Mark Twain said “If you can’t go to old age by a good road, don’t go.” I like that. Works no matter what map you’re following. Thing is, as the seasons add up, all roads get potholes. So, let me ask you, when you drive – when you journey through your daily life – do you focus on the road or the potholes?

If it’s all potholes, maybe it’s because you’re traveling the same ruts. Ruts come with accumulating time traveled, but you do have a steering wheel. A lot of aggravations are just because ruts mire us too deep to see the rest of the road clearly. Perspective comes when we steer out of the ruts. Works the same with daily life. Clarity comes when we steer free of the moment, juxtaposing the past with the present. Ever catch yourself blindly impatient at a foolish young driver for driving like you used to before you wised up, or scoffing at unorthodox fashion statements that once were yours, or condemning a rowdy crowd while forgetting your own stampedes with the herds, or being merciless in your judgment of things that once weren’t considerations for your own choices?

So, you can choose which potholes to skip. Hit ‘em all, and your arse sags deeper. Sit up a little and ignore the rationalizations that fog your rear-view mirror, and the windshield will show you the clear road ahead. It’s easy, and it was natural when you were young. The more you do it now, the younger you’ll feel.

Those examples are just superficial empathy, of course. Serious de-aging comes with personal stuff. Shrink-wrap your grudges and bury them deep, else they’ll return like mummies from hell. And while you’re shrink-wrapping in that oven, throw all the defensive snowballs you’ve been stockpiling in with them until they evaporate in a cloud of steam. You don’t need defenses. Remember that kid driving impatiently was once you. Holding others to account for behaviors we accept in ourselves makes us tunnel-vision practitioners in the art of double standards.

And give yourself some privacy; you don’t have to weep in public. This is for you alone. If stress has re-wired your brain and poisoned your emotions, the cure is an inside job. Keep it simple, and it will flow out of you naturally. Could be a relative you haven’t spoken to in years, or maybe you have to quit granting yourself amnesty from those behaviors you accuse others of. Or – and this is a big one – have you accumulated so much disappointment and perceived failure that you secretly fear you are somehow to blame? Maybe at first, your survival instincts lashed out and you blamed others, and then when anger subsided, self-doubts and depression infected you. But what if there is no blame? The longer you cling to negatives of any kind the higher the walls of justification climb brick by brick and the deeper you dredge a moat in which to wallow. A moat is a circular pothole, and it begs this question:

What makes us think we are any more valid or legitimate at one time in our lives than another?

Judgments and affirmations of our worth at any time are wonderful and crucial to our well-being, but we base them on aspects that change. Should we let our needs and wants in the present discredit all our needs and wants in the past? If you banked on perishable assets in your physical prime only to feel de-valued as your youthful attributes changed, should it embitter you toward society or the opposite sex? Each new phase of life can make us a hypocrite of the last, bound and blinded to the validity of who we were. Potholes.

What is right at one stage of life should remain separate from all other stages and in context with who we were. Else we become caricatures of bitterness and illusion. Journeying around potholes is the only way to avoid throwing ourselves out of alignment. The true road is the one that shares the right-of-way with others, not the one-way street, not the blind alley, not the blueprint that disintegrated into potholes. It’s the Golden Rule, the quid pro quo, the essential to loving ourselves and others. And to love…is to remain forever young!

Photos below are best explained by adapting something I posted on Facebook:

Had some massive shrubs that split asunder in the Sturm and Drang that closed out winter. These were post-puberty junipers fully a story-and-a-half high and maybe 12 feet wide. So, Easter Sunday I go out with the electric chain saw, dance with my Goddess in the Garden statue a la Fred Astaire (except I’m Sully Trip-on-Astaire) dancing with Judy Garland in the flick “Easter Parade,” and proceed to cut away storm damage in the rain. So it went through much of April (two storms, actually) and early May, but it’s been a glorious year.
 

How pleasant to sit in my house in the middle of the night reading books with the rain playing its soft tympani on the window glass. Do I hear a clock ticking, or is it the one from my growing up – the old German one that chimed the quarter hours? Memories surround me: nautical appointments from my ancestral family who went down to the sea in ships…a pair of apothecary jars from Argentina made into lamps…my brass Tsax waiting for me to stir its soul…yesterdays on the hearth…tomorrows on the long sofa beneath the picture window tracking stars that cartwheel across the cosmos. The digital picture frame on the coffee table slowly and silently parades its photo montage like a kaleidoscope into my Minnesota past. Silence is so loud when life speaks with raindrops and reminiscences. And now the raindrops really do go silent, like ephemeral beings caught halfway between the mortal world and fantasy. I look to the big window above the sofa and see diaphanous snowflakes wafting stealthily to Earth like tardy angels. (Good night, world.) Out, light. Down, curtain. 

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan