At the breakfast table in the morning dark just before dawn, I read a sweet and slightly sentimental poem. It’s called “Aging in Place” and is about an older man who, upon seeing his wife’s bare shoulder, realizes he still lusts after her the way he did when they were in their 20s. And much like when they were younger, he’s still not sure what she sees in him, but is thankful (I assume) that she sees it nonetheless.
For the romantics out there, I think this is what many of us imagine – a distant future that slows down and becomes the type of comfort that feels like well-worn jeans and wintry fireplaces. This is also what we mourn when it doesn’t come to pass – a future that we had hoped would take on more grace, nuance, and subtle surprise as the sparks change from young lust to something with more padding and history behind it… we imagine that as we learn to slow down, we’ll pay more attention to the dancing glow of the coals and embers as opposed to the jumping flames of the roaring fire – though there’s beauty and passion in both.
Of course, that’s not how it plays out for everyone. At least that was my thinking when I finished reading the poem. Sweet though it was, long and storied (40 and 50 year) histories are off the table for a lot of people, myself included. Endings happen (divorce, death, breakups, affairs). But no sooner did I feel the slight tug of lament mixed with self-pity, I also began to question my sense of time. If done well – meaning if we practice care and pay attention – ten or twenty deeply amazing years can be made to stretch and fill an entire lifetime and can certainly be as fulfilling, if not more so, than 40 years of meh. I’ve had connections where it felt like we knew each other far longer than we did. I’ve had single dates that felt like I had been hanging out with life-long friends. In this moment after reading the poem, I had to remind myself that the story starts now, or tomorrow, or whenever it starts. After all, what constitutes the rest of a life necessarily begins with the present moment.
Frequently, especially when I feel inadequate in my “progress,” I need to remind myself that in a life full of potential new beginnings, there’s no wrong time to start (a job, a hobby, a relationship, a friendship). There are no gold stars being awarded for longevity or finishing the race in any particular fashion. There’s no wrong time to discover new things, new people, new cities, or revisit old passions. Often, I think about these things in terms of re-establishing old habits and routines (mostly writing and exercise) or building new ones (maybe painting or a supper club or a writer’s group or a monthly hike). Often, I think about these things when I wish to be more deliberate with my life. This is the “I’m going to get up early and write” type of thinking. This is the “I’m going to date with intentionality” type of thinking. This is the “I’m going to start submitting poems again” type of thinking.
But the poem triggered something else – something that I can’t quite put my finger on that seems to have something to do with the confluence of past, present, and future. Something that has to do with the wonder of not knowing what comes next, what will feel new, what will feel familiar, or where this life will twist and turn. There have only been a handful of relationships – maybe two in the last eight years – in which I (or we) dared to think about what it might look like to grow old together. Because I believe life is meant to be shared, this is a concept that appeals to me on the deepest level, but also forces me to think about those times when I was in that emotional space compared to where I am now.
Whether I like it or not, my thinking on this particular subject is influenced by the book Be the Person You Want to Find. To some degree, the premise of the book is that we can’t rely on others for our happiness… we can’t rely on others to stick around or stick it out and therefore, we should work towards providing for ourselves those things we seek in others. More deeply, it suggests that we already possess everything we need. I don’t fully agree with that type of individualism – by which I mean, I want to believe we already possess everything we need, but I suspect there are things most of us can only get or see from having relationships with others. Some of those internal qualities need to be coaxed out of us. Other people can be mirrors for us and as such, they help us rid ourselves of self-delusion. The best relationships (either with others or with ourselves) are full of honesty and care. They drive us to be better people, drive us to get closer to our own personal truths, drive us to be more patient, compassionate, and understanding.
All of that said, after the last time that I envisioned a joint future with someone else didn’t work out, I set out, somewhat intentionally with lots of room for flexibility, to “be the person I wanted to find” – to be (in some ways) more like the person I thought I found. Doing so meant reflecting on the best parts of the partner I thought would be my forever person, examining the future life I thought I was losing when our relationship ended, and trying to navigate towards building some version of that life anyway. Since I felt like I was starting over and because I had become so entangled/enthralled/enamored with this other person and the life I thought we would have together, I tried, desperately, to understand what pieces were mine, what pieces were hers, and how they all fit together. I tried to get to the heart of what mattered to me. I tried to figure out what to keep, what to save for later, what to toss aside, and what to modify or pursue.
