the age of reckoning

this past saturday
as i sat with my dog on a beach towel
in the middle of central park

waiting for SEVEN hours to get tickets
to the public theater's production of "hamlet"

i had more than ample time
to people watch

so for seven hours
more or less
that's just what i did...

being that this is new york city
there was every age, color and variety on display

certainly plenty of other theatre folks
like myself
waiting in line

but also tons of moms and dads with strollers
business types wearing their best conservative casual chic
ladies on horseback, kids on bikes
and more joggers than one could have ever imagined

it's curious that out of all these people
the two that stood out most
were a father and son who were running together
just as naturally and casually as could be

there was nothing special
that i noticed
about the two of them

just a dad and a kid
on yet another saturday morning run

but here they were

and to me they seemed the perfect illustration
of time gone by

one had his looks
his youth
his hair

the other had intelligence
a world view
and priceless life experiences

i suppose i remember them now
because i was struck by the fact that
This Is The Payoff

as we get older we gain so much..
character, confidence, a richness of being
but in essence we lose ourselves

or at least we lose ourselves as reflected back to us

we lose the way we'd once looked to the world
and the way we'd once looked in the mirror

there's a quote from christopher hampton's play
"les liaisons dangereuses"
that "vanity and happiness are incompatible"

and the older i get
the more this seems to be true

we are at the mercy of time...
even at the prime age of twenty six
i'm cognizant of that fact

i don't look like i did at eighteen
but the day will come when i'll think to myself
that i don't look like i did at thirty

or at forty
or at fifty
and so on and so on

a life lived wishing for the impossible
is a doomed one

and i don't intend to lead a doomed existence

i believe
that the father and son
each has his own story to tell
his own experiences to discover

we can pass through this world
jogging side by side
surrounded by the lushness of nature

ever changing
ever evolving
ever growing old

but always alert to the fact
that this is our body
our shell

and not at all who we really are
inside...