The time of your life

At what point do you start feeling your age? Or start admitting that you are old? Seeing that I turn 36 in a few weeks I am starting to ponder that question.

Per the latest study, the typical white male is expected to live 76 years. This means that I am almost, but not quite, at the official halfway point of my existence. Yes, I can now have a mid-life crisis and mathematically speaking be accurate about it. Now I don’t think I am at the halfway point of my life and I certainly don’t feel it but just that idea that half my time on this planet is used up is enough to make me curl up into a ball in the corner for awhile.

Or how about this one. Back in seventh grade I was 12 years old. We all remember being 12. Thanks to Facebook we can all now relive our friendships and grudges from those days all over again. I can’t even comprehend that I have had two thirds of my life since that point. Or that half of my life has been post high school. First off, those days don’t seem that long ago but more importantly those days still hold much more sway on my psyche than they should. How many people fear a high school reunion because they feel the need to show how successful they are? In fact, isn’t that part of what Facebook is about: proving to people you once knew that you have made something of yourself. All for people that were only important half a lifetime ago.

I’m really beginning to get the sense of how time speeds up when you are older. I’ve mentioned it before but nothing lasts as long as a summer when you are ten years old. You have just enough knowledge to enjoy yourself without any of the responsibilities and the days just go on forever. I think that summer lasted five years. Now I’ve just celebrated my six month anniversary with Kim and it feels like it has been a long weekend. The time has just flown by that quickly. In two weeks I will mark my year in Delaware and a year removed from all my friends in KC. I can’t even fathom how quickly it has gone.

Here is the one hope that I hold out for myself and, not surprisingly, it revolves around theoretical physics. The idea is this: in our universe we have as constants a) the universe expanding, b) entropy increasing and c) time moving forward. Now, there is a possibility that at some point the universe will stop expanding and start contracting. It is my hope (and Hawking has at least touched on this idea in a supportive light) that when the universe starts to contract that time will start flowing backwards and we will get to live our lives in reverse. That way we will get to live our lives out one more time. Get to see everyone again and have those summers of our youth play out as we wait for the coming of spring. I just find it a pretty thought.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Only one song would be fitting