IVP - Strangely Dim

Old Friends

I’m getting old. I can see it and even feel it—the grey nose hairs, the popping joints and the intermittent back spasms. But more than the physical indicators that I’m getting old, I’m getting signals that I’m getting old from all the young people around me. I’ve very nearly reached the age of irrelevance.

You may think me inordinately morose—a coworker of mine told me I have plenty of good years ahead of me—but demographically speaking, turning thirty is tantamount to a kiss of death. You switch from MTV to VH1, and you’re well on your way to NPR. You switch from Sunny D to V8, and Metamucil is starting to sound sensible.

For those of us who try to stay hip, we find that twenty-somethings look at us funny every time we name-drop: “Hey, have you heard that new Coldplay song?” And just in case you’re not conscious of this shift, you get all kinds of reminders from the annoyingly young. Joan Girardi, the title character of the TV show Joan of Arcadia, took a cold shot while lamenting her own aging process: “I’m seventeen years old—that’s half the age of a really old person.”

For all you math fans out there, here’s what the equation looks like:

17 x 2 = Really Old Person
17 x 2 = 34
Dave = 34
Dave = Really Old Person

I’m comforted by the knowledge that I’m not alone in feeling old. Liz Phair, who was hip way back in 1991 and continues to be one of those names I occasionally drop, is feeling her age a bit. She wrote a song about being in her thirties and dating a college boy. One line spells it out in large print: “Your record collection don't exist / You don't even know who Liz Phair is.”

I’m also comforted by the fact that although I’m ancient in the eyes of the young, in the mind of America’s founding fathers I’m very nearly the age at which I can be trusted to run the country. For you math fans out there, here’s another equation to play around with:

17 x 2 = Really Old Person
Really Old Person +1 = 35
35 < Absolute Political Power

So, although I have virtually no chance of actually being elected president, I am now only two months away from having at least potential access to absolute political power. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Joan Girardi.

Lately, though, what’s comforted me more than anything is the relatively new presence in my life of old friends. Until last year, I went to a church that helped people to build relationships by grouping them demographically: married couples were introduced to married couples, retirees were introduced to retirees, and so on. If someone fell outside your principal demographic, they were effectively invisible to you within the confines of the church.

My new church is small enough, though, that it would be silly to group people so narrowly. As a result, I recently spent three months in a discussion group with people who were twice my age. I felt like a student, except that I was treated as an equal. We talked about health and loneliness and family, as I’ve done with my demographic peers in the past, except that these discussions came from a completely different frame of reference. I found myself with a different outlook: in the past I’ve dwelled on my youth and consequently I’ve feared aging; in this group I looked forward and saw people experiencing life in all its fullness, and aging lost a bit of its sting.

Since our group disbanded, one of my old friends was sent to a hospital, and I had my first inkling that I will over time watch many of my loved ones get sick and eventually die—some sooner than others. But the older we get, the more we understand that dying is OK; God uses death to usher his people into a life without tears, fulfilling the vague longing that’s followed us throughout life.

This awareness of death eludes the young but regularly tests the faith of the old, and in that respect having old friends is like a spiritual discipline: none of us is immune from death, and the sooner we face up to that the sooner we can make our peace with God and get on with living.

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Mark your calendars: Batman Begins hits theaters June 15; Fantastic Four hits theaters July 8. For a guy who's inexplicably enamored with superheroes, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .