More so than any other holiday, I find New Years delivers her sobering message with punctilious ferocity. That message? You're getting old.
I am not aging gracefully. Not so much in the physical sense, that particular nightmare has yet to befall me. What I mean to say is that I am not accepting the aging process with the grace and fortitude that one might hope for. To be clear, I am not one of those poor shlubs shopping with the tweens in the mall, distressed jeans matching some godawful Ed Hardy shirt, matching some godawful hair I wouldn't let my son wear, were I to have one. Son that is. So, I guess it could be worse.
I can still make the young opposite sex swoon. The same sex too, I imagine, if I was so inclined. But I know, sometime sooner than later, this universal trait of youth shall extinguish and never be seen again. I'll be left with the rest, dropping drawers with dollars instead of debonaire debauchery. And it will hurt.
Youth caters to, hell, is the raison d'etre for that most beautiful and short-lived art of reckless indifference. One wants to cast that aside as middle age approaches for fear of losing to it the fast-track, the corporate climb, the "career". But upon such discarding, one also discards the essence of dreams, the possibilities inherent in making foolhardy decisions, the options open to a young man standing in front of this great big world deciding which bite to take first...
So I say to you Happy New Year's, and I say it with a slight bitter taste in my mouth. Another year gone. Here's to making the best of it. Cheers.
