Aside: ‘a remark or passage in a play that is intended to be heard by the audience but unheard by the other characters in the play’ **
Times, eras, chapters, a book of my life, but I’m not finished writing it. I look around me and it’s like being at a wedding reception. The party has been going on for a fair amount of time and it seems like there’s plenty of evening left. Several groups of guests slip out quickly without announcement. Suddenly the room is only half full and others are starting to pack up. I don’t feel ready to go yet. The men packed up quicker than the ladies, disappearing into silence. Oh, they’re still alive but health issues, emotional issues, especially when your body goes; you still have a voice after all and yet for men, it’s their voice that leaves first, even before our bodies begin to disable. This is what seems to be different than me.
I tend to think of my life as a consistent whole, yet I often gloss over just how prodigal I was in different seasons. In my present, I tend to think and feel that I’ve been in this state a long time. It’s not the case. So many intervals of life are entirely distinctly different. Life at home, work, associations, groups, churches, individuals. I lived a half dozen, maybe a dozen different careers.
I’ve watched old men; their focus quickly narrows to few petty appetites. Liquor (or longing for that past), golf, indolence, hollow opinions. Things like sex, familial interests become rote, then symbolic, then rumor only. Then begins the season where life is defined by the next doctor’s appointment, the next mealtime and that’s all, except maybe pain. To live too close to others of those shared values hastens that decline.
Maybe I’ll someday regret it or find it futile, but a voice is a terrible thing to waste.
**Courtesy, Google web dictionary