FEAR AND 50: THOUGHTS FROM THE ROAD

Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard? -- Paul Simon

When a man turns fifty, it's only natural that he indulges in a little reflection -- especially when his own father died at the age of fifty-four. Well, your humble correspondent not only turned fifty last week, he marked the two-year anniversary of his return to the East after twelve and a half spent in California; also his two-year anniversary of returning to the fold of criminal justice. In short, it was a date filled with milestones: so he did the only thing possible: he hit the road.

I haven't had a proper vacation in longer than I can remember, and the days leading up to it were so riddled with anxiety I could hardly function. After years in the pressure cooker, I couldn't adapt to relaxation, to being my own master. I almost scuttled the trip out of sheer discomfort with the idea of taking it that easy for that long. Subconsciously, I think there was something else going on. I was afraid to be alone with my own thoughts.

When you turn fifty, you are painfully well aware that you not only have more days behind than ahead, you are also aware that the days remaining also include physical and mental challenges you didn't have worry about at 18, or 31, or even 44. You are aware that even if you live for decades yet, all the vigor of youth, the natural energy and strength, the smooth unlined skin, the full head of hair -- all of that is behind you. Between forty and fifty you can absolutely convince yourself that you are still young in many ways. Between fifty and sixty that prospect becomes impossible. Even with all the modern tools of the anti-ageing trade, steroids and surgery and hair transplants and teeth-capping, the real magic of youth can never be recaptured. It's gone, and that's that.

When I started the drive north, I was simply relieved to get away. Stress seemed to ebb as the miles piled up and the hours dragged by. And when I finally arrived at the bed and breakfast tucked in the middle of a huge state park, itself tucked into a great wilderness that encompasses most of the upper part of the state, a place that not only looked but felt and even smelled differently than where I had come from, it tapered into a feeling of exhaustion. I didn't know how tired I was until I got there and just lay down for about three hours, listening to the silence.

I didn't feel relief, or happiness, or excitement. I felt nothing of note. Even when I went up to the top of a mountain and watched the full moon rise above the trees like a huge gold coin, bathing the sky and the land both in its radiance, I can't say I was struck with any profound thoughts or emotions. I was just tired and cold and a little annoyed I couldn't see more stars. I went back to my cabin, drank a lot of beer and went to bed.

It was on the second day that I felt the change. Having slept well between crisp cool sheets in cold country air, I woke up full of appetite and indulged in a huge breakfast of sausages, bacon, loaded French toast covered in preserves, fresh fruit, and coffee. I then drove an hour to a huge old railway bridge, half-destroyed by age and a tornado, which has a glass bottom. I stood on that bottom and looked 275 feet down to the valley floor, trying to overcome my fear of heights. Then I took a four-mile hike in the woods. Another hour in the car and I was at the Elliot Ness Museum, full of beautiful old cars and gangster memorabilia. A few hours of rest, some food, and I was out hiking again, deep in the woods, on a trail so raw the lumber was still stacked by the silent earth-moving machinery. That night I slept very well indeed.

On my last full day -- not of vacation, but this part of it -- I indulged in yet more excessive breakfast, then met an old friend an hour away at a WW2 museum packed with relics of the conflict. I hadn't seen this guy in years and we ended up spending hours there, and then in a roadside diner, "jawjacking," as he likes to put it (I'm convinced he borrowed this expression from my character Halleck in SINNER'S CROSS, a book I know he has read, but if I call him on it and I'm wrong, I will look a pretentious clod). Late afternoon was upon us before I hit the road again, for the four-plus hour drive back home, two hours of which were spent in country roads cut narrowly into the pine-covered hills of northern Pennsylvania.

When you drive through God's country, you have plenty of time to think about those things you weren't keen to think about. I thought about the face of my friend, who I have known for 31 years, and how it is now as old as the face of his father when I met the man in 1991 or thereabouts, yet is still clearly the same face: slim, tanned, strong-featured behind a neatly trimmed grayish-white beard. Sometimes when I run into people from my past, I am saddened and frightened by their appearances, or by their circumstances -- divorces, economic ruin, depression, physical ailments. It is, of course, myself I am partially feeling sorry for: not that I am in any dire straits, in fact I am ageing better than I could have hoped, but let's face it, there comes a time in any one of those encounters when you wonder what they are thinking about you. And if they catch you on the wrong day, when you forgot to shave and are ten pounds over your fighting weight and didn't sleep so well the night before, you go home cursing vain and shallow curses. But it's really Father Time you're cursing, and his chief enforcer, Death. This time I was just glad to see my old pal was in good shape and good spirits, and that our bond had only strengthened with years. Sometimes we forget that: age is not merely destructive: it can make things sturdier, can give them vintage and wisdom, a tang of experience. It is not for nothing we call it "seasoning."

