i am beginning to feel my age

Once I was young, and now I am old. (Psalm 37:25 NLT)

I am beginning to feel my age.

It is an almost indefinable feeling, hard to explain. But it is like art: you may not be able to understand it, but you know what you like. Age is that way, only without the like part, or the art part, for that matter: you cannot explain it, but you know it is there.

Part of it is the mental distance you feel from young people. As a 61 year old man, I feel that distance. They do too, you can see it. The mental framework is different when you are young than it is when you are older. You have seen more things and are sure of less things. Things of utmost importance change as you get older, values shift, priorities rearrange.

Experience is much greater and dreams are less. There are things you are just too old to do or to want to do. and some things – such as family and faith – are far more important.

More and more, I feel that distance in years.

I remember Elvis Presley coming out, his first records. I don’t recall the exact record, but I do recall that my parents didn’t like him so I didn’t, being a good boy. But I was about 7 or 8 years old at that time. Heartbreak Hotel and Love Me Tender were about that time. He has been dead now for 34 years.

I remember the Beatles coming out. “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were the songs I first heard. In fact, I heard them in gym class. The boys were on one side of  the gym and the girls on the other (no co-ed PE then – another distance), and someone, for some reason, had a record player (another distance) playing a 45 rpm record (another distance) of one of these.

I asked who it was singing, and someone told me it was that new group, The Beatles. I had heard negative things about them at church and home so I wasn’t sure. But I quickly made up my own mind. I liked them. Two of them have been dead for quite a while now.

When I got out of school, I got a job with the telephone company (another distance since there was only one) and got a car with an AM radio with push buttons (another distance). My girlfriend (now my wife) changed all of the buttons to her stations which played top 40. I had listened to a blend of music, but no more. I quickly got hooked on the new stuff (Rolling Stones, Ohio Express, Monkees - another distance),

When I went into the army, I got into acid rock (Hendrix and others). And on it went.

My memories are going further and further back. It seems like just a few years ago I was in high school, but I graduated in 1968. It seems just a while ago that I was in the army, but I got out in 1971. It seems that we have not been married for all that long, but it has been forty years.

One of the best times of our lives was in Spokane, but it has been thirty years since we left. It seems like a short time ago that I graduated from college or seminary, but my last graduation date was 1985. It seems like just a while ago that I left the Church of Christ, but it was in 1994.

Life is on fast forward and I do not want it to be.

The past few years have been hard ones and I guess the scrabbling for existence had made the time go faster.

I have already been in Lincoln for over a year.

And I am about to turn 62, retirement age if I wanted it to be.

So many people I remember as teenagers are retired now. Some are dead, some are having real troubles in life, some are doing well. Some have found the Lord. Some haven’t. But all those who are still alive are significantly older.

The distance from then to now is far greater than I ever thought it would be. I never had a mental concept of being older. Oddly enough, I still think of myself, at times, as being younger. Then I will catch sight of myself in the mirror or a window and it will surprise me. I am white headed and bearded. I am wrinkled, although not as much as I thought I would be.

I see my wife, and although she still looks good for her age, it is for her age that comes to mind. She is older than I think she ought to be.

Memories come flashing back. A song on the oldies station will flash me to 1972 on a warm Houston night in our 1968 Ford Galaxie 500. Another will put me in the snack bar in Germany at the army base. Another I will be in seminary. Another and another.

Someone once wrote that you become old when you replace your dreams with regrets.

It seems to me that it would be impossible to be otherwise. At this age I do not have a lot of dreams. Too many of them have been smashed or fulfilled. I only have a few years left. With good health, maybe 20. Half the distance to getting out of the army. Ten less than in Spokane. Five less than graduation from my second degree. Only three more than since I left the Church of Christ.

I was listening to a song on the radio in a store not long ago and asked the guy behind the counter, have you ever thought about the fact that three of that foursome are dead now? He hadn’t thought about it, I guess. So many songs I hear are by people who have been dead for a long time, decades sometimes.

Time has gone by so fast. And as I said, I am beginning to feel my age.