A Reflection on my 67th Birthday

I turned 67 today and I don’t feel any different than I did when I turned 40, or 30, or even 20, and I remember all those birthdays like it was yesterday.  Of course the muscles in my knees are weak and sometimes they give out without notice, my hair is a little thin and almost totally gray and that makes it look thinner, I’m about 50 pounds over my weight at 40, I seem to get more emotional about some things and the lyrics of the songs of my younger years seem to pack a lot more meaning.  I don’t recognize the person looking back at me in the mirror, but other than that, my state of mind is no different than when I was fourteen.  I’m curious about everything and little wonders like a simple flower and a falling dew drop impress me as they used to.  However, I am a little more reflective about my life and I often wonder if anybody had any idea what would become of me as my mother gave birth to me in a room in a house where my mother and father lived.  At that far away time in March 1947, they were renting a room from some friends of the family because they could not afford their own house.  My expected lifespan in 1947 was about fifty years and I’m certain my parents had no idea what their future would be and less what mine would be.

My father was a product of the depression but he managed to start a business and he worked hard to support his growing family.  He was extraordinarily hard working and versatile person and he would take on any job to earn a living.  I remember when I was about 12, he started a third job - cleaning windows.  He clean windows early in the morning, go to his factory job in the afternoon and his dry cleaning job on rainy days and on weekends.  Like all other people at the bottom of the economic scale, he knew his place in society and he was expected to stay put and work in whatever he could find.  But unlike the rest of the people he did not stay put, he always saw greener pastures in other places and followed his nose to a better living.  My mom was also a go-getter making ends meet with the small farm keeping chickens and pigs in a small home farm where I had to help with the chores from a very early childhood.

    

Being the oldest in a family of ten, I don’t think I ever had a coming-of-age days.  Helping to take care of the brothers and sisters and working in the farm fields in the summer from an early age, one does not have the luxury of regular people going through the stages of life.  I think I was born mature, or at least went from being a kid in the third grade to being held responsible for household responsibilities.  For example, at eight years of age, my mother would send me by bus to take chorizo from our pigs and eggs from our chickens to market 25 miles away, make the transactions and return by bus by myself – and I better has sold it at the highest price and don’t lose any of the money.  What eight year old kid does that these days?

 

My father is a devout Catholic and therefore, we were raised to be devout Catholic, although I have to admit that I have found logic more compelling than faith and take a more secular view of religion.  My parents drove me to higher education, the only way to advance in life.  I believed what they told me and I follow their guidance ever since I can remember.  Education has been a main drive in life.  My father, with a third grade education, but lots of street learning, was also taught to know his economic and social place and defer to authority.  In many ways, I am my father’s son; same genes and chromosomes. We have shared the same interests in knowledge, in innovation, and in invention.  I might have been better educated but the innate sense of finding a solution to a problem and “Gettin–er-done” has been the same.   One “mantra” that I learned somewhere along the way, something that kept my sanity in the face of overwhelming challenges was to repeat: “anything they can do I can do better.” I would find myself repeating that over and over again and convince myself that it was true and I would make it true.  I remember saying that in middle school, in high school, in college, graduate school and even at my job.  And, it most cases it worked.

My dad was an adventurer and risk taker but he always constrained himself by the walls of society and religion.  He knew his place and stayed in it, and that is where our characters parted.  I never let the chains of social classes get in the way of things I wanted to do.   I might have been able to go far up the economic ladder, unfortunately, not having a role model for economic advancement, I never developed the proper vision, or got the proper tools, or had the proper resources to “make it in the big time.”   It turns out that "money does lead to money" and with no initial capital, above average smarts and work ethics can only take you so far in one lifetime.  But, that was OK because it allow me to be part of a real life; getting married, having kids and chasing the American dream.  Unfortunately, I think I chased the American dream so much that I lost track of life when I was about forty and broke up the family in the process – the lowest point in my life.  I lament that very much and all the pain that I’m sure it caused.  But when one is down the only thing to do and pick yourself back up and try to fix thing the best you can.

As of this birthday, I hope to still have 10 good years left and with luck stick around for 10 extra more, but if I make it to 80 anything after that would be pure gravy in my journey of life.  Absent of some massive physical and possibly mental dissolution, I may yet live to be wise.  So many people grumble about getting older, as though it's some penance we have to pay for sticking around, and they totally forget the part about getting wiser.  I Can’t wait for the wise portion of my life to come around, I think I might like it.   So at 67, and well on my way down the road to the seventies: I realize that I’m certifiably old; that I'm set in my ways; even acerbic; but not too much down the path of senility where I cannot listen to new ideas and maybe even learn new things.  I think I am a little wiser than a decade ago, I hope that's true.  Although I must reserve the right to do some more stupid things.  The way I see it, I can either arrive to at my 70s a wise man and in cultural style, or I can arrive at them stumbling still in search of adulthood.  I think for me it's still too soon to tell.

As I mention in my blog, I have done many things, have met many people, and have seen many great things.  I have always been driven by an interest in truth and enjoy rational conversation.  I am a product of the Pontiac school system, Michigan State, Oakland and Stanford Universities, and for better or worse, the Catholic Church.  My personality has been molded by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the acid years of the 60s and the philosophy of Don Quixote de la Mancha.  I've been a Mexican farm worker, a worker on the auto assembly line, a construction worker, a teacher, an Engineer, a Research Scientist, an International negotiator for the U.S. government and industry, an international environmental consultant, an energy scientist, an economics and policy consultant for government and industry, and most recently a strategic and logistics analyst for the DOD.  I think I'm going to try my talents in video graphics next, and maybe to try to write the great American novel.  If this means something to someone, I sure like hell would like to know what is it.  It could mean that I have not found myself yet.  I hope I can find myself before I am seventy and reach my seventies a wise man and in cultural style.  Or maybe I am one of those people that will never be able to reach adulthood.