All about getting there

All Things Must Pass
- the title for one of George Harrison's albums

It's been a while. I've been face-down in a new job, new family issues, and a lot of spiritual churn to work through. I also tried in this time - and did not quite succeed - to make my own business goals (you'll see more about that in this blog soon). I've come through some pretty big adjustments in the past month. I am happy to report I'm safe & sound. However, I have neglected updates to this blog, and I sure have missed it.

I am working now in a group where I am easily the oldest person there. It reminds me of when I was working at my first job in Rochester. At the company where I worked, I was frequently called into meetings where I was usually the youngest to attend. I mentioned this to my father once, and he smirked. "Just wait a couple of years," he said. "You'll go from being youngest to oldest in no time."

Yep, he was right. I am the oldest now. In fact, some people there were born after I was in college. They could be my own kids.

What does all this mean? I find myself quite conflicted. I know that on the one hand, I feel a dread over it. Why should I be working with such young people? How does it make any sense that we would have anything enough in common to be working in a common effort? Doesn't this mean I've badly underachieved?

On top of this, the nagging existential thoughts sure don't help. How did I reach this point, I wonder. Where did the time go? How can I now be middle-aged, and how can so many people I meet be younger?

Further - why am I still in a corporate office, writing computer code? How could I have possibly spent my life this way? I'm trying to "scrape" out of this mode now by building my own business idea, but I hardly know where that will end up.

My son was just accepted into the college of his choice (you go, David!). He sometimes kids me about the "Dilbert" nature of corporate life. I hope he finds a more satisfying path.

No matter how either he or I go about life, though, aging is inevitable. One of the most compelling comments I ever heard on this issue was from the late George Harrison. In an interview a couple of years before his death, he contrasted being a Beatle - a "lad" who epitomized the bustling energy of youth - with his middle aged state as he faced worsening health problems. Harrison, who never shied from spirituality in his thinking or his music, spoke humbly of his mortality. With no apparent will to deny anything, "the Quiet Beatle" had only this to say of aging: "We all get there."

Actually, not all of us do. Many don't see older age. So far, I have been healthy throughout my life, and that is why I am here now. Many others die younger - from accidents, disease, or crime. Harrison's own friend and fellow Beatle - John Lennon - fell to an assassin's bullet at the age of 40, just as he was beginning a popular comeback. He didn't live to see his younger child grow up - but I have seen mine do so, having now outlived Lennon's age by five years. Imagine how the now adult Sean Lennon feels when he hears the song his father wrote for him, more than a quarter century ago, that glowingly declares "I can hardly wait to see you come of age - but I guess we'll both just have to be patient." Such a simple dream - one that I live every day - fell tragically out of reach for this celebrity and his family. I'm sure that he would have gladly traded away his great fame and fortune for something I now take for granted.

A couple of jobs ago, I wasn't the oldest there. Most of the people who were there were middle-aged or older, and they were often complacent, tired, resistant to change, and sometimes downright cynical. I found it stultefying. When I go to this new job and see young people - fresh, intelligent, energetic, and just warming up - I guess I shouldn't feel so old. I'm still among them, after all, and I'm trusted to fit in with them. I guess it means there's hope for me yet. The worst that could happen is to let myself be swallowed up in bitterness and doubt, as I've seen so often happen. Why, if I know the dangers, do I feel this attitude coming on, anyway? What sense is there in begrudging my age when it actually means the world has taken good care of me? Where is the gratitude for what is right, when there is so much that can go wrong?

Perhaps the answer is very simple. Age is a bitter pill to swallow, no matter how it comes. Even as I remain fairly young at heart and healthy in body, every day I feel the time passing, more and more acutely. Like George Harrison, my spirituality has helped guide me through youth and career, but, like him, I am spared from nothing, and I am just as surely headed out. I, too, will get there, and, for all I know, it may be soon. George Harrison died at the age of 58, and that same age is only 13 years away for me now.

How much longer do I really have?