No, it's an entirely different and more beautiful sounding bird. Finally, more at peace within itself, that on occasion will make its presence felt so that you appreciate its mechanism and which would look like a fine time piece if snapped open: all tiny cogs and wheels interlocking and tripping over one another to enable the sweetest music to play, though to your untrained ear it might sound like dull, and sometimes rapid or irregular, thuds.
Whatever happened to that ear? You used to have one, as in twin appendages, for rhythm and music. When did it died?
I can tell you why: because you let it. You stopped listening for the pitches of life that very few others heard. And with it the impetus, the delight in movement alone, for movement's sake died also. By slow degrees the body's dance was lost, as was its natural grace and fluidity. You let it grow tired at too young an age.
That was your fatal error.
Thinking that you could get that same energy back whenever you wanted; that the motivation to do so would be there. Because thirty years ago, if you remember, you were overly focussed on the expansion of the mind and so the body, although not neglected, was less attended to, which is why it's in the state it is. And your mind for all its learning and intellectual leanings is not as sharp either; its astuteness has dimmed somewhat, though its ability to fixate is just as potent.
All this I feel I can say with some assurance. But if I'm proved wrong, I've not wasted my breath. It means somewhere between the writing of this letter and your reading of it you took a turn, and not just about your living room with a book in hand as you were doing at thirty-six and could have continued doing, and made alterations. This then will be a 'what could have been', which both you and I are revisiting because once written you will forget it until thirty years on when I open and re-read this letter. Ah, memory! How it floods back!
Breathe...read on. There's more...
There's still time if habit won. And no, you're not the same now as you were then. Nobody is. Nobody would be.
What were our parents like at sixty-six? That's how you hoped to be – as mellowed as them, and more relaxed and practical with it. But our experiences and interactions with the world are not theirs, so if that has not come to pass then don't be too self-critical. You are you, even if that's not how you set out to be. There is goodness and darkness in all; we are shaped by triumphs and losses, brought low or raised high.
You, I, could have done many things better: been more rational, less moral, less sensitive and more adaptive to environments, people and circumstances, but you met such trials as best you could, often with doubt and trepidation, though occasionally with impulsiveness that you regretted later. You frequently chose the forks in the road that did not serve you but served others. You might think that wise or foolish now. I cannot comment either on those decisions I know of or those I know nothing about. And I advise you to let them go if you haven't already. Don't waste further time analysing what has passed, or wondering what might yet come.
Live!
These are the years to do just that.
Originally penned and submitted to The Guardian for their A Letter to... feature, September 2017.
Picture credit: A Girl Feeding a Bird in a Cage, Jacob Maris
