Today
I’m feeling ornery. I guess it’s like that a lot. I’m sitting here in the library at columbia trying to get work done while everyone around me is younger and doing stuff that I don’t think I understand.
I guess my point is that, in a lot of ways the process of growing old is one of continuous disappointment and systematic lowering of one’s expectations of oneself. There’s something really dangerous about the constant refrain we tell our kids “you can do anything you set your mind to.” It’s really not true, but a lot of people internalize that message and its unspoken corollary “and if you don’t then it’s all your fault.”
There are joys to be had, to be sure, mostly from the awesome people in your life that you get to choose to surround yourself with. It’s a good thing, I guess to no longer feel that sense of equity, the internalized knowledge that you could, if you set your mind to it, do what anyone else who set their minds to whatever they’re doing did. But you can’t. There’s a some 20 year old blond chick at the table diagonally from me struggling through neuroscience. Just the fact of that, the fact that she’s forcing herself to do that right now means, almost necessarily, that she’s going to have a better, more successful and happier life that I possibly can. And I really kind of feel that way whenever I enter the gates at 250 Joralemon. It sucks. It really fucking sucks.
