Incredibly Shrinking Selves

— Being my “self” could mean any number of things. That’s an inspiring (and scary) thought —

This month, adding another candle to the cake, I find no room for doubt: I am now conclusively lumbering upward through my thirties.

Older readers may chuckle knowingly. Yes, according to life-expectancy metrics in the developed world, I’m still snugly cooped with the spring chickens.

But the thing is, my body, which I don’t abuse, has started whispering alerts to my mind and soul. Already, the unforgiving realities of my few decades are with me. Irksome physical complaints, small but various, hint that somewhere in the last few years I crossed an unavoidable threshold, unnoticed though it was at the time.

On this side of the threshold I’m starting to learn a few things about the realities of age. Three examples:

1: I now know what “throwing one’s back out” really means. Most of my life I’d regarded the phrase as the arcane intellectual property of middle-aged, potbellied, aspirin-popping, Alka-Seltzer-guzzling men. But alas, creeping across the years is much like crossing borders. My body — or more particularly, my vertebra — must pay its duty-tax.

2: I’ve started to notice that many people in the world are younger than I am. Especially alarming are encounters with twenty-something doctors, policy analysts who resemble high-schoolers, and radio show hosts, film directors, or composers born in the mid-eighties. Seeing that they’re doing what they do at such an early stage slaps me awake to all I might have — but haven’t — done.

3: It actually matters what I eat. …

But there’s something else — something I’ll call Shrinking Selves Syndrome: the feeling of facing a seemingly inevitable narrowing of possibilities.

One of my favorite moments in contemporary cinema comes near the close of the movie The Weatherman, starring Nicolas Cage and Michael Caine. A powerful film by turns visceral and hilarious, The Weatherman unconventionally explores conventional coming-of-age themes, seating them in the context of Chicago TV-weatherman Dave Spritz’s dysfunctional, divorcee existence.

Spritz’s wife finds him repulsive, his teenage son might have a drug problem, his adolescent daughter lacks self-confidence and direction, and his father has lymphoma. To top it off, Dave’s high-paid TV job seems more like a fluke than the outcome of any actual talent he might possess. Being a weatherman supplies him with no sense of accomplishment, fulfillment, or self-worth (what he really wants to do is write novels like his Pulitzer-Prize winning dad).

Dave’s life seems to demand his overdue answer to the question: What do you want to do when you grow up?

Late in the movie, we see Dave Spritz walking down a crowded snowy street. He narrates reflectively:

I remember once, imagining what my life would be like, what I’d be like. I pictured having all these qualities — strong, positive qualities that people could pick up on from across a room. But as time passed, few ever became any qualities I actually had. And all the possibilities I faced, and the sorts of people I could be, all of them got reduced, every year, to fewer and fewer, until finally they got reduced to one: To who I am. And that’s who I am: The weatherman.

The sequence ends with a wide shot of Dave. He’s standing alone at an intersection of streets entirely empty of other people or cars.

It’s a bit of cinematic art that haunts me unshakably. For, young as I remain today and for some years to come, I feel an urgency to embrace the innumerable possibilities afforded me, to see clearly the myriad selves I might become, to recognize life as it happens.

Years ago, on the day I reached my quarter-century mark, I wrote a note to myself. Today I write it again:

Presence is important.

(This post has seeped up from the rich artesian waters of the Soul Shelter archives)

You might also enjoy:

“Art Awakens Us”

“The Rainbow Vanishes”

“Soul School”

“Let Us Begin“