Thursday, March 20, 2003
Who's afraid of the big 2-1? - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER – This past Tuesday, I turned 21. I feel like echoing the sentiment of my fellow columnist Marty Beckerman. The sightlier, cruder scribbler, upon turning 20 a while back, wrote that he was: no longer a teen and not yet a man. Obviously, a play on poptart Britney Spears' recent song, which I won't invoke, because I was never hip. These all-too important years of development are in fact that, far too important. Yet, we don't spend nearly enough time dwelling on what has been. We're preoccupied at where we're going that unless something tragic or life-altering happens, we don't realise the parade that's passed us by. I look to the past with the requisite nostalgia and rancour that's expected of someone older. It is healthy to look to the past, because I believe that only from the past can we see the direction that our lives will invariably take. Perhaps subliminally, but it is there.
Upon turning 21, I am not endowed with vast expanses of wisdom, nor am I in the knowledge of what the meaning of life is, or what people are for. Perhaps at 22. We do expect however that with every passing year, we get a little wiser, if not a little less naive about life and all that it entails.
More and more, because of circumstance, I've become all the more introspective and find myself increasingly pensive. Seemingly, I want to return to the past. Oh no, I don't see myself wishing I were back in the past, for the past never returns, but really I want those little moments to reappear. Somehow I want those ever fleeting moments of youth to run through myself again. Those smells, those terrors one felt in their blood or bones. Those situations of joy or high angst, make up who I am. To feel those again, would somehow make me realise what's made me. It would, I am sure, give some meaning to this life thus far. To feel young, impressionable, or somehow freer, would perhaps calm the realisation that life is certainly not easy.
A while back, I stumbled into my parents' room and opened up a drawer that housed old photos. I glanced upon a few of them, which had been taken at a Christmas party, nearly a decade ago. After recovering (albeit slightly) from the horror of seeing how I looked – I do not photograph well – what I noticed most were the people in the shots. The house is still the same, though the walls are lighter. The people who were over that night, and over so often on many other nights, are not the same anymore. I realised then and there, sitting at the edge of the bed, how amazing the turnover rate is in one's life. So many people, whether family, friends or mere acquaintances come in and out of your life. I really was shocked at how many people in those photos, don't bother writing, nor visit, or even call. It seems they've just disappeared. Or more appropriately, faded away. See, you never notice these things right away. They slip out, while new ones slip in, and you never notice. You think they'll hang around forever, and without much of an after thought, they're gone. Went on to their own families, throwing their own Christmas parties, starting their own lives. You don't think about this until many years later, when you do stop to take stock. By then it is too late to retrieve any of this, or any of them.
The pace quickens in these years. Pressures from within and without capture your attention. Getting off of the freeway of life, for a brief breather to look back, allows you to feel the brunt of time passing. It allows you to value the little things, which so many of us, all of us, seem to take ever so for granted. It's enough to make you weep. You're getting older, and hopefully growing at the same time. You feel the journey to death quicken.
On Monday evening, I sat down to dinner with around 13 friends from high school. It was a pleasant dinner that gave me an excuse to don my suit and my latest French cuffed shirt, with matching cufflinks no less. After it all, we were standing around and I decided to make a few impromptu remarks. I thanked everyone for coming, and reminded by the slightly lugubrious events in my life, I told those assembled how nice it was to be amongst old friends. Mind you, not everyone there knew each other well. However we all had that common denominator of being from the same high school, pathways crossing one another, thanks to the exigencies of time and space.
Last evening, thanks to a long drive back into the city, I looked out the window to see the passing of buildings and passerby. I thought of a lot of things. I thought of my parents, my father and mother, how our lives have changed, and the future. It is far from bleak, not because I know what will happen, but because I know it won't be. I perished further thought of where I'll be at any point in the future, because I could not stand it. Not only are outside realities uncertain, but certainly charting the course of one's heart and mind needs so much more than a plan. What it needs though, we hardly know.
***
During my remarks on Monday night at the restaurant, I quoted a passage by Willa Cather. I am forever in debt to Warren Beatty, who three years ago brought this to my attention. It was ever so appropriate at Monday night's gathering that I uttered that quote. Herewith is what I said, with apologies to Willa Cather: "Only solitary men know the true joy of friendship. Other men have their families, but to the solitary man, his friends are everything." I certainly meant it, as ever.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .