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I was thinking today about how our society is completely horrified of aging. How we choose to ignore that we as a species in fact do grow old as the years go by. We try to prevent it with skin creams. We fight with plastic surgery. We battle time’s onslaught with prescription and otherwise illegal drugs. None of it works.

Plastic surgery makes the majority of its recipients look even older. They end up looking like they are just trying too hard. Plus they all end up looking the same like in that creepy Twilight Zone episode from the 1950’s. Skin creams do absolutely nothing other than drain our already bleeding bank accounts. And drugs, well they help the pharmaceutical companies tighten their stranglehold on all of us.

We don’t like to watch old people on television or in the movies either. Maybe some already famous actor will be given a token role in a tear jerking family film as the tender-hearted grandfather or the crotchety old neighbor with a soul roughly chiseled out of gold with insights from a life’s history behind him that he shares to save the troubled youth from going down the wrong path toward naughtiness. He might even get his long overdue Oscar for his efforts.

We’ll gather around the flat screen at home to watch the comedy show guest starring the matronly and blue-haired former hot starlet saying dirty lines and acting in completely inappropriate scenes. We’ll laugh and joke about it at the water cooler on Monday and she’ll win her Emmy that some young six-pack stomached hunky actor barely out of his teens will have to carry off stage for her at the end of her acceptance speech in which she’ll name check people that nobody’s heard of since the 1940’s.

The aged are mostly relegated to the sidelines in our culture. We don’t respect their wisdom, knowledge of the world or the history they can teach us. But somehow we elect them into political office for those very same reasons. We don’t think they are worthy of driving, working or being our next-door neighbors because they might lower property values. If a man is too old to work in your office, how is it he is capable of being President of our country? I for one will never understand that pretzel logic.

In other cultures they honor and respect aging. Older members of the family are held in high esteem and their opinions not only matter, they are even asked for. Village elders are looked to for answers on life’s tough questions and depended on for how to shape the future. Here we ignore them and force them into retirement villages with shared televisions and unused ping pong tables.

Don’t get me wrong I’m as guilty of doing it as the next guy. I argue with my parents and ignore their advice as often as possible. Questioning authority is a part of how I was raised and I do think it is important to never follow blindly no matter who is leading. I always try to educate myself so I can make an informed decision whenever it’s possible. Somehow I know that one is going to come back and bite me on the ass with my kids. I hope it does anyway.

Recently I got back in touch with my very first drum teacher. I started taking lessons with him when I was ten or eleven years old. At the time he seemed like a wise and experienced adult to me. While in actuality he was eighteen or nineteen years old, just a kid himself. But I learned so much from him. He talked to me about things other grown-ups wouldn’t come close to addressing with me. We didn’t just have drum lessons. Man, we had life lessons. We talked about music and books. We talked about girls and how to be cool. Like most other “old people” he didn’t talk down to me. Most importantly he showed me how to be genuine.

Talking to him now I get the same feeling inside that I did all those years ago in that tiny, sweaty, loud and stinky drum room in the back of Action Drum & Guitar on Balboa Blvd. I feel alive and open. Maybe some more inches under my belt and a head worth of lost hair along the way, but the old feelings about the newness and freshness of life come right back to me. Here we are as middle age men. I’m just passing forty and he’s at fifty. Both of us are married now with young children and are experiencing life from this side of things. The great part of it is that I find myself still learning from him. The interesting part is that I think I might even be teaching him some stuff too.

I guess that’s my point in all this ranting and raving. I had my ninth infusion today and my second heart surgery is one week from tomorrow. So right now I feel like crap. Tomorrow I’ll probably feel better. I should just be getting back to feeling pretty good by the time they put me under in the hospital up in Boston next week. Needless to say, not looking forward to it. I’m nervous and fidgety. I flip flop between denial, ignoring it completely and unable to think about anything else at all. Not quite at sheer panic mode yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.

Anyway, back to what I was getting at before… In America we hold beauty and youth’s bejeweled throne up high on the shoulders of muscular young men and Barbieish young women with after market parts installed, skin stretched to impossible tightness and tummies tucked with ass fat shoved into their cheeks. They worship at their own mirrors. It has become the United States of Narcissism. We pledge allegiance to ourselves if we never get old in any way, shape or form. Gym memberships, hair dye and boner pills for all!

I guess it's taking the otherwise non-option of growing old and sliding it almost out of my reach that makes it that much more important. For me, it’s all I want to be able to do.

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