20 Years

Aging sharpens perspective even as it dulls the mind.

Age may also just be a number, they say, and I’m sure there is some truth to that, but the body has a way of reminding you that it’s a meaningful number, as much as you might try to ignore it.

20 years ago, I had moved back to Houston and began my professional career, independent, uncertain of the future, and single without a prospect. Today, I’m 12 years into marriage with three adopted children, attempting a second career, and doing my best to punch these words out without grabbing the cheap yet admittedly useful reading glasses I recently purchased. 20 years from now, I can’t project where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing, but I will be on the cusp of my 70s and all that entails for one’s health and personal pursuits.

It’s a sobering thought.

I know 50 is approaching, but it seems to me it’s still going to feel as if it snuck up on me. I’m neither afraid nor anxious about it (my wife even less so), but what strikes me most lately is how 20 years doesn’t feel at all like it used to. I can remember the very day I stepped out as a professional, as vividly as I can see everything in this room right now, and yet, it was two full decades ago. There was so much time ahead, it seemed, yet here we are now, as if it swiftly and imperceptibly sped along with no regard for our consideration, and there are no signs of slowing.

My grandparents’ passing this year and my parents’ last and final move to a new home has done much to alter my perspective. The fact alone that my grandparents’ were roughly my age when I was born, or the still lucid memory of celebrating my father’s 50th, for that matter, is enough to do it.

At 20, it can already feel as if you’ve lived a lifetime. Up until that point, you’ve been through so many developmental changes to have a sense of having been a different person at different times. So much has happened, yet so little relative time has actually passed.

When 40 arrived, I barely noticed. For many, if not most, of us, it’s the “busy season of life,” as they call it. Kids, career, marriage—everything is rolling along with its own relentless momentum, and you don’t (at least, I didn’t) purposefully take the time to ponder where you actually are.

At 60 — well, I can’t speak to that as of yet, but I’m starting to get an idea of what to expect. Somewhere between 40 and 60, your body, if nothing else, rudely reminds you of the score, in case you weren’t paying attention. This, I find, is also roughly when your attitude and perspective on the passage of time shifts, if you have allowed yourself any opportunity to be undistracted and observant. The time you’ve spent is just that — the time you’ve spent, and it isn’t coming back. Moreover, it didn’t take nearly as long to spend it as you carelessly imagined at 20. With hope, you have few regrets.

My kids are on the cusp of everything, and I desperately want them to understand all of this, as any parent does, as I look ahead to the future along with them, though with different eyes. Yet, there is truth in the saying that “youth is wasted on the young.” I hope this is not the case for them over the next rapid 20 years, but there are some things only experience can provide. I hope it teaches them sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, may I make the meantime meaningful. Time is a gift, and not a second to be wasted, I discover more each day. I pray the next 20 pass with hope and satisfaction.