As the miles disappeared beneath the wheels of my rental car, I considered the life I was returning to, and its attendant anxieties. They seemed less now than before, but I knew that was an illusion; rather, it was a difference in perspective. The problems of life seem much worse when you are tired, or angry, or lonely or frustrated or sad, or even hungry: I felt rested, if a touch fat after all that beer and country cholesterol, so naturally my woes seemed less woeful. The terrible anxiety and even terror that had gripped me the day before I embarked on my little trip north now struck me as absurd and cowardly. This too, however, was a matter of perspective. I am a man juggling two distinct careers which have nothing whatsoever in common with each other. By day I am an advocate for victims of crime. By night -- like a superhero! (or a supervillain) -- I am a writer with a small but growing audience, a regular on three different podcasts, and a guy who still keeps a foot in the entertainment industry, if only remotely. This is not exhausting. My second career takes the role of a hobby which refreshes me and keeps me reasonably sharp for my first. What is exhausting is the constant internal voice which tells me I can do more -- much more -- and that time is running out to do so. The Germans call this "torschlusspanik." In my case the "panik" is rooted in the fact that I spend far too much time and energy in things that take me out of alignment with my purpose. Sure, I'm working, but do I have the right job? Am I making enough money and taking care of myself? Sure, I'm writing, but am I doing everything I could be doing to reach the widest audience, win the most awards, rake in the most cash? Sure, I try to enjoy life, but what does that mean practically -- drinking beer and watching 40 year-old TV shows in my underwear on Sunday afternoons? Couldn't I -- shouldn't I -- be doing MORE?

In life I have often found that the people around me who are most unhappy are the ones least aligned with, or simply ignorant of, their purpose here on earth. They drift, and are aware they are drifting. I don't have the latter problem, but I do have the former. When my energy, my focus, my discipline are all in line with my goal here in this existence, I achieve a Nirvana-like state which we Americans refer to unimaginatively as being in the "zone." But this path is very easy to stray from. There are many distractions, and beneath those distractions is fear. To be what you were meant to be is frightening. To be what you were meant to be every day is to change from who you were -- potential -- to what you could be: realization. It means becoming someone else, and that is scary. Everyday life (work, commute, relationship) has the curious effect of actually distancing us from our life's purpose. We get so caught up in the trivia and the bullshit and the day-to-day, that we either forget or put off our passions and our actual reasons for occupying space on this planet. When I lived in Los Angeles, I saw this all the time, guys with film degrees from great schools who had let their day jobs consume their lives and before they knew it, had forgotten their grand plans to conquer Hollywood. Some kidded themselves with an occasional "I'll get around to that script yet" but they knew they were lying, and they knew I knew. They scared me, because in them I saw a possible future for myself. And isn't that why we really shun homeless people? It's sure as fuck not because we can't spare a quarter. We shun the homeless for the same reason we shun sick people, dying people, crazy people, and so-called losers. We're afraid they'll infect us. What we don't consider is that we're already infected. The infection comes from within. It's called fear.

