Your Illusion of Perpetual Youth
Labels are dangerous. Labels create opposites. Labels promote fear. One of those labels is Young because it means, especially for most of us…Not Old. They also marginalize our abilities to act upon the dictates of our own choices, because with labels come rules.
There was a time when the youth culture of the Sixties swept the world and shook it to its very roots.
The Old Guard took solace in their established place. Acceptance of their parents’ way of life and values was something they never questioned. They already knew they were dead before they were born.
But somewhere along the line, the Post-Neo War Babies fell in love with their own propaganda about youth culture, and became completely self-centered and materialistic, as if that somehow replaced what they had once believed.
They are certainly not Flower Children anymore…they’re not even children at all.
Most of their children are now having children.
One of the features of Existentialism is the angst Man experiences trying to accept his own mortality in a godless universe. Although we are allegedly the apex of the primate tribes, we are almost paralyzed by the fear of our impending death, although some of us more so than others. Chimps understand death and even conduct what bears a resemblance to funerals, but exhibit no signs of such preoccupations.
So much for evolutionary advancement of the species.
Our culture worships youth and sequesters the elderly. Out of sight, out of mind. We are so neurotic about anything even remotely sexual that few children in this country ever witness childbirth, and unless you are very wealthy or have Asian children, eventually you will be shipped off to “Gomer Gardens” where the elderly are farmed like vegetables at the expense of their insurance benefits to die alone.
We are not taught to embrace the cycle of life.
Between those two defining moments we are just doing the St. Vitus Dance in denial of the inevitable.
Most of those whom I consider my peers are now struggling with that angst over Mortality, and their own aging process. Death walks on their shadow.
In the last three years, my father, my mother, and my younger brother have died and a number of my peers have likewise slipped the mortal coil, although most of them did so either by virtue of too many indiscretions or by their own hands.
Long ago I became desensitized to sudden, violent and/or tragic death. I was a medic…it comes with the territory, but slow “natural causes” as a part of the aging process is somehow harder for me to accept…perhaps it’s just the suspense, or maybe it’s because it’s happening to me.
I recently found myself asking “Am I too old to be doing this anymore?” about any number of aspects of my life. Because I have always lived a vigorous life almost in defiance of the aging process, with little regard for Danger, the thought never crossed my mind until recently when it became clear that I had to learn to moderate some of my behaviors.
All things considered I am a very lucky guy that way, but somehow as regards anything from Polyamory to (and I love this phrase…thank-you, Mrs. Fever) “Monogamish Polyfuckery” or any other form of the pursuit of happiness, I hope no one ever comes to believe they are too old.
My beautiful and captivating spouse (who is herself almost a generation and a half younger than me) monitors several web sites seeking playmates or even potential triads or quads for companionship in our pursuit of mutual interests.
As time has passed, (we are both over forty) we have found ourselves setting the bottom end of the age range a little higher every few years. It is simply a matter of having some semblance of a common frame of reference.
This does not however preclude the occasional person who is naturally drawn toward someone much older than themselves…God Bless every single fucking one of you, wherever you are….
In a brief but wonderful period of my life, I was a teenager exposed to mature women who were not afraid to express their desires. My willingness to fulfill those desires may have been the product of “sex goggles” owing to my unbridled teenage horniness, but looking back on it, maybe it was just money in the Kharma Bank.
Interestingly enough, despite the fact that the phenomenon of older men with younger women has a much longer public history in our culture than “Cougars” and their “Cubs” it seems that although there is still a considerable stigma attached to them as well, our society seems to be more accepting of their relatively recent arrival into the spotlight. The rest of us are still simply labeled as “Dirty Old Men” or “Lecherous Perverts” or the like…we don’t even have a user-friendly description.
By all means, if anyone knows of a “kinder, gentler” term for men involved in May-December romances, please let me know.
Of course if you stop and think about it, an older woman and a younger man just makes more sense…it’s a matter of simple mathematics. After all, twenty five will always go into fifty more times than the other way around.
Nonetheless, Suki frequently finds that more and more often, the people who respond to our personals are so pathetically unattractive as to range from mildly humorous to downright depressing.
Neither of us are so shallow as to not be able to recognize “Inner Beauty” but let’s face it…although Beauty may be only skin deep, Ugly seems to go clear through to the bone. That also includes physically attractive people who are so shallow and narcissistic that if the pics don’t hint at it, more than a few lines of conversation will absoluteley confirm it.
It is one thing to be preoccupied with physical appearance and quite another to use your eyes, your ears, and your gut instincts to tell you if there is any “Chemistry” there, even in regarding rather plain or somewhat homely people. Personality and humor seem to become more important factors as time goes on.
But I think we all reach a point where we may find ourselves questioning whether we would even want to fuck anybody that would consider fucking us. That spectre of the Aging Process keeps haunting us.
There is a great deal to be said about the wisdom of acceptance of who we are as we are right now. After all, we’ve earned those crow’s feet, scars, stretch marks and the effects of gravity or whatever physical imperfections that hint at our chronological age, and hopefully we had a pretty good time “Reelin’ in the Years” while we were doing it.
Ruminating about the past is a sure way to make yourself miserable about either regrets or wishing you could go back to some long-gone point in time. Dreading the future is no better.
If you are really concerned about how much time you have left, then start living today as if it were your last, but never stop acting like you will live forever.
You are never too old to do that, and if you can view the others around you with enough loving kindness to accept them in the same way that you hope they will find to accept you, then you will be far too busy living in the here and now to worry about much of anything.
Namasté
नमस्ते
Chazz Vincent
06/27/2015
dreamlanddancing 