Musing Upon 19

Stephen King was right. It's all about 19. A decade ago I was 19 and while life was still a vast, seemingly limitless expanse before my third eye, I could already sense its precipitous and fleeting nature. An early hint of that feeling which sunk in somewhere in the mid-twenties - when life suddenly felt very short and swooping past at an alarming rate. As if one had just been shoved off a cliff and realized the surroundings were moving faster and faster and the ground loomed larger and closer.

19 is like noon. It becomes the reference point of our lives. In the morning we always look towards noon. In the afternoon we look back at it. It's the turning point. And 19 (or somewhere thereabouts) is when things start to shift. Those deviously intangible things that only make clear sense in our minds. Where if we attempted to describe it to another human being we would stumble awkwardly over the words and then give up and go watch football. At 19 you can look up at those lovely eastern clouds at sunset (the ones that soar like mountains, but are painted in glorious blues and purples with white peaks illuminated by the sun as it fondly waves goodbye for the night) and imagine seeing whatever dream those clouds inspire actually come true. But in later years, that confidence fades, the swirling pull of time floods those dreams with doubts and all we can do is imagine another reality where such dreams are possible.

19 is a time when everything is incredibly slow, though we do not realize at the time. The 19 reality is vivid and sharp, as if Life itself wants to impress upon you the importance of that era. Like how a ball thrown into the air pauses for a moment at its highest point. Timelessness.

On a September evening in my 29th year I went running beneath a magnificent sky which held a modest assortment of those soaring, mountainous clouds I so love. On my Iphone (a device my 19 year old self would have marveled at) I listened to a song I first heard almost exactly a decade before. It had the same feeling as back then, though perhaps with some added layers from the years. As often happens I felt as if I could literally still be 19 - as if I could run right through a hole in reality and find myself 10 years in the past and it would seem perfectly fitting. And it hit me that a decade from now I'll likely still feel the same way. As if I've only been on this planet a matter of hours and that there is no possible way I have experienced all those years. And that nauseous falling feeling will begin to claw at me. That this cannot be reality, life cannot be this short, I'm only 19! There's still an ocean of time and possibilities and opportunities and experiences and lives to live spread out before me!

But only the 19 year old sees that ocean. The later versions instead see the edge of the abyss, like those old paintings when people believed the earth was flat and that ships would just sail off into nothingness. Or instead maybe there's a massive wall of water that with each passing day or year looms closer and closer. The inevitable in all its glory.

And so the 29 year old renews his vows that he must fill his remaining years with meaning, with accomplishments, with moments that he wishes would drag out a little slower - like a ball at its highest point.