Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "freud"

Aging Gratefully

Here I go again, bitching about getting older when the truth is that there are a lot of dead people who never got the chance to be in their mid-50s.

So. I won't bitch this time. I'll just make a few observations.

One is that time does indeed seem to move faster as you get older. When you are ten, a year is 10 percent of your life. That's a lot of life between Christmases. When you're fifty, a year is only 2 percent of your life. It moves a lot faster.

On my way to work this morning, I heard a song that I hadn't thought about in a while: "Love Spreads" by Stone Roses. I got to work and looked it up and found that it was a hit in 1994.

You know, 1994. AKA: Yesterday.

Actually, 1994 was 18 years ago.

If "Love Spreads" were a person, it would be eligible to vote this year. (That's provided, of course, that it could gather the paperwork now necessary to prove its identity.)

I called my daughter while the song was playing because its feminist slant makes me think of her. I didn't get her, of course, because she's busy. I did, however, leave her a message. I also let the refrain of the song play on her voicemail.

Twice today I found myself reflecting on the body-as-shell-for-the-spirit concept. I always counter-balance that sort of positive thinking with Freud's quotation "Physiognomy is destiny." Sure, it's just a shell. But it's my shell.

Work exhausts me. Part of that is because I try to stay busy all the time so that the hours will pass quicker. The other part is that I'm too old to have such a physical job. (And I have a really crappy shell.)

There was a funny cartoon a few years ago of two prisoners chained to a dungeon wall, with one saying to the other, "At least the weekends don't fly by here."

So. That's all I've got for now. A few less-than-morose thoughts on aging.
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on August 22, 2012 15:41 Tags: age, aging, freud, funny, humor, middle-aged, old, physiognomy

Reader and Writer

Eddie Whitlock
I began to write because it seemed to be a realm in which one could exercise omnipotence. It's not.

My characters demand to make their own decisions and often the outcomes are wildly different from wha
...more
Follow Eddie Whitlock's blog with rss.