Getting Older

Last night I was sitting at home relaxing, letting the weekend wind down.  I was reading that Paxon paper again, The Five Stages of Fascism, and I just started seeing all of the pieces come together.  It’s difficult for me to describe. It was little pieces of vaguely associated images, sound bytes, feelings, pieces of old conversations that flirted with the edge of my understanding all interacting, being reinforced by each other as well as by new information ultimately revealing a richer more profound picture of the world. I felt a thread tie together all of these things that seemed completely unrelated even irrelevant outside of their mutual context.  It could be that I have been reading A LOT lately; I always enjoyed the elevated level of conscious thought that comes after spending a couple weeks neck deep in a few books.  The near instant access to even seemingly irrelevant associated information, having everything you want within reach when you need it… I think maybe that is what power feels like. But last night was different; more than just a heightened level of intellectual awareness, there was a Zen quality to it, a feeling of seamless yet interconnected understanding.  

When the young think about aging they think about getting fat and wrinkly, they think about responsibility and sickness, children and death.  Why would we think of it any other way, having only witnessed those things from a distance as we approach in an inevitable progression? But there is more to it of course, there are advantages to age and experience that youth cannot fathom. When you are young “experience” (whatever that is) seems like a hallow substitute for a healthy body and seemingly limitless potentiality.  Now, I’m only 27. I don’t exactly have one foot in the grave. But, if what I experienced last night was a harbinger of some expanded understanding of the causal tapestry of existence then the kind of person I am is exceedingly conducive to the gifts that age and experience bring and I am looking forward to it. Of course it could have just been a simple moment of clarity in which case this whole post is just so much piss in the wind…