When we are young, we stack our days with heaping piles of activities, from end to end, even stealing from short nights to avert loss of an opportunity to squeeze one more thing in. And we look on the middle aged with a mix of contempt and pity, vowing that we will not, unlike our parents, ever choose a full night's sleep over the chance to watch a meteor shower, or give up an opening night seat because it would mean a fifth night out in a row.
Alas, the weight of our days begins to accumulate, and we too yield to the summons from within, to focus in on the gems we have discovered along our raucous headlong journey. In order to accommodate this close regard of a few things, whether chosen of free will or forced on us by life circumstances, we very gradually begin to let go of the periphery, allowing it to diminish as does the road behind us, still part of our personal history, but no longer part of day to day life.
I would like to say that this middle-aged selection process is not the beginning of the narrowing that comes with old age, that we don't expand our horizons for 29 years, and then having unknowingly summited one day, cross immediately into the other watershed, where the flow of golden life is gradually drawn away from us.
I'd also like to say that pigs fly and there really are unicorns.
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