So This Is Me?

This article is a reprint from a column I pen each month for the website of my high school class www.DanMccarty70.com.  While it has been over four decades since the 400+ of us exploded from the halls of Dan McCarthy High and into our lives, today over 250 of us still meet on a regular basis in cyberspace to remember, smile and stay in touch.  I hope you enjoy my Ramblings.

So This Is Me?

It never ceases to amaze me how much more understanding and caring we become as the years roll by like some lazy river ambling toward its yet unseen destination. Not only do we become kinder to others, but also if life has taught us anything, it is that the baby boomer in the mirror is not such a bad dude after all. If we are to be happy, we eventually learn to dial back a notch the incisive self-criticism that drove us in our never-good-enough younger days. As I've aged, I've learned to become my friend. I have watched too many cherished friends depart this world, too soon, never feeling the liberation that can only come with half a dozen hard-fought decades under their belt.  

I’ve concluded that it is no one’s business if I choose to read a book, surf the Net, or watch TV till dawn and then sleep till early afternoon. I have no problem with dancing alone to songs from the only era of music that matters—sixties & seventies. And if listening to Bread sing “I Want to Make It with You” brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my face as I remember a once true, but long since lost, love, then I will hit the replay button on the CD player to my heart’s content.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riBsOHkApmU

Click the Above Link for a Magic Carpet Ride Back to a Simpler Time

I now choose my shoes first for comfort and then for style. (Don’t you wish we could find a good pair of desert boots again?) I take advantage of living in the best state in this great nation—Florida. And make myself take the time to walk the beach in a pair of baggies that has been stretched tight over my bulging body, remembering the days that hanging five on my 9-foot, 6-inch Gordon & Smith just once could make my week.

Today, the surf knots might be gone, and the surfboards might have shrunk. However, that does not mean that I cannot dive headfirst into the warm gentle waves of the Atlantic with the abandon of a seventeen-year-old if I choose to do so, ignoring the pitying stares from the oiled-up Generation X, Y, and Net Set staring in horror from their beach blankets. It helps to remember that they, too, will get old, if they are as fortunate as you and I. 
Yes, I know that I have become a bit forgetful, many times walking into the center of a room and slowly turning in a circle, scanning its contents for just a clue of why I might have walked in there. But I have concluded that being a bit forgetful is not a bad thing because much of what goes on in life is best forgotten, anyway. Besides, I know I will remember most important things… eventually.



And yes, over the decades, my heart, like yours, has been broken—often. Broken by kids finding their way in life while trying to one up the sheer volume and depth of my life-changing, record mistakes. Broken by friends and once-friends, by lovers and would-be-lovers, and by the unfair and senseless things that just seem to roll into our lives one after another, like the endless sets of waves crashing on the North Beach jetty. The bizarre thing would be a sixty-year-old heart that has not been broken many times from losing friends and loved ones, the suffering of precious children, and even the traumatic grief coming from the loss of an oh-so-dear pet, a family member much more loved than a few of your more crazy extended members.

But just as the pain of lifting weights in the gym builds muscle, so does a broken heart give us strength, understanding, and yes, the compassion we need to become an ever better person—one filled with love, empathy, and the joy of life. As the ever-mounting number of broken hearts stacks in our lives like firewood outside a mountain cabin, we become us—a product of our unique journey. After all, a heart never broken is sterile, and it will never know pain and joy as an imperfect person in an oh-so-imperfect world.
Long life assures you that God has a sense of humor. I can almost hear Him saying, “I think I’ll have some fun today. See that guy down there? I think I’ll stop the hair from growing on his head, but just for kicks, I think I will blow it out his ears and nose like there is no tomorrow.” I am pleased and more than a bit grateful to have a full head of hair, even if it, by the day, becomes a bit more salt than pepper. The way I view it, any color beats scalp, or so my good friends Mitch Hilburn and Pete Wells tell me. 

Then, there is my sweet, but aging, baby face. There, I am again most blessed to have my youthful laugh lines forever etched into deep and now permanent grooves on my smiling face. It takes only a trip to our In Memory section to see so many taken early, too early, cutting short their laughter and depriving them of this gray hair and all it brings with it, good and bad.

As the years roll by at ever-increasing speed, I find it easier to be positive. I seem to care less about what others think and work harder to make myself happy. I don't question my decisions or myself as I did in my youth. You could say that, in the last sixty years, I’ve earned the right—to be wrong. So, big deal, if I try to do what is right, and it does not work; whoops, my mistake, let’s do that differently the next time. No harm, no foul.

So, I guess, overall, I am warming to the idea of getting old. If I am honest, I must admit that my age has done much to set me free. And when I look in the mirror, I kinda like the person I have become; although I wish I had not laughed quite so much in my youth. I understand that I will not live forever, but by golly, I’m not dead yet, and while the case, I will not waste a single minute lamenting of what could have, should have, or would have happened had I zigged when maybe I should have zagged. Whatever I did or didn’t do was by choice—my choice and I can live with that. The result of all those roads taken or avoided is why I am who I am today. I do not intend to become someone else; I have grown to enjoy being me.

So, folks, what you see is truly what you get, complete with all my wisdom and stupidity, my successes and failures, a host of positives and negatives all bundled in my handcrafted version of me. I hope when you look in your mirror, you, too, like what you see—a slightly aged boomer showing your well-earned laugh lines, whom I trust, is mostly happy.  
Life is too short to skip dessert… so dig in!
Keepin’ the Spirit Alive
Richard Parker