I've always thought that this summarizes beautifully what you're talking about.....

Men at Forty

Men at forty

Learn to close softly

The doors to rooms they will not be

Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,

They feel it moving

Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,

Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors

They rediscover

The face of the boy as he practises tying

His father's tie there in secret

And the face of the father,

Still warm with the mystery of lather.

They are more fathers than sons themselves now.

Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound

Of the crickets, immense,

Filling the woods at the foot of the slope

Behind their mortgaged houses.

-- Donald Justice

...And thus THE CALENDAR,

In all of its colorful disguises

Was presented to

The bored & miserable people

Everywhere!

GREGCERY issued a memo on it.

Whereupon the entire contents

of the Steno Pool

Identified with it STRENUOUSLY,

And WORSHIPPED IT as a WAY OF LIFE,

And took their little Pills by it.

And went back 'n forth from

work by it.

And paid their rent by it,

And before long they were even

having

BIRTHDAY PARTIES IN THE OFFICE

by it,

Because NOW. AT LAST,

CRECGERY PECCARY's exciting new

invention

Had made it possible

For everyone

To find out

HOW OLD THEY WERE!

What hath GOD wrought?

Unfortunately,

There were some people

Who simply DID NOT WISH TO

KNOW,

And that's why,

On his way home from the office

one night,

GREGGERY was attacked

By a RAGE OF HUNCHMEN!

Making his way through the

evening traffic, GREGGERY notices

that the other vehicles which

crowd and bump his little red car

are all inhabited by slowly-aging

'VERY HIP YOUNG PEOPLE',

They appear to be casting

sinister glances toward him

through their glinting acid burn-

out eyeballs, trying to run him

off the road, or make him bump into

something, giving strong evidence

of HOSTILE AGGRESSION!...

(Frank Zappa, "The Adventures of Greggary Peccary," Studio Tan)

I am so happy someone actually reads Donald Justice. Thanks for one of his really good ones.

Yet another navel-gazing boomer screed to aging. I'm so impressed I could just yawn.

I can't WAIT for another ten years, when every boomer article will be about how to "personalize" and "amp up" your funeral.

La vie est breve,

Un peu de reve,

Un peu d'amour,

Et puis, bonjour.

Why do I know a whole bunch of people in their 80s who are living life with far more dignity and vitality than people in their 50s? What IS up with that? (Sad so say I include myself and my own mother here.)

Now tilting toward 61, It's been decades since I treated myself to poetic treatments of life's passages. My thanks to the responders for awakening that soul in me again. Question is, did my soul age too or was it just waiting for me to rediscover its youth bound self. Enjoy the following from a poet who is not me.

Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,

I felt a door opening in me and I entered

the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,

like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas

assigned to my brush came closer,

ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,

grief and pity joined us.

We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division

into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part

of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -

a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror

of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel

staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,

waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,

as are all men and women living at the same time,

whether they are aware of it or not.

Czeslaw Milosz

...how much I understand this article!

The nostalgia here may be deeply felt, but it seems oddly limited in scope.

What seems missing in this essay is the imprint, the echo, the colors of the writer's contact with others--and the feeling and humor and perspective inspired. A person should only be able to think of his knees or hair--of himself--for so long. Then he should find himself distracted.

A great book on how people in our culture get trapped in themselves--and how they can find greater freedom from the overbearing nature of self-- is "Thoughts without a Thinker" by Buddhist psychiatrist Mark Epstein.

The self is to a significant degree a construct, a fiction. Let go. Then dig deeper.

Our group of seven met some days ago and covered this selection from the Book of Ecclesiastes. In the discussion two men, the youngest (28) and the oldest (72), had the most to say. Only they brought their extensive typed notes. No one else had gone to the trouble.

Their questions were probing and therefore enlightening for the rest of us. Both are polite individuals and teachers by profession. At discussion's end with faces lit up, their conversation continued as they exited the room.

As I turned out the lights, my one thought was, truly they are teachers.

I don't understand how anyone could hear that from a doorman and NOT knocked his lights out. It would have totally been worth spending the night/a few days in jail, just to maintain "face".

Just stop blogging your head against the wall, get some modern tech to work on your knees, and spend some more time hiking with your Mom. I'd bet she could explain it all to you.

Are you kidding me? Really -- are you kidding me? THIS is what you've come up with? Good Lord: all you've done is tighten your blinders and make them even MORE self-referential. Have 53 years not taught you anything about stepping outside yourself? Where is your sense of awe? -- I wish you well, and I wish you insight, but these are some of the most prosaic, self-mirroring banalities I've ever read.