Tag Archives: life

50/50 the Movie, Youth, Cancer, and Questions

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This has been a reflec­tive week­end that began with the movie 50/50. The premise, for those who aren’t famil­iar, is a 27 year-old, played by Joseph Gor­don Levitt–you remem­ber Angels In the Out­field–is diag­nosed with can­cer. He has an over­bear­ing mother, a father with Alzheimers, a crude best friend–Seth Rogan, a hesitant-to-involve-herself girl­friend, and an under­stand­ing that patience with his form of can­cer have a 50% chance of sur­vival. I found myself com­pletely taken by try­ing to grasp what that would be like.

QUESTIONS

What is it like to be a guy still on the cusp of life who finds him­self on the cusp of death? What are the ques­tions he’s ask­ing? What are the things and who are the peo­ple he’s think­ing about? What is he fear­ful of miss­ing? Is there peace? Is there fear? Where and how does he spend his time? What is he gain­ing through this unique psy­cho­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence, and can I gain the same things by seek­ing to under­stand his predicament?

IT GOES ON

Per­haps I’m over-thinking the whole story. We go through this life with only so much capac­ity to grasp the com­pletely crazy, the over­whelm­ingly dif­fi­cult, or the entirely unex­pected, and maybe in those times we real­ize that there isn’t always a rea­son­able expla­na­tion. Years of life aren’t dis­trib­uted based upon a clear set of cri­te­ria that we can ref­er­ence to clear up why we find our­selves wher­ever we find ourselves.

I thought of Robert Frost’s sim­ple take which is to “…sum up every­thing I’ve learned about life: it goes on”, but what about when it doesn’t? I think he’s say­ing that we all have in com­mon, no mat­ter how good or bad, that whether or not we make it through, we will con­tinue onward. I hear what you’re say­ing Frost, but for every sin­gle one of us that won’t be the case one time, so what about then? What about when your one time that life doesn’t go on hap­pens when you’re 27? Life is just con­fus­ing, but not as con­fus­ing as death.

I’m not really sure what to do with the storm of thoughts 50/50 sparked. I don’t have any clue what that sit­u­a­tion would feel like. It’s a healthy thing to pon­der, and I think an age old les­son applied once again here. That les­son: I need to do more appreciating.

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Project 29: the twenty ninth year project

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Aging and Change

I just turned 29 on Jan­u­ary 17th and I’ve been pon­der­ing aging. It’s become our com­m­mon under­stand­ing that aging is a painfully slow, yet even more painfully fast, process of grow­ing old and rick­ety, senile and for­get­ful. We spend our lives long­ing in vain for the pre­vi­ous year, the pre­vi­ous decade, or the pre­vi­ous life stage. At the one-quarter life mark we switch from look­ing for­ward to look­ing back, never spend­ing a day look­ing here at the now. Each year just as we begin to adjust to our new age, to wear it and per­haps own it, the loom­ing annual “cel­e­bra­tion” strikes, again putting our per­sonal aware­ness out of kilter.

I’ve spent a life strug­gling with whether to accept the things I see around me that just don’t sit right. Rush hour baf­fles me, that we all live trapped in the same sched­ule so much so that we clog the arter­ies of our com­mu­ni­ties twice a day– not to men­tion we get pissed off in the process. This same lens has led me to rebel against age.

The Dec­la­ra­tion

I have made a deci­sion. I will not limp out of my 20s and into my 30s with a wim­per and a pout, I will not let my 29th year be a year of slouch­ing my shoul­ders and mourn­ing the goals not achieved and the tasks not accom­plished, and I will not live a life that uses pre­cious time long­ing for the things past that I failed to appre­ci­ate only to not appre­ci­ate the things present until they have become the newest things past.

I will live a life anx­ious for today peer­ing to what could be tomor­row, I will live a life that eeks out every drop of every age I have the oppor­tu­nity to expe­ri­ence so that when it comes time to turn the page I have no more use for the pre­vi­ous num­ber, and I will live a life built on what I have or what I could have, not on what I don’t have or what I did have. It all starts today. Project 29: the twenty ninth year project

The Project

I want to take the time to be pur­pose­ful in mov­ing for­ward and to reflect on what my move­ment means. This isn’t a project about being dis­ap­pointed where life is at the final turn of the 20-somethings. This isn’t about squeez­ing in all of my per­sonal expec­ta­tions or goals before it’s too late. This def­i­nitely isn’t about mourn­ing the end of a sig­nif­i­cant decade in the tale of one’s life. This is a project about tran­si­tion, inten­tion, and hope. It’s a project to use a time when we tra­di­tion­ally mourn time past to flip the script and make it a cat­a­lyst toward dreams future. Let’s do this thing.

In the com­ing days I will lay out what I’ve got in mind so far for the adven­ture that is Year #29.