices so much as just to follow and see where it led. Felt life was my right somehow. But was more aware that I was older than I'd ever been before and getting older year on year, than I was of being barely formed, a new adult blinking in the bright world.
My mother, 81 on Sunday is old now, officially, and how can it be that I never saw this coming? And how can it be I've only now realised that much of what has been happening to her, the memory loss, depression, dwindling interest in life, loss of concentration, and the viciously aggressive outbursts, all point clearly to the early stages of one or other form of dementia? Because she's my mother is why. And she is not, in terms of my inner working model of the world, permitted to become old and infirm.
At 48, my life has foundered, and I feel 'on the outside looking in' at people with secure jobs, nicely developing careers, established roles in the world of work. Of course I know that there are at this time many like me, out of work, more or less, many others fearful of losing jobs and the security that goes with them, but what I tend to be wincingly sensitive to, on the radio, in the paper, in overheard conversation, is the feeling of complacent entitlement people have to their work identity, the social and economic validation so unthinkingly gained from going to work and doing whatever they do year on year. And I am chilled to the bone, thinking I've lost it (even though next week or the week after I may perhaps regain at least a little of it), and may never be readmitted to the charmed circle of the working. And I'm 48. Too old for a major career change, too young to retire. Too young to be old, too old to be young. I have never really known what I wanted 'to do with my life', and now I am so sharply aware that 'the life' I have left is finite, is very likely less than the life I've already lived.
It's not just work either. What else is important to me? How do I want to live? Surely I should be thinking about these things... I have so much time at the moment, but not the spare psychic energy for much creativity, tied up as most of it is with the matter of my economic survival.
I met a woman I know slightly at the bus stop last night. I was coming home from the pub, she from working, doing healing and Reiki at a local centre. She said she always came away with a big smile on her face, saying (casting her eyes upwards) thankyou, thankyou for letting me do work I love. I just felt annoyed, thought ungracious thoughts about how Reiki isn't work at all and what a bunch of flakey new-agey types this town is full of. Which isn't what I usually think. Much. I think it was her comment about work that hit the raw nerve. I'd settle for doing work I can just about tolerate at the moment... Thoughts of being '50 and on the scrap-heap' haunt me. I know you'll all say no, no, of course you won't be, you have so much to offer... and this of course in my better moments I do know. But this limbo, when none of the possibilities that keep shimmering like mirages up ahead on a hot summer road, seems willing to manifest itself, keeps me struggling to believe that 'all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'
4 comments:
Hmm. A very thoughtful post and so well expressed.
You couldn't teach? I really like teaching - most of the time - and the holidays are great. Even if you had to do a year's training? And it's fantastic at taking one's mind off one's troubles.
The first part of this post made me think of Bob Dylan: - "but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." That observation about the 17-year-old boy and you remembering how old you thought you were then - well, now I'm in my fifties I look back ten years and think how young that was, and I didn't know it. Just saying.
There are lots of Us, you know - artistically-inclined marginalistes. I don't know if that makes it feel better or worse, and lack of money is always a pain and a drain.
Confronted with the Reiki person I'd have felt exactly the same - though actually that's what I used to feel too when I was teaching. But I didn't bang on about it.
I - oddly enough, the other possible opportunity I'm waiting to hear about is sort of teaching... not the kind I'd need to do a year's training for, but yes, I think I might be able to do it. Still hoping that I can ply the old therapeutic trade once again...
Signs - Yeh, I was thinking of that Dylan song too, somewhere in the background. And yes, I know, it's all relative. As L is 60, I do also feel quite young sometimes, but aware how quickly it's all going, and what am I doing???etc etc. 'Marginalistes' I like. I've certainly never been a mainstreamer.
What Signs said, there are a lot of us, but it's not all sunshine.
The entitlement thing gives me pause for thought quite a bit now. There really is so much bloody luck involved in what you get, and there are external factors which affect us significantly, but we're taught to believe that it's all down to us. Positive thinking, will power, the work ethic are all fine but the corollary of it is that if things don't turn out great it must be our fault, or according to your Reiki woman, we're out of tune with whatever she raises her eyes to...
I could say that you are doing what you are doing with your life, it's already here, and worrying that you aren't doing what you're meant to be doing is pointless. But then I'd be sounding dangerously like one of those flaky New Age types, and I'm not sure it's very helpful anyway.
I like 'all shall be well', but 'this too shall pass' is perhaps more easy to cope with just now.
Post a Comment