Touchstones

I've discovered that nothing I see in the mirror or in pictures can make me feel as old as other people's kids. I went to the high school graduation of my business partner and friend, Ronnie's daughter last night. I have a vivid memory of her as a three year old jumping up and down on his knee, while her little blonde ringlets bounced in perfect Shirley Temple style. Now she's off to a full ride scholarship at the University of Oregon, where my wife Lindsay was graduating when we first met. Yikes.

Still, there's something comforting about the milestones and routines of life. The births, graduations, Bar Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, the weddings, and even the funerals. These universal touchstones create a context for the continuum of life, to remind us that our time here is finite and is indeed passing while we're busy making our plans. When we are old, they remind us of our younger days, and they validate our accomplishments and transitions we're young. They give us things to look forward to, and things to wistfully reminisce about. They create a commonwealth for old and young that unites us, despite a disparity of age and experience.

The speeches and ceremony did tend to drone on, especially the ones given by the principal and other scholastic bureaucrats whose careers center around telling the endlessly revolving door of kids how unique and special they are. Still, the very act of going through these motions serves the purpose for which it was intended. The seniors get to celebrate and be honored among their peers, while being endorsed and welcomed across the threshold of adulthood by the grownups, which is a once in a lifetime occurrence for them. For the adults—suffering dutifully through yet another cycle of pomp and circumstance—it serves to remind us that people were born, educated, married, and buried long before we came, and will continue to do so long after we are a forgotten footnote lost to the sands of time. I guess we get to decide for ourselves if that fact gives meaning to our days, or not.

As the heady days of summer kick off again, I'm often reminded, as I see little kids running and playing with the kind of abandon and freedom that only they can generate, of how I felt at that age. I still carry sharp memories of firecrackers, bike rides, and a head bursting with plans and shenanigans. Of how endless the days felt as I wiled away entire afternoons carefree, with a slingshot and a bag of empty soda cans down at the train trestle, trying to learn a skill so that I could successfully fight crime as an adult. Time well spent, if you ask me.

Though those days are long gone, they've never really left. I still think of them whenever I see a kid racing down the road on his bike, no shirt on and headed to the river with his fishing pole. If he sees me at all, it's as some old guy that can't possibly understand who he is or how he feels. But as long as I carry those memories with me, I do understand, in a way that he can't even fathom, yet. So when I'm annoyed with the school bus I'm stuck behind, as I so often am, it helps me to remember the view from inside those windows, looking out, as opposed to merely looking in. If you forget what that was like, then everyone is a stranger, always one step removed from you. Merely objects in space.

It's one of the great tragedies that we only understand the world and our lives when reflecting on them down the length of our years. In the moment, it's a confusing cacophony of impressions and emotions, misperceptions and gut feelings. Watching events unfold like random images that pass by the window of the school bus. It's often only when it's too late that we sort out what was really going on, and what was accomplished in us, or lost in the moment. But for as heartbreaking as that can be, it's far worse to never gain the perspective at all. To continue in myopic disconnection from everyone and everything, never understanding the continuum of connectivity between us. That is the true tragedy of our nature and existence here. It's "Us and Them." Or worse, "Me Against the World".

When we see ourselves in everyone else, no matter how different they seem, we have arrived. Then every birth, graduation, Bar Mitzvah, Quinceañera, marriage, and funeral is our own. That place is our home.

"May the Grace of God be with you always in your heart

May you know the truth inside you from the start

May you have the strength to know you are a part of

Something Beautiful."