When I was in seventh grade, I sat next to a girl named Ellen in school. I was a mess at that time: I had greasy hair and dandruff, was heavily overweight, and failing half my classes. I had no friends to speak of and had to fight bullies with humor, my only weapon. Ellen, however, was in an even worse place. She was truly obese and wore Coke bottle glasses. She had a tiny voice, almost a squeak, and no friends at all. She had nothing to fight the bullies with, and they tormented her with the utmost cruelty. Ellen was always unfailingly kind to me. When I forgot my pencil, when I was out of paper, when my ruler went missing, she always offered to help me and I always accepted politely. But that was where it ended. She would say, in that timid little-girl voice, "Would you like a pencil?" and I would say, "Thank you," rather formally, and take it. But I never smiled at her. I never looked her in the eye. I never tried to protect her from the bullies in the class. In short, I never offered her friendship or even friendly acquaintanceship, which I sincerely believe she was looking for -- that poor, lonely, isolated girl. Instead, I treated her the way you'd treat a bank teller -- politely, but with no warmth, no human kindness, no acknowledgement that they are suffering. Why? Because as low as I was on the totem pole of Thomas W. Pyle Junior High School, Ellen was lower, and so long as I kept my distance from Ellen I was safe from the added burden I'd entail if I called her my friend -- the extra bullying, the sneering remarks about how Miles landed himself a girrrrrlfriend. But beyond that, I was just scared that I'd lose the fragment of social standing I actually possessed if I publicly showed her compassion. Cowardice and selfishness gave me an easy way out of a difficult situation...except the way out was a dead end: I ran into a guilt and a shame I carry to this day, this moment as I write this. Fear can be a healthy thing, but in civilized life it is usually moral and not mortal fear. It is fear of doing the right thing. The necessary thing.

When at last I arrived home, fed the cat, and looked at my bank balance, I groaned a little, but then simply turned the page in my own mind. I wasn't going to let the most contrived fear of all -- money -- or the Puritan work-ethic ruin a much-needed exercise in self-care. The vacation was a good idea; it did me good. I wanted some clarity and I got it: I see a path going forward. I cannot really make out the details of the path through the mists of uncertainty which we call life, but I know it is there, and I am moving upon it, if only stumblingly and with hesitation. One thing I have come to understand completely, even if I don't frequently act upon the knowledge, is that without overcoming the inertia which fear places upon me, no positive change is ever possible; and positive change always begins with anxiety, doubt, uncertainty, fear, trepidation, and self-negotiation. In short, change and discomfort are two sides of the same coin: to flip the coin one must actually come into contact with its dark side. There is no formula by which we can achieve positive change without sweating and feeling pain or fear. I have long known that “breaking the ice” kicks in my adrenaline and my courage; the trick is that I can't break the ice with these weapons, they lie on the other side of the scrim. A different kind of courage, a kind of pushing-the-boulder-up-the-hill-kind-of-courage, real courage, not reckless abandon but the overcoming of fear, is necessary: and that's what I generally avoid. Actually, I must overcome the fear of getting what I want in all aspects of my life, which has been holding me back from day one. It's not enough to be a theorist, I have to practice. We all have to practice, because no one will practice for us.

When I was alone in the woods on that windy overlook in the early evening, no one around for miles, just a vista of white pine and hemlock as far as the eye could see and the sun like a gold blaze, I held up my arms and demanded the universe align me fully with my purpose. But of course there is no one listening when you make these sort of demands. The universe isn't, I believe, a conscious entity in the way we understand consciousness. It is a gigantic force that wheels slowly and irresistibly like a galaxy or the hands of a clock, or perhaps more accurately a rushing river, and you either actively align yourself with its movement, i.e. or you allow it to carry you along, or you swim in the other direction entirely. The universe doesn't care what you do. It gave you certain abilities and perhaps certain inborn desires, and the free will to act upon them or no. But if you swim with the current, with its intentions for you, you get to where you want to go quickly and have some control over your exact course; if you just ride along, you will perhaps arrive, or perhaps be swept past that point without realizing it until it's too late; and if you fight it, you will simply accomplish nothing at all, except to exhaust yourself. When I look upon my own life, I see that most of it has been spent either fighting my destiny, or trying to force another, different destiny into existence, or simply running away from destiny, period. All stupid wastes of time and effort which have inflicted great pain upon me and others, too – friends and family and lovers who had to bear the brunt of my self-created bitterness, either by witnessing it without being able to stop it or actually suffering from it by having to live with me at the time.

When I was on the road, I reflected that I have – if I'm lucky – perhaps twenty-five years left to me at the maximum, and only ten of those, the next ten, will really still fall in that active period of life when one can achieve great results physically as well as creatively and spiritually. I have wasted so much time it makes me sick, and time is passing faster and faster, so it's really no longer a question of deferring dreams. I'm sure my dad had many dreams about his later life and how he wanted to spend it. He shared some of them with me when he was dying. I don't think about that much because it hurts too badly. Maybe in his own way he was trying to warn me about not letting time slip by, not assuming there will always be opportunities to do the things you wish to do. If so, I wasn't listening then; but I'm listening now.