Yesterday, I stumbled onto an old YouTube video of mine used to promote my IndieGoGo campaign for Soul Stealer, a short film I made at NYU (you should definitely watch it). Unsurprisingly, I look a little older now, but my wife simply could not believe how DIFFERENT I looked. Indeed, the shape of my face and its features is very different now than it used to be.

Obviously, when we look at ourselves every day, we’ll never see the inevitable effects the slow passage of time will take. Lately, however, I have increasingly felt these effects as I find old friends and acquaintances on social media. My memories of them are frozen in time, but they’ve clearly aged and time has not been kind to all. 

From my childhood I remember hearing old men say things like, “One day I woke up, looked in the mirror, and wondered where that old man came from.” Yesterday, I really felt the truth of that statement. So did my wife, I think. And some emotions were shed. All I could do was look at her with a smile and say, “You want to grow old with me?” We laughed and she agreed. 

I’ve always been aware of my mortality, even as a young child, but I’m reminded constantly of it now. A co-worker and friend of mine passed away almost two weeks ago. He was only 58 and died by heart attack while riding his bicycle, of all things. He was a healthy, athletic man, with no expectation of what was about to happen to him. I was blessed enough to interview him for a podcast in February, and you can hear how excited he is for the future and the new activities he’s pursuing. I had to edit that podcast the week of his passing and it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.

All of this transpired a week after I myself had a medical scare that turned out to be nothing, but for a few days I really started to wonder, is this how it ends? Suddenly, nothing I cared about seemed to have any meaning. All was vanity under the sun. What would I do with my last days? Depends on how much time I’d have, or, more realistically, how much money was in the bank. But honestly, the conclusion I had was to ensure my wife was going to be squared away after my passing. To take a vacation only meant stealing from her future and that simply was not an option.

But, as I said, it turned out to be nothing. With that relief returned my feelings for all the stuff I’d previously found to be so vane. I’m cognizant of the fact that it’s all vanity, but I sure do enjoy wallowing in it. What a strange feeling.

You might half expect I’m going to summarize all this up with some philosophical bumper-sticker-phrase you can turn into a meme, but I honestly have nothing. There’s no grand reveal. Just the musings of an aging man.