I’ve been in a very strange place recently – I think introverts call it Reflection, a quiet place just down the road from Contemplation. I have to say it’s not a place I have spent much time in … which can’t be too surprising for those of you who know me to be an extroverted Taurus, but it is catching me off guard and making me think.
Now I’m good with the thinking thing, it’s what it makes me think about that has me a wee but uncomfy. And then, in this fragile, vulnerable, uncomfortable place, I make a mistake. I listen to Neil Young’s song ‘Old Man’.
“Old man, look at my life
I’m a lot like you were”
I was 22 when that song was released. 22! What did I know?! Nothing is the answer. None of us do at 22. How can we, we’ve hardly lived. The great irony of course is that at 22 we think we do know everything, at least those of us who have not yet visited Reflection or Contemplation, think we know everything.
As the story goes, Neil Young wrote that song after he’d purchased a ranch in California. Paid $350,000, a huge sum of money, over two million in today’s dollars. An old ranch hand was showing him around his new property and asked him a question.
“How can you afford to buy this ranch?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” came the answer.
The exchange inspired his song ‘Old Man’.
That old caretaker was the ‘old man’ in the lyrics and Young was recognizing that being young is just a stepping stone, a stage and that the young will eventually become old.
“24 and there’s so much more.”
Young captured the sense of limitless possibility we all have when we’re young, and the arrogance to think that those possibilities never end.
So when I say none of us know anything at 22, I’m wrong. Neil Young did. Nailed it. But for me some fifty-four years later I’m left to visit Reflection. Why was I so hell bent on getting there. Wherever there was?! So focused on the journey I took no time to reflect upon each moment of it. Insatiable for what was next, but oddly unsatisfied by what was right now. If I could have a word with that raw, callow, ambitious, arrogant Tony, I’d tell him to reflect, take a moment, take it in. Value it for what it is; it’s priceless and it’s a currency that can be frittered away, as I suspect I have done, much of my life.
So why now? Why is good old ‘hail fellow, well met’ Tony Peyton all of a sudden going there. Not quite sure really, except I am. Thinking it has something to do with my age. It’s different now, looking through the other end of the telescope. I’m the Old Man now, looking at my life, I’m a lot like I was..
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4 Responses
After listening to his friend discussing history with great enthusiasm, he said, ‘Why don’t you do a degree in the subject.’ His friend replied, ‘You’ve got to be joking, John, I’m 76 years old. I’ll be 80 by the time I’m finished.’
His friend replied, ‘How old will you be if don’t do it?’
Thank you Harold. You offer great perspective, although I have noted an additional filter through which I make decisions these days; I tend to give long range planning documents a pass and I don’t buy toilet paper in bulk without thinking how long it will last. My wife recently returned from shopping with my favourite soap, Irish Spring. There were twenty-four bars of soap. I remember thinking, “hmmm, perhaps she’s more of an optimist than I had thought.”
I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. Tony
Deep! Truly deep! This is a good one to get us all thinking. If we are lucky enough to be able to remember back to whom we were in our 20’s we are fortunate.
Thank you Debbie and you’re right, memory is so precious. The photography of words. Regrets ‘I have a few’, and one of them is that I didn’t journal, jot my stories down in real time. Now I’m left to try and remember them, long ago giving up on the need to be accurate. As a storyteller that is so freeing, but as someone trying to recall those moments, so frustrating. Thank you, as always for your comments.