Time: Screw the Bastard

 

 

As a species, humans are nothing if not overly preoccupied with age. Some of us buy into the latest gadget, product or fad being lauded as a savior against the inevitable; some of us handle it in healthier, more active and natural ways. But at some level or other, we all have that nagging clock loudly reverberating around the back of our theater. It alters the performance of everyday goings on up in our attic, as it counts down the seconds before the arrival of what Eliot called The Eternal Footman.

     This has long been on my mind, even as a young man, not because I’m obsessed or unhealthy or overly morbid, but because I’ve spent my adult life in the Southern California entertainment industry. It’s is an oddly surreal culture, in that we’re conditioned to think that we have to be ageless. And I guess if somebody meets with the right level of success, they are–to the zeitgeist at any rate, in the same way that they’re quickly forgotten if they don’t achieve that success–but if we get visibly old, especially women, the phone tends to stop ringing. So hereabouts at least, it’s not a baseless concern. And most of us are smart enough to know how stupid that is, and resent the vapid aesthetic that devalues the most experienced sector of the creative workforce. And of course, the entertainment industry isn’t the only culture on Earth where this errant thinking holds sway.

     I’m a staunch functionalist at heart, so it’s not actually as big a thing to me as it is to many around me. As I see it, those who would be concerned about age–as opposed to caring about what someone brings to the table professionally, or as a human–don’t have the right mindset to work with me professionally or to be on my cloud, anyway.

     But whether viewed from inside or outside the plastic capsule of Hollywood, this stigma about getting older is a bad path: it makes us compare ourselves to who we used to be. And this focuses our energy 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

     I had an illuminating conversation with a good buddy one night when I was living in Mammoth Lakes, and the subject turned to this. My promo headshot was dated and I needed a new one, but I was concerned about not looking as young as I had used to. I’ll never forget he said:

     “Ah, no, my man…that’s not how it works, here’s how aging works: It’s not that you’re older than you were yesterday. It’s that you’re younger than you’ll be tomorrow.”

     This simple sentence rocked me back on my heels, and has been my guiding tenet about the aging process ever since. Thus I herein impart it unto you, in hopes that it has the same effect on your efforts and life as it does on mine, namely:

     Get out and do it now. Do everything you can, every day, with whatever you’ve got. Pursue your time, don’t be chased by it. The life you live–this incredible, mind-boggling thing that is existence as a living, thinking organism–will be fuller, and more fun. You can trust the Eternal Footman to be here on his own time.

     Until then, screw the bastard…and screw father time, too.