As I grow older, fewer and fewer things bring me as much joy as they used to. Some enjoyment remains. Yet, that internal sparkling burst of emotions. The one that leaves you lighter than before. The one that makes you feel like it’s all meaningful. It often goes missing.
When I was a teen, I remember reading a book by a somewhat famous French satiric cartoonist, Wolinski. He wrote that we should cherish “first times”. He noted that those become rarer and rarer as we age, and so goes life. When you’re fourteen, full of desire and eager to get hands-on with the future, those words feel accurate, yet disincarnated. How could one give up on the feeling of being alive enough to regret their first time?
Twenty-two years later, today, still far away from old age, I recall this intuition. I somewhat regret that I have to relate to it more and more.
Over the last five or six years, I have observed a slow internal movement toward desensitization within myself. Fewer things “feel” like they used to, and fewer come to replace them as they used to. In a sense, it also makes space for being more considerate towards yourself. Your experiences and your thoughts. But a lot of the excitement and joy is gone, and it feels like I’m left with the Cornelian choice to either simulate or go on a hunt for new sources thereof.
I feel more at peace, but I also feel duller, almost stunned. Tazed without the current. A deer surprised by the lights of a car in the middle of the night. Everything tells you that you should feel something, but nothing is coming. You accept your fate and almost get joy out of this acceptance.
As we discussed it with an acquaintance the other evening, they argued acceptance was the key, and that this state of being was inevitable and inescapable. The key would be to accept it, to experience another renewed form of peace.
There are experiences left to explore. I want to learn to fly planes and paragliders. I want to learn to become a good cook. I want to have my own garden and cultivate rare species. I want to access that whole knowledge space that, as a city person, I was never expected to learn.
There are experiences left to fulfill myself with. Gastronomy brings me joy. the supreme art and craft of layering and agenting tastes, textures, colors, and smells. Photography illuminates me. As I navigate my existence, pictures reveal themselves. Capturing them gives me a sense of joy and presence in the world and in myself. Cycling and hiking ground me. It provides me with a sense of ecstasy. It allows me to access myself as the object of nature rather than as a subject experiencing it.
Living 100100 years feels like an Odyssey. Like the Homeric one, it sometimes feels overwhelmingly packed with action and meaning. It also sometimes feels like a constant battle in which you need to remind yourself why you keep going. For the Art is long, and the time is short. For the sirens’ distraction will leave you drifting, and consumed.