A few years ago, right at the start of the pandemic, actually, I heard this really powerful observation about a better way to record a sense of our time on planet earth. As humans, we tend to think of things in years because it is a helpful concentration of time. But the act of compressing time has a way of diminishing and shortchanging the vastness of how time actually works. Long story short, this thing I listened to suggested that instead of summarizing our lives by counting the years, we would do better to count the days, as they tell us much more about where we’ve been and how much life we’ve actually lived.
I took this to heart because I tend to think of my time here as short, and yet my creaking back and the newly sprouted grey hairs in my beard are reminders that the skeleton and brain driving this body of mine have reached a point of daily rundown and more noticeable wear and tear. It’s often said that young people tend to think they are immortal, and I have now passed the expiration date on that privileged way of thinking.
I remember the first time I thought about what it would feel like to be 40. My mom had taken me to a party goods store as a child to buy supplies for an event, and my inquisitive mind needed an explanation for all of the wacky plates and cups and table cloths that had the phrase “Over the Hill” printed on them. My mom explained to me that this was a joke often lobbed at newly minted 40 year olds, suggesting that they were approaching, if not now on the other side of the midway point. It was meant as a funny way of saying “it’s all down hill from here.” Even as a child I had a sense that this joke wasn’t really all that funny. Whenever I’ve shared this story with anyone, it’s been suggested that I needn’t worry about this applying to me just yet, because life expectancies have lengthened, and I still have more of the hill to climb before I can see the other side. David Byrne and Brian Eno put it beautifully on a song of theirs from the mid 2000s: “life is long.”
Another way of marking that time is to count all of the stuff I’ve accomplished during mine. I’ve been a Sunday school Hebrew teacher, an apprentice in the family travel agency business, and a decade-long sales associate, assistant manager and second generation tech nerd at RadioShack. For a week in my late adolescence I was a pilot and then a few weeks later, I was a marine biologist at the Jersey shore. Oh, I was also a revolutionary war re-enacter. True story. I’ve been a writer, a storyteller, a journalist, and a newspaper editor, which are four different ways of saying ostensibly the same thing, but because so much of that work demanded the use of vocabulary and all of it encouraged literary embellishment, I have no qualms about listing them separately. I’ve been a short form filmmaker, a content producer, a podcaster, a photographer, a lighting and sound guy, a roadie, a band van driver, and I’ve tour managed at stages across the country and across the pond, meeting music legends of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I’ve been entrusted with song demos, book manuscripts, poems, business ideas, and any manner of creative endeavors undertaken by so many close friends. I’ve started several companies, including a music magazine, a production company, a rehearsal studio (which forced me to learn the ins and outs of construction), and now a strategic development company. And for nearly eight years, I’ve been a corporate stooge, promoted to AVP as a subject matter expert, and now doing the job long enough that I have no idea what I even really do anymore or what my title actually is at this point. A couple of weeks ago, a new friend in Texas asked me if I’ve spent much time in my life jumping from job to job and I laughed and replied that I don’t really jump so much as I just keep adopting new jobs without letting anything actually fall away. This is why my social media bios for a long time included a short list of the activities and jobs that I’ve mentioned above and ended with the sentence, “I am tired.”
I attribute much of this to a sense of youthful curiosity and a willingness to go in whichever ways the winds of life might take me, and in every case, this lifestyle has presented me with a seemingly endless series of possibilities. Each choice, each path, splitting off and taking me down roads full of uncertainty and just as many chances to fall down and scrape my metaphorical - and literal - knees, as it did chances to rise, and reach for higher elevations. Age has shown me that I should be proud - perhaps more proud - of all of those choices, regardless of what version of myself each choice gave birth to, and which version of myself each choice snuffed out. I’m a million different people from one day to the next, I can’t change my mold. Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life.
I’m grateful for all of the dream jobs I’ve listed above, but as that internet meme so eloquently puts it, I don’t actually dream of labor. I’m most grateful for the million different people I’ve become from knowing and learning from all of the folks who hold space in my life, who accept me as a flawed human who doesn’t always get it right but whose heart and soul are hopefully always pointed in the right direction. No matter where I stand on that hill of life, I’m most appreciative that I’ve been a son, a grandson, a nephew, and a friend, a “brother,” an “uncle,” a godfather, a caretaker, a colleague, a support system, and a sounding board.
I’ve been immensely humbled to have earned the grace and trust of so many, and to have been given space to take up in their lives. To know and have been shown that my input, my feedback, and my ideas have value to others. I have been so lucky that in my time so far I’ve found comfort and purpose and guidance and clarity in being a student, a Jew, a Buddhist, a spiritualist, an amateur scientist and anthropologist, and a collector and consumer of the scared, profane, and completely mundane ephemera of our existence.
That David Byrne quote I mentioned earlier actually has a more profound second half, part of a larger statement he and Brian Eno are making about how important it is that we connect with each other and appreciate one another for those connections. “Life is long if you give it away,” Byrne sings. “Soul to soul, between you and me, chain me down, but I am still free.”
That day in the party goods store, all of those many years ago - all of those many days ago - I recall walking around up and down the aisles and processing this new information about what it might mean to one day turn 40 and be over the hill. I vividly remember thinking “gosh, that feels like it’ll take forever.” Today, that feels like it went by in the blink of an eye.
“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.” James Taylor wrote this in 1977 when he wasn’t even 30, but by that point in his life he had lived far beyond his years, so the old soul knew what he was talking about.
“The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time. Any fool can do it, there ain’t nothing to it. Nobody knows how we got to the top of the hill, but since we’re on our way down, we might as well enjoy the ride.” He goes on to say that “the thing about time is that time isn’t really real. It's just your point of view, how does it feel for you? Einstein said he could never understand it all; planets spinning through space, the smile upon your face. Welcome to the human race, some kind of lovely ride. I'll be sliding down, I'll be gliding down, try not to try too hard, it’s just a lovely ride.”
“As of today, I am 14,610 days old”
As of today, I have travelled this vast multiverse of possibilities - of endless outcomes, of connections, of impulses, of ideas, of roles and jobs and purposes, of loves, of losses, of mistakes and learning to grow from them, of living life - for 14,610 days, and in every one of them, I would choose those people closest to me to do it with over and over again, to take this lovely ride, sliding down, gliding down, trying not to try too hard, enjoying this lovely ride.