"There's A Smile On My Face"

I find myself feeling old. I’ve been feeling old quite a lot recently, and it’s not just the passing of another year that does it.

I guess everyone feels old from time to time, but when, like me, you start finding that you feel permamently old, I guess that’s a sign that maybe there’s something deeper going on. I was thinking about it today and I think I may have got somewhere.

On the face of it, you might think the things that set me off are the constant realisations that things that seemed like only yesterday – e.g. leaving school, listening to Wham! on the radio, etc – were actually more than 20 years ago. But I don’t think it is that. Time passes, and that’s a fact. In itself it’s not a surprise and it’s not the numbers themselves that make me feel old. Not really, I don’t think.

I was tidying up again earlier and ploughing through a box of old videotapes, where I came across some television programmes that were made about the place where I used to work. They brought back a lot of memories. I couldn’t really get over the feeling of what great people I used to work with, what a good group we were, what good things we did. I used to work with brilliant people who were actual proper heroes and – although I can’t truly claim any heroism of my own – I find that I do miss the association. Standing next to greatness is still pretty great… and I seem to notice it more now that it’s gone.

It got me to thinking about what could have happened – and I noticed emotions and regrets very simlar to those which come out when I’m “feeling old”. The things I could have been – should have been – but which now seem out of reach. I’m too old now, the things I’m reaching for are paths I should have set out on long ago if I wanted to make it in time. As it stands, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and just went where the wind took me. A fine philosophy, it seemed at the time – but with my now aged wisdom I wonder if it wasn’t a miscalculation. Having “no plans” was literally no plan at all. And that’s when the big question has to be answered. Have I wasted my life?

But then I started joining the dots, and came to a bit of a realisation. These feelings, these regrets, can only have any validity if I accept an unstated premise – that the best moments of my life are strictly in the past. Surely that could only be true if I believe that my life will never get any better. It’s not exactly bad now, but if all the ‘good times’ are in the past, there must be something about the present that isn’t giving me what I need.

The present, of course, is something I can change. I just need to decide what it is that I want from life, and then “go get it”. And maybe there is the problem, because those are two things that I’m really not too good at – making decisions (or actually “wanting” something for myself) and then doing whatever kind of ‘hard work’ might be necessary to actually go get it.

I could have hundreds of great friends and a social life if I wanted one. I could go climbing mountains, hurling myself out of planes (with a parachute, obviously), sign up with the Open University or go to medical school and become the world’s oldest junior doctor… but that’s such a lot of effort. Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure I could do it. And even if I put all that work in, would it really take me to the place that I want to be, when I can’t even identify where that place is?

Even if I’m not sure where the future leads, it has served as a timely reminder that maybe my clinging to the past is for no other reason than I need to change the present. Perhaps my hoarded boxes of old magazines and tapes are a very real indication of how I can’t let go of the past while it seems like the best of my life is still there. “Spending our money, filling our house with the things we hope will bring us happiness… again.”, as T’Pau put it in the song Only The Lonely.

They had more to say, actually. “Making your mind up – it never did anyone no good, for how do you touch what you can’t have? You cover the hurt, pretend you don’t care – it’s living, I guess, but it hardly compares.”

“Hiding your poor heart, you wouldn’t think could be so hard, from the roaring giant of love. Oh, but he won’t leave, and so you keep silently screaming, filling your head with a love song that no-one will ever want. And yes, we are keeping up resistance to a good time, in case we fall – put up a wall you can’t overcome, well I believe every home should have one.”

“We cover our empty hearts up with a full smile, but it has no joy – put up a wall you can’t overcome, to cover the hurt, pretend you don’t care, I see a world that is empty out there.”

Maybe that’s getting a bit morose. It’s a very good song, though. On which ‘note’ (ho ho) I actually bought some singles tonight, just like an actual proper hip young swinging cat. Of coursewhen I say I “bought" some "singles", actually I downloaded them from iTunes, so at least I’m not entirely stuck in the past, even if I did select six tracks from the late 80s that I’d completely forgotten about (and rediscovered today on an old “songs recorded off the radio” tape.) But it wasn’t all in the past – I also bought the ‘new’ one from Mint Royale. (Well done, George.) So it does at least seem that I have one foot in the now, and I guess that buying the song that’s bound to be next week’s number one is at least some kind of indicator that perhaps it’s not time to bury me just yet.

But it seems pretty clear that I really need to find something to do with my life. Of course I’ve got all kinds of ideas – entirely unrealistic ones – about things I’d like to do, if I were to somehow come into a ridiculous enough amount of money that I’d be willing to burn on making myself happy. Even the most avaricious venture capitalist would probably consider that a rather poor investment, and since I don’t play the lottery the chances of it happening are slim. So I need something realistic to aim for. I wonder if that isn’t harder still.

I’d better think about it some more.