TIME
Jann Burner
July 24, 2008
Young people see every day as another day. Older people can look back on their lives and recognize certain specific days as being pivotal. There are special days, days that will rule the rest of your life. Days that will reverberate like a Chinese gong and send their vibrations with you for the rest of your days on this earth.
These days do not have to be the happiest nor the saddest; often these crucial days are the most ordinary, seeming to turn on the most insignificant event. Your eyes meet those of a stranger on a crowded street and without knowing it, at that exact moment neither of your lives will ever be the same again. You'll drive across a bridge and casually glance over at a sailboat gliding by on the water in the distance, ghosting across the horizon like a slow thought, and that image will haunt you forever.
Sometimes I think that there are perhaps no more than five or ten truly pivotal days in a person's live, the rest are just padding; emotional Styrofoam put in place to give protection to the spirit as it moves through its handful of crucial days. I think of the possibilities more as I grow older.
There seems to be a difference between how an older person sees and how a younger person sees his days. An older person sits with a distant look in the eye. He will be looking deep into the past or far into the future. He will be looking into the distance and seeing things that aren't there. He will be analyzing thoughts and feelings with his eyes. Look at a young person watching something.
The young person will focus on the immediate distance free from future consideration. A young person's eyes dance on the surface, eating the particles of light. The young person looks at the play of light and the ripples on the water.
The older person's eye is searching beneath the surface for the leviathans, for the schools of fish, for the submerged coral head, the wreck, the potential hazard to navigation, the shark that has stolen his years and made him old. The young man wants experience. The old man wants revenge....
These days do not have to be the happiest nor the saddest; often these crucial days are the most ordinary, seeming to turn on the most insignificant event. Your eyes meet those of a stranger on a crowded street and without knowing it, at that exact moment neither of your lives will ever be the same again. You'll drive across a bridge and casually glance over at a sailboat gliding by on the water in the distance, ghosting across the horizon like a slow thought, and that image will haunt you forever.
Sometimes I think that there are perhaps no more than five or ten truly pivotal days in a person's live, the rest are just padding; emotional Styrofoam put in place to give protection to the spirit as it moves through its handful of crucial days. I think of the possibilities more as I grow older.
There seems to be a difference between how an older person sees and how a younger person sees his days. An older person sits with a distant look in the eye. He will be looking deep into the past or far into the future. He will be looking into the distance and seeing things that aren't there. He will be analyzing thoughts and feelings with his eyes. Look at a young person watching something.
The young person will focus on the immediate distance free from future consideration. A young person's eyes dance on the surface, eating the particles of light. The young person looks at the play of light and the ripples on the water.
The older person's eye is searching beneath the surface for the leviathans, for the schools of fish, for the submerged coral head, the wreck, the potential hazard to navigation, the shark that has stolen his years and made him old. The young man wants experience. The old man wants revenge....
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