Halftime (Long)

I turned forty last week. It feels like halftime. A brief reprieve before the stressful grind of the third quarter commences, when we try to chip away—Seattle Supersonics style—at the lousy deficit earned during the first two poorly played quarters. And so far it does feel a lot like halftime—I can ratchet up that false optimism, and listen to motivational speakers (Coach), have a loungy rest, joke with friends, and have a drink or two (if I’m Ron Artest).

I actually enjoyed turning thirty, and was confronted by none of the aging angst I had expected for that milestone. All of that returned during my thirty-first year, when it became clear that nothing was different, I wasn’t older and wiser (just older), and that my thirties were just an extended version of my lackluster twenties, without the sheen and polish—a new time when I would start to buy Glucosamine for creaky joints and when bran intake would become a legitimate topic of conversation. This third and fourth quarter, however, will not stretch into infinity with time-outs and TV breaks and attempts to ice the shooter. It will be played with a running clock, and when it is over, it is over.

A great man once told me that turning forty was the best thing that ever happened to him. I am paraphrasing here, but basically he said that turning forty causes you to come to terms with yourself. All of that STRIVING and VAGUE DISSATISFACTION kind of fades away—if you aren’t a millionaire and a CEO yet, you probably aren’t going to be—and that’s okay, a good thing maybe. Come to grips with it! Turning forty makes you ask yourself: “Now what?” For him, the answer was: “Okay, now I can start having fun.” I suppose this is what a mid-life crisis is, but I don’t think he was out buying convertibles and leisure suits and trying desperately to turn back the clock with material goods and rowdy behavior. That sounds a bit dramatic. For my father, he was able to make peace with his job, that this was what it was, and that the most important thing was to be a good father and to enjoy life every day.

I will say this: The past few years it has become clear that time is not infinite, and that I’ll probably never learn Sanskrit, and if I do it’ll be at an extremely high cost. Saying yes to one thing means saying no to a dozen other things, and turning forty is just another blunt reminder that you can’t say yes to everything (although my lengthening to-do list seems to be in total denial about this). Do I want to work on a novel for two years or do something more productive with my time? Or twenty smaller things? Much of my thirties was spent making a certain documentary, and now that it is over it has been so pleasurable—delicious, really—to just focus on little non-artistic domestic tasks—doing chores around the house, cooking more and more, starting a garden on the balcony, etc. I’d still like to work on a book; I just feel like I need to decide that spending this time in this way is important, and correct, and then stick with this decision. Of course, this RAISING OF THE STAKES contributes to total artistic paralysis—if every creative endeavor has to be sanctioned by the time-management committee in your head. But that is a topic for a future blog post!

From Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky : “We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

It is worth asking again: Now what?