I came to a realization….

Tags

age, Charlottetown, generation, Laurent, life, Me, PEI

Last night I suddenly came to a realization, we were at Baba’s Lounge which is upstairs from Cedar’s Lebanese Restaurant on Great George Street. Baba’s is an institution and is known by all musicians on PEI. Several nights a week they have music, on Thursday nights it’s Jazz night and last night Island Jazz was performing. The group is Ben on piano, Marlee on saxophone and Evan on bass guitar and Brandon Roy sang and what a wonderful voice he has. All are either music teachers or musicians and Brandon is a professional singer with that wonderful booming voice appearing in several shows here and in Toronto. The age group last night was between 25 and 35, the new up and coming generation, in this case talented, fun, full of energy, nice people.

This is not a pity me post but more a sudden realization that I am older now by about 30 years from that generation. I have turned a corner like you do at 20 or 50, life changes and you change. People also react to you differently, I hear references to being older meaning you belong to a different generation. We socialize with people more our age or somewhat older, though I do not necessarily share the same world view. This may have to do with the fact that I travelled around the world and my views are maybe more based on my own life experience in different cultures. If we meet with younger people I am very aware that we may not speak the same language because age can create a distance.

I had pictures taken recently by a professional photographer, the results were quite good, this has to do with a project I will speak of later, looking at them though I thought do I look this old now or is this what people see.

Maybe it is, by looking at pictures at another time in life I see a familiar face at a different time, this is where I am now. Maybe this is why I find the change so shocking in some ways, but then it happens to all of us.

I do not really see myself at 61, it just does not make sense to me. I do not feel older, just the same. I do think from time to time that I may have another 25 years to go, if I look at my close family relations and my parents, if good health holds then another quarter century is not bad. It’s just that everything looks shorter now in terms of time span. One might think that at 30 or 40 you can still think I got decades in front of me, but the reality is that no one can be certain of what they have left.

Maybe this is what comes with age, you know the past, you have experience and your life is shaped by all the years of living. Is this what is meant by, Life changes us, I think it does, we stay the same but life experience and time changes us. So maybe this set of photos are what I do look like today, just make the best of it and move on.