To a friend turning 50
When I was a kid, I always hated Sunday afternoons, with each minute ticking by bringing me closer to Monday morning and another long week of school. I remember feeling a kind of paralysis as I would resist any activity that might make my remaining time speed up. So, I would mope around feeling the loss of each second, until the day was gone (and wasted). It isn’t so much that I hated school as I regretted the lost freedom and opportunities, the vista of possibilities that, on Friday afternoon, the weekend seemed to represent. Turning 50 has given me a bit of the same feeling. Suddenly I am in the Sunday afternoon of life and I feel the same regret – why didn’t I do more, why did I waste Saturday morning sleeping; or now: why did I never go to grad school or learn to play the piano? Tonight, many of us will be gathering to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday, and I was trying to work up a few words of encouragement – Life begins at 50! Fifty is the new forty!— but the words that keep coming to mind are Marlowe’s ,sorry, that’s Marvell, - see Elaine’s comment below – (‘but at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.’) Sounds pessimistic, I know, but maybe a sense of urgency is not the worst quality to take past the mid-century mark. It might be what’s needed for me to make the most of that “Sunday afternoon.” As for my friend, my sense of his life is that he will keep on doing what he’s doing and have none of the above regrets. So, Happy Birthday, friend! Avante!