During that process (which continues to this day), I realized a few different things:
I liked living in the city (a city). I love love love sunshine. I was open, if not eager, to move somewhere else and get away from the east coast grind and gray. I wanted to slow down and be more present in the world. I wanted to add more beauty and art (nature, music, visual arts, and writing) in to my life. I wanted to get better at being alone and independent (meaning I don’t want any future partners to feel like I’m a needy drain on them – though I think everyone feels drained at some point). I wanted to cultivate a deeper sense of, and appreciation for, kindness – in myself, in others, and in the world.
Not all of those things were “new discoveries.” I had always liked the week I spent at the shore with my family because it involved slowing down, being present, being by the water, and lots of sunshine. I have always enjoyed the arts and spending time in nature – one of my favorite days of the year was a sun-drenched annual blues festival in July. And ever since traveling west to Colorado Springs early in my publishing career, I’ve always had a slight distaste for the east coast hustle and grind. Whenever I would travel back to Philly and experience the east coast temperament, I would wonder why I live there.
Ever since that future vision of a shared life collapsed – I’ve been pursuing at least one, if not all of those things that I deemed important or desirable in my construction of a life well-lived. I moved to Memphis, Tennessee for a slower life, warmer weather, and to be surrounded by music. My move to State College, Pennsylvania – though not as deliberate – gave me more than enough opportunity to practice solitude and writing and it had the extra bonus of introducing me to new friends and what new friendships as a single adult (meaning not based on my kid’s friends, my partner’s friends, or some shared past) could look like. It also revealed to me how much I appreciate (need) sunshine and how little I care for harsh winters. My move to San Francisco is, and has been, an attempt at bringing all of those desires and realizations together in one place.
People will sometimes say that they lost themselves in a relationship… that they abandoned who they were, or made too many compromises and sacrifices. I had the opposite experience. I found myself in that relationship. If there’s any shame to its demise it’s that I lost trust in myself afterwards. If you take the other person seriously, that’s bound to happen when they choose to leave. Because it had been rejected by this other person, I began to doubt my vision of the future I thought we’d have. It took years with many setbacks to regain some clarity. It took a few false starts and a few missteps to regain the confidence that I knew (mostly) what I wanted way back then. It took time to learn that the rejection didn’t mean the vision was bad – it just meant that it wasn’t for them. It took landing out here on the west coast to get to a point where I feel like this is the life I thought we would have. And petty as it seems, there’s a smug sense of validation in feeling as though I can finally say this is what I wanted and she’s missing out.
Of course, there’s a downside to being the person you want to find when that’s partially based on people you already found. Pursuing the life I thought we’d have is, at times, a reminder that I thought we’d be doing this together. Being able to “say” I’ve reclaimed doing all of the things I enjoyed doing with this other person boarders on being a pyrrhic victory. If, as they say, the best revenge is to live a good life, I think going one better is to not seek revenge at all. The harsh reality is that we both lost the vision we had been co-creating, and we’ve both had to battle back to some sense of living the life we want to live. The soft reality, for me, is in acknowledging the vision was good – she chose differently. I respect that.
Coda
If I’ve said a lot of these things before, it’s because, sometimes, I need to remind myself of where I’ve been, where I think I’m going, and the distance – dare I say progress – between the two.
There’s an odd irony in the paths she and I have taken. An irony that supports the notion that we seek in others the familiar and the new and some of what we feel might be missing within. Based on what I know of her time in Tennessee, she has since adopted a more suburban lifestyle – one that I suspect mirrors what her married life looked like. I, on the other hand, have adopted a city lifestyle which mirrors the life she and I briefly lived in Philadelphia. A distinction, if there is one, might be that while in the present moment both of us could be trying to recapture some part of our past (the familiar), when we were together, I think I was more invested in breaking from my past and building something new than she was. I think I was more interested in learning from her than she was from me – and when unbalanced like that, it’s a dance that’s often unsustainable. Endurance and patience peter out.
My hope, going forward, is to remain open to the twists and turns, to the knocks and wobbles, and to going it my way until someone entices me, once again, to go a different way and, once again, envision a shared future – aging in whatever place and manner we choose to age.