**The following post is a ‘redraft’ of an earlier version that appears on http://theshapeofdesire.blogspot.com/ where I currently feature poetry and the poetic form. I hope to begin a mini series – with Melissa next week – on Porn, Power Narratives and the Promise of Lasting Change. The series will contain the ways in which we have leaned upon the grace of God to live into His freedom and relied upon the love of each other in the good and the bad.
Stay tuned ! Until then, enjoy this older post!**
Pop culture is infatuated with the age of 17. My wife and I live with three teenagers. I can, from their perspective, understand why the age of 17 is so important. After all, this is often an age during which one has a strong sense of tomorrow coupled with the feeling of invincibility.
When I was seventeen I recall believing that I was at my peak in many ways. I further recall thinking that my current age (forty-six) was a mere step from the grave. Yes, from the perspective of a 17 year old adolescent, I get it – the world is their oyster.
As I recall my late teen years now, it’s easy to see that I was, like most people the age of 17, completely incomplete. Caught somewhere between Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man and James Cameron’s Titanic: flashes of brilliant irrationality combined with a sense of superhuman invincibility.
SITTING AROUND TALKING ABOUT . . . GLORY DAYS
What I do not ‘get,’ however, is why those of us over 40 still long for and dream about the ‘glory days’ once past; those days when we were . . . 17. Consider this brief list of songs that extol in one way or another the virtues (or celebrates vices) of ‘yesteryear’ (mind you all of these are written by songwriters older than the age of 17, some of them much older):
- Yesterday, The Beatles
- You’ve Got to Fight for Your Right to Party, The Beastie Boys (okay, these guys were probably about 7 when they wrote this one).
- Dancing Queen, Abba
- Glory Days, The Boss
- Summer of 69, Bryan Adams
- Fast Cars and Freedom, Rascal Flatts
- Springsteen, Eric Church
In the interest of ‘fair play’ I admit that these songs and others like them (as well as a variety of components from our culture) may simply be relaying themes and ideas of times gone by in a way that causes us to pause and be thankful for where we are now; rather than longing for where we were then.
Yes, this may well be the case.
However it is increasingly clear that we are living in a world that ‘idolizes’ youth and detests aging. We fight aging or ‘growing old’ at every turn. From our incessant habits of exercise, endless consumption of diet pills, to our multi-billion dollar industry of cosmetic surgery, one might easily surmise that we are infatuated with youth.
Indeed many, if given the chance, would choose to be 17 again.
Continue reading “The United States of Uncle Rico (A Repost)”