Forever Young

I don’t want to wake up in metal capsule, in a cold, dark warehouse fifty years outside my time, only to suddenly age and become an old man. While that’s the basic plot of the 90’s film Forever Young, I wish for a different kind of perpetual youth: the kind that never grows up.

I am starting my thirty-sixth journey around the sun, hosted by the earth (my deepest gratitude, you are a wonderful home!), and as I begin this newest trip, my social media is filling up with good wishes. However, I wanted to express some wishes for myself. The first and foremost is to never grow up.

Life can make me older, and experience can make more more mature, but I never wish to lose the joy and mirth that comes with being a kid. I see my youngest nieces, Rae and Cassia, and the vigor with which Cassia in particular attacks life. Rae does as well, but with less tenacity it seems. She is somewhat more reserved about things, but Cassia can’t spell reserved (or, well, anything, she is only 3). My point is, I want to be more like them going forward.

I still play with action figures; I am reminded how I used to stage endless battles with my GI Joes with my childhood friend Luke. Nowadays it is more customizing and photography, but I yet like to collect and display my figures. I just finished painting an action figure last night, and can’t wait to reassemble its disparate parts and see what the entire paint job looks like all together. I also am into building dioramas in which to pose the figures, and have much fun with that.

I am not into LEGO as much anymore, a surprising turn of events if one considered my later childhood and teenage years, in which the building blocks were ubiquitous for me. But I still enjoy constructing the odd set, and have a few I don’t wish to part with, that I enjoy seeing displayed in my bedroom.

Every time I am in Walmart, or Target, I inevitably head for the toy isle, looking over the Hot Wheels, Hasbro, and LEGO. I don’t often buy anything, expect for the drain cleaner or toilet paper or whatnot that I am actually there for, but I wish and dream and covet just as I did when I was a child. I never want to lose that excitement for the endless possibilities in play.

I want play and playthings to be around me the rest of my life. I want to be a fun and good uncle to my nieces and nephews. I want to always be odd and rambunctious and unpredictable in the delight I bring with me for the world and life. Even as a tottering, old man, I want a twinkle in my eye and a smile on my lips, and laughter in my mouth. If I ever become crotchety and misanthropic, something will have gone terribly wrong inside. I hope to never walk that path.

Beyond that, I want to be wise and understanding. I want to be able to judge things rightly, and to be fair and even in my dealings with other people. I would like to be full of love, not just for the kids around me and my family, but to all I meet, those like and un-like myself. The world is full of interesting and unique and different individuals and I would hope I have the capacity to love them all. Some, I know, are intent on being unloveable and hateful, but even then I would wish to bear no malice towards them, only hope for their healing and a better life.

I work as much as I can on acquiring these goals, and renew myself to them once more as I turn thirty-six, a still young age at that. I do the math, and if the world is kind, I will have more time than has already passed to yet be alive, and I welcome every second and year. I have come a long ways from the kid playing in the grass with action figures, or on the living room rug with LEGO, or on the sandlot with a baseball, and I think of all the growth I have achieved in that time. I hope I can make as much progress in another thirty-six years.

So here’s to me, and my many happy returns, and to remaining forever young, yet perpetually wise and full of love. I truly wish that to be said of me all my days on this planet, and after I am mouldering in my grave. For now, the sun is shining, it is a bright and glorious start to March the 12th, and I can’t wait to celebrate with my family, and my littlest nieces. Rock on!