Monday, May 5, 2008

May 5, 2008

I turned 49 years old today, the same age my father was when he baptized me in 1967. (My father, were he still alive, would turn 90 in another week and a half.) Last year, some journalist whose name I don't remember now put some rather withering perspective on the passage of time by noting that the same number of years -- forty -- had passed since the so-called "Summer of Love" in 1967 as had gone by in 1967 since the height of the Roarin' Twenties. I often go back in my mind to earlier times in my life that perhaps I'd like to re-live; however, as I've often said, there hasn't been any part of my life that I'd care to revisit if it meant that I'd also have to live out all the intervening years again. It's been a long journey to get where I am in life, and if I'm not always happy with the road I've taken, at least I'm smart enough to realize that there's no turning back now. I just wish I felt assured that the rest of my life -- whether it be five years or forty -- will be worth living, because from my perspective I see only more and more of the same. Such is the pall that a long-term sleep disorder casts over someone's existence.