Mirror, mirror on the wall...

“(Fame) I'm gonna live forever
Baby, remember my name…”

Lyrics Jacques Levy –

Musical Fame

The electric shaver hummed as I moved it to the left side of my face, when I glanced up and first noticed.

In fact it was a bit startling, not just because it was so apparent, but also because it had eluded me, unseen for so long – my whole life in fact.  There is no other way to say this, but this morning when I looked in the mirror, my father was staring back at me!

My dad!!  What the heck was he doing there?!

In that moment, it seemed odd that I hadn’t seen it before.  I mean, in reality I have performed this ritual thousands of times.  Maybe I hadn’t taken notice, because shaving is one of those oft repeated, thoughtless habits one performs…you know, routine activities – wandering minds.

Little doubt, however, for those brief moments, ‘he’ had my attention.

This event brought to mind what I have heard said for decades by folk in their golden… thoughtful… mature …senior…less relevant hmmm, I know, “we have survived and are still on the planet” years – yeah, that’s it! 

You have heard it too:

“When I looked in the mirror today, I wondered who that old man/woman was staring back at me.  I know I’m _____ (fill in the blank), but I don’t feel like I’m that old!”

Not much thought given…

I am not often reminded the years are slipping by with the increasing velocity of a brakeless, runaway freight train, maybe because there is still plenty to occupy my mind…places to go…people to see, OR maybe because if there is nothing to do, I make an effort to manufacture projects to occupy my time.

This morning there was none of that, and for the briefest of moments I saw my father as a 67-year-old man…a tired looking 67-year-old man…staring at me with equal curiosity.

Older people I know, talk about the depressingly unrelenting markers in their lives.  Decade birthdays, are a common example:

“Man,” they say, “I just turned 30.  My life is over!” or

“People tell me, life begins at 40, but it seems to me this is a long way from a beginning!”

For me, those decade markers slipped by like any other day – no feelings of passing milestones…no moments of reflective melancholy…no sense that youth or middle age were gone forever.

Nope!  If anything reminds me that time has slipped by it is an old high school classmate telling me they are grandparents, or by now great grandparents!  There are a few others that have drawn my attention to the current period I occupy in life’s expedition – but not many.

The thing is - the ‘I’ – the little creature/soul/life energy who lives inside of me doesn’t feel any age at all…I simply am!  If I were to try and express it, as I look out the windows of the ‘organic mud house’ in which I live, I do not feel any different now than I did when I was 5 or 10 or 40 or 60! 

Of course, my body is older…it’s batteries slowly running down in spite of a daily – or rather nightly – recharge.  Regardless of all the rejuvenating activity that occurs when we sleep, it seems that even the best ‘genetic rechargeables,’ imperceptibly reduce their capacity to fully refill, and over time physical capacity diminishes.

It is also true that I have learned a lot more stuff since I was a youngster, and little doubt the things I have put in my mind influence the things that I do, or do not do.

BUT in the context of life in this world, I truly see myself as a timeless passenger sitting in the control room of a piece of living protoplasm identified as ‘Ted,’ pushing buttons, pulling levers and filling the hard drives with information that provides my ‘space suit’ nourishment, protection from the elements and built in routines, many of which run on automatic pilot (e.g. breathing, heartbeat, digestion, injury repair, disease destruction, among so many others), permitting ‘me’ to focus on other things…you know like shaving!

Seeing my ‘father’ in the mirror was startling, because regardless of the unrelenting effects of time and gravity, I still face life with the same optimism and excitement I always have.   Maybe the ‘garment’ I have worn for so many decades is dog-eared and a little thin around the edges…BUT a garment nonetheless – nothing more than the address where I have spent my life. 

It won’t be too awfully long now, when I will be looking for a new residence…a fresh place to live…a home where I can peek out through a another set of windows to see what lies just outside…a place where I will fill the hard drives with new and interesting information.

I wonder if there will be mirrors?

- ted