NOT A CHILD , NOT YET AN OLD MAN

Orhan Pamuk says this about Black in his novel , ‘My name is Red’ . “I looked at the world , Not a child , not yet an old man.”.

On the same day I read these lines , by some coincidence , me and a good friend of mine , were having our usual discussions on career , midlife crisis , how life did not turn out as we wanted it to , how in a couple of years we will turn 30 and we don’t  really know what we want to do  and so on. We do this regularly . Like , two addicts , who confess to each other how hopeless their addiction is . And then we promise each other , that we will do something about it.  We do this every time even though we haven’t done anything about it yet , perhaps to draw solace from the fact that , each of us is not alone in feeling that way. It’s like we have lived around 28 years of our lives , and we are clueless as to whether we spent them all well , as much as we are clueless what to do with the next 40-45 years.

I would love to be younger again , not for anything else , but because of the fact that , being younger means having more hope. When I was young , I had a lot of hope. Age was on my side. And I could fly into bouts of fantasy , and had even the luxury of hoping it to turn to reality , just because I had age on my side. I am only 18 , I would tell myself , that meant a lot of life to live , and that meant enough time for any fantasy to be turned into reality. It was incredibly naïve but , it was also a great source of strength –this hope. I remember agonizing over spending two rupees more , to buy an express bus ticket , instead of the slower ones. I more so remember telling myself , on those occasions , that by 25 , I will have Mercedes at my disposal. I am 28 , and no I don’t have a Mercedes , but yeah that hope , helped me get through.

Similarly , I could always get an incredibly beautiful , smart girl who would be oh so totally devoted to me , I would be world famous , I would have established a business empire and so on. All fantasies , all naïve , but all of them represented hope for the future , and gave a certain strength to face it.

And as one grows older , the flights of fantasy are toned down , as one sees more of the world and how it works. As life passes you by , you not only realize that your fantasies and hopes were rather naïve , you also find yourself unable now to fantasize with the same vigor ,when you were younger , perhaps just a child in a certain sense. At a certain age , your hope is slowly replaced by a fear for the future.  You have lived a certain life so far , and either you make your peace with that way of life ,or panic.

But when I read the lines I mentioned in the beginning , it kind of got me thinking. I am not a child anymore , and while those flights of fantasies were great , they give one hope , but they just don’t work. At a certain age , you are not only in a position to see them for the childish stuff that they actually were , but more importantly , also remember the strength that they gave you . You are still in a position to hope , because you are not yet an old man , but old enough to understand and see the world and your life in it , for what it is. Your hope is now tempered by a certain experience of the world , and you are all the more better for it. You can perhaps now enjoy the world , for what it is , rather than what you want it to be and hope to find your special place in it and perhaps even hope to change it a little.

Yes , Not to be a child and not yet to be an old man , I guess that’s the ideal state in life.

Is that why they say ,life begins at 30 ? Or was it 40?