Middle age is bittersweet – wisdom, but also absolute decline. Your sense of time both expands and grows short. You realize 100 years is not as long ago as you used to think, but in the other direction death comes rushing toward you ever more tangibly.
I’ve decided to skip the Corvette-and-hairpiece, clinging-to-youth thing some guys do in their middle years, but I now understand how powerful an attractant nostalgia is for guys my age.
It’s all death-denial. The negotiations have begun, but I already know I will lose and death will win, as it must – as it needs to.
The first half of life is about getting a grip – on life, on who you are, and where you fit; the second half of life is about learning to let go.
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