On Gettting Old

You thought your ass would age like fine wine... but now you look like the Undertaker.

Look at you, you old man. You thought you could handle three craft beers, but now it's morning and you feel as though someone dragged your guts behind a truck for several miles. Drink some coffee, elder millennial. Hydrate and pretend it's working. Slump in your chair behind the computer screen for some quality time with the old PC. Notice how your brain is sluggishly crawling over words like a wounded snail? It won't be long before you start forgetting stuff, like people's names or where you put the goddamn keys. "It's always been like that," you say. Fine, make excuses. The truth is, your getting old.

Happens to the best of us, you know. Look at that picture of the Undertaker at the top of this post. He's fifty years old. Of course, for most of those fifty years he's been in a wrestling ring, which equates to like one-hundred and fifty years worth of wear, but still, you have to admit that it's depressing watching him move at this point. Your joints might be fine, hell, you may even been in fine shape, yet you and I know that your recovery is compromised at this point. You can't push yourself like you used to do. You probably have already subconsciously stopped doing so but you haven't realized it until now.

"So what?" you say. Bodies are flesh and blood. Are we supposed to mourn our youth like the death of a loved one? What is so great about youth in the first place? When I was young, I was dumb as a load of bricks. I was a mess of hormones and anxiety, and I couldn't talk to a stranger without fumbling my hands around in the air. Look at the decisions I made, and tell me that I should want that version of myself back. Behold the amount of wisdom that I have accrued, and marvel at my modified decision making processes. The fruits of age and experience, right?

It's a hard argument to make when you're still hung over in the middle of the day, your stomach writhing around like a struck snake. The bad thing is that when you are thirty, you're just starting to notice that some pieces of you are not functioning optimally. You're just experiencing a taste of how it's going to be, and that horror makes it worse.

Keep on climbing into the ring, Undertaker. Keep working for that pay day. Your pectorals have disappeared and your skin has the tone and texture of sun-dried leather, but still you trot out the black leather coat, the wide-brimmed, hat, and the gravelly voice. You hope that the memory we have of you will somehow supersede our current perception. You are counting on the great power of nostalgia.

I want to end this with some sort of message, but all I can think of is that nostalgia is overrated, and that my stomach aches with the strain of processing half-digested beer. Maybe there is no message, just random speculation masquerading as an essay. You've read the title on the top of this blog, no? Read it again, if you will.