Wrinkles and Reality
It is with utmost ambivalence that I welcome the coming of age: the quarter of a century. Last year was denial. This is it is ambivalence. I am not sure if aging is a good thing. When I was little, I visualize myself to be a working professional, but I did not envision myself to have wrinkles. There are prominent wrinkles now on my forehead, and it seems premature because I am only turning 25.
When one laments how the generation today has erosion of values, it is a sign of getting older. “There is nothing new in the world, except the history you do not know,” as Harry Truman puts it. It would seem that my perception changes and social ills remain constant. For instance, the notion those corporations appear to be the collective few who win in real life. The world seems to be run by marketing.
Sometimes, it is reasonable to deduce that wrinkles are proportional to the realities a person may encounter. Like wrinkles, realities are visceral and palpable. Wrinkles are comforting and constant reminders that a person is aging. The inevitable and inescapable reality, when one is reminiscing the good old days, it just means that a person is getting older.
Affirmatively, there are methods to hide wrinkles. In reality, such action only proves that the more we hide wrinkles and reality, the more these viscerally palpable entities would persist.
Reality creation varies from place to place, even from country to country. One reality I learn living in the USofA: happiness tends to be materialistic in the land of the free and home of the brave. This claim hinges on the fact that lifestyle is regimented to work and compensation. I always find myself desiring new gadgets after a hard day’s work, and when new gadgets are purchased, I am in bliss. This is how the definition of drastically changes.
People might say that these musings are just misdirection from a wrinkled forehead. Maybe I am docile to regimen, but oblivious to the bigger picture.
The cynic birthday celebrator may borrow the words of Jerry Seinfeld: "Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing."
The ambivalence regarding birthdays and aging may flummox wrinkles and realities.
