I was sitting around with borgette last night and after dinner we got to yakking about life in general. We got to talking about certain phases in life and how to best deal with them. I tried to come up with some simple analogies that might make sense to her either in the present or sometime in the near future. Granted, these are my analogies and there are no universal truths when the topic is this varied. Maybe that’s the universal truth.
Ages 0 – 5
Like most babies I had that baby smell, the one you can’t put your finger on yet is recognizable to anybody who has held one. Yet, like most babies, I have taken no form. I sit and wait to be molded by those people and events that surround me. I am oatmeal, I am a blob of dough.
Ages 6-12
I begin to take notice of my surroundings and crave the sweet things in life. I think I know what I want yet cannot decide. I need help from those around me yet feel embarrassed to ask. I am many things starting to come together. I am peanut butter and jelly.
Ages 13 – 16
I know what I want and I know when I want it. Time moves too quickly for me to sustain my desires. I need to be gratified no matter what form the gratification takes. I am pizza, I am hot dogs, I am hamburgers.
Ages 17-22
I have no direction, I am scattered to the winds. I lack purpose and am easily influenced and swayed by my peers. I take on the shapes and the images of those things I like and disregard those things that I don’t. I am a bowl of spaghetti.
Ages 23-30
I seek adventure and sometimes it seems as if adventure seeks me. I discover new and wondrous things and re-examine older things and find new meaning in them. Nothing at all seems familiar. I am nouvelle cuisine.
Ages 30-40
I dabble in experimentation. To my delight, sometimes the experiments work but more often than not they don’t. I feel disappointment and the disappointment leads to more experimentation. I don’t know if this is good or bad. The things that at one time seemed so new now sometimes seem so stale. I try to look at things from a new perspective. I am a trendy restaurant.
Ages 40-44
My pace is slackening and I am slowing down some. I try and enjoy this easier pace that life has afforded me. I tend to tire a little more quickly and for the most part feel a sense of contentment that has somehow snuck up on me. I am a backyard barbecue.
Ages 45 - ?
I try and offer comfort when comfort is needed. My friends are mostly old ones and for the most part I crave what is familiar. It takes me longer to do many things and the addition of time seems to be worth the effort. I realize I will never achieve perfection and somehow I’m okay with that. Any advice that I have to offer is sometimes passed around to many people. I seem to be getting more tender with age. I am a pot roast.