Question Number One

I came across a link the other day that was to a web site that listed “50 Questions That Will Free Your Mind”. I have no idea if they actually will free your mind, but I thought that I would work my way through the entire list as a set of writing prompts. This is Question Number One:

1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

I am forty-nine years old. If I did not know how old I was I would suspect I was in my late thirties or early forties. I had a wealth of experience – thirty one years since I was eighteen – and I feel that wealth of experience. I feel it in the sense that I have perspective on things. I feel it in the sense that I know the value of things (their true value in the greater cosmological and philosophical sense). I think that, without knowing my age, I would still have the sense of my age.

I had an experience late last year that was revelatory. I was talking with a friend of mine and we were discussing retirement. At the time, I had roughly twenty years until retirement (nineteen now, if I retire at my approved social security age). I sat there and thought about the journey of the last twenty years and I was rocked back on my heels thinking that I had – twenty more years ahead of me. I thought about all of the physical journeys I had taken, all of the psychological journeys, all of the emotional journeys, and I thought that I get to do all of that over again. It will be different events, different incidents and accidents, but it will be in substance another twenty year journey. That is pretty awe inspiring I think. At least it awoke in me a sense of awe.