Member-only story
65 Today
And closer to becoming invisible?
The wheel has turned once more, slowly, making strange grinding noises as it continues its path, and now I’m here today, 65 years old.
Every birthday I’m the oldest I’ve been. The nature of time makes us live in a perpetual state of seeing ourselves as becoming older. At any one moment, I am the oldest I’ve ever been.
Okay, not a profound statement. It’s a statement of the obvious. But obvious or not, cliched or not, it has implications for how we see ourselves and conduct our lives. Especially as we live in a culture obsessed with age, youth and appearance.
At some time along this road, I had a growing sense that the cultural moment was no longer mine. The young upstarts had snatched the baton from my hands and were running with it. I had crossed a line towards invisibility.
The cultural markers and references we once took as part of common parlance become more niche. The majority no longer relate to ideas and references that had their moment before they were born. They now need to be explained and described. But usually, they’re ignored as irrelevant.
And this is the start of what will continue and become more magnified, until talkin’ bout my g-g-generation is gone, and no one is left.
