JEREMY CORBETT
FROM THE INSIDE, PETER PAN HAS GOT NOTHING ON JEREMY
Ithought I’d be done by the age of 30. I remember quite clearly at university having a discussion with a genius of a radio engineer called John. He’d popped in from the local commercial station to repair some gear at Radio Massey, the student station.
I would’ve been perhaps 20 years old. He was older, maybe 29, and much wiser. Somehow, as he worked and I mused, the discussion drifted around to age. I said something along the lines of, “When I get to 30, I’m going to jump out a plane without a parachute.”
He questioned this decision and I replied, with all my university boldness and naiveté, that surely I would have accomplished all I was going to do in life by that time. I’d be done. There would be little point hanging around clogging up the planet.
Even though his back was turned, I’m sure I detected a smile as he said, “Maybe wait until you get there before you make that decision.”
Good call, as it turns out. In retrospect, it’s quite obvious I was 90% idiot. The memory of that university conversation popped into my head earlier this week as I was once again spending my time musing. I was considering at which age I would be truly old. Remembering student-idiot-me solved the riddle. Never.
When I turned 30, I didn’t feel as old as I had imagined in my early twenties. For starters, I hadn’t achieved anywhere near as much as I had imagined. I needed a few more years to get things done thanks. Pass the parachute.
This lack of progress was mostly because I hadn’t really set any clear goals. It was also because I was a lazy, easily distracted procrastinator. I hadn’t matured either. Youngerme imagined older-me would have somehow mentally developed and got himself together. Nope. Didn’t feel that different. Didn’t think that different. In short, I hadn’t changed one bit.
If I wasn’t old when I turned
30, logic dictates this would hold true for any age – older is simply older than you currently are. Thus, you never arrive. Tomorrow never comes.
What a warming thought.
The other truth I arrived at is you cannot pass this wisdom down to younger people. It’s not that they are unwilling to listen, but their brains just aren’t capable of believing an older person when it comes to age. They can’t accept their path will be the same as anyone else’s. Especially an older person.
It’s perhaps nature’s way of preventing us all sinking into depression – it gives us hope we will improve. A 20-year-old would not believe me telling him he will not feel that different at 50 any more than I will believe a 70-year-old telling me something similar.
Even though I have just outlined the logic, somehow I don’t think it will apply to 70-year-old me. But it will. Septuagenarian Corbett will be much the same as I am now on the inside. The outside is a completely different matter.