Even Peter Pan Doesn't Live Forever

What is the difference between life and time? Time will kill a life, but a life cannot kill time. Jason always had a fascination with time. He was eight years old when he first noticed a preoccupation with the subject as he told himself while walking to school, ‘You can wait to grow up.” He didn’t know the specifics of what that meant until many years later. The word “Wait’ and the term “Grow Up” both implied he was cognizant of the concept of time. All of us are to varying degrees in different stages of life. All he knew at eight years of age though, on some level, was that he held time in the palms of his hands.

He had time to be a kid. He had time to play, learn and be free of the constraints that both of those actions of adulthood bring. He had time to do whatever he wanted, so he worked a lot to that end. Adulting has a way of sucking the joy out of life, and Jason wanted no part of that. There is an old saying: “Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.” You see, putting off life is both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing when he realized he had that option, but it became a curse the longer he put that option into play. It becomes a habit that’s hard to break because it feels so good. But if there is one thing most people in this rat race despise, it’s seeing someone feel good about things or point out the good in life. After all, is childhood not one of the happiest times of our lives?

He also doesn’t realize, until it was almost too late, that the longer he puts off the inevitable, the harder it is to kick the habit. So, what is a boy to do when he can’t kick the habit of seeing life through the eyes of a child, when he is a fully grown adult who works, makes a few children of his own and phones in everything that adulting requires of a person? In the case of Jason, he learns the art and craft of writing stories. It’s more than just that, however. It’s not so much an escape to "keep from growing up." It’s more than just learning how to do something that is a socially acceptable practice of adulthood. It’s all about keeping that child-like focus alive while doing the things adults do. It’s all about learning how to keep one foot in and one foot out.

And again, be careful what you wish for. Jason became adept, through time, at skating through life. He became an expert at doing the bare minimum while appearing to be doing the best he could, to the people who tried hard to be successful at what they do. He was that kid who got A’s without studying. He was a social imposter who was smart and didn't care. A stranger in a foreign land who never saw the point in learning the language of the natives. What he didn’t fully realize was that he wasn’t fooling Father Time in the slightest. You can put off doing whatever you want in life, and you can even do what it takes to prolong your life. But there are no options in dealing with death. As another old saying goes: “It gets us all in the end.”

Jason knows full well where he stands in the different cage's society offers a conformist. He does have one foot in and one foot out after all. His juvenile vision is still there, but it’s getting fuzzy with time. Some people say losing part of your 20/20 vision is simply a condition born of aging. And while they’re not entirely wrong, it’s also a product of seeing life as a serious proposition that must be dealt with after decades of seeing the opposite. The eight-year-old boy may not be dying, but he’s becoming crippled. He can’t put it off forever, and that’s the kicker. Time gets us all in the end, and it doesn’t care how you spend, or have spent, your time prior. The ticking of a clock……the shadow on a sundial……the movements of sun and moon……. They never slow down and they never speed up. They truly are the only constant in life.

While that is an undeniable fact, time appears to move slow when we are young. We see things coming, and they are slow to get to us. Realizations, consequences of our actions, and other important instances that are instrumental in our growing as people. As we age, there is a seeming quickening of time. Realizations, consequences of our actions and other important instances that are instrumental in our growing as people, seem to get to us faster. We start to see the finish line. The tape at the end of the race track, and the realization that it means little to nothing if we won or lost the race, only that we had a chance to participate. Should we feel blessed or cursed that we were able to do it at all? The answer is subjective at best, but the eldest among us realize that it is the final redundancy in a life full of them. 

In his early 50’s, Jason had a dream. There was a man running around a race track on the grounds of a middle school. He was the only one running, and there was a lone man sitting in the bleachers. Every time the running man passed the spectator, he yelled out: “I’m winning! I’m winning!” The man sitting there watching him thought to himself: “But I’m not competing with you, dumb-ass.” If the man on the bleachers had actually yelled that out, would it have made a difference to the runner? Jason was the man in the bleachers. Then Jason turned around to face another race track. There was another man with the face of a child, running all alone, and every time he passed that lone spectator he would yell out: “I’m winning! I’m winning!” The spectator, Father Time in that sequence, yelled out to Jason: “NO, YOU’RE NOT!” Then the dreamscape panned out to the vantage point that an eagle has of land, and the dreamer realized that neither racer could see the finish line, even though they were getting closer.

Jason’s perspective changed in the days and years after that dream. He began to see the finish line, and, for the first time in his life, he cared about his own personal race. In the years prior, he cared only about doing things in opposition to the status quo and beating the status quo at its own game. Now he realized that not only did that not matter, but they didn’t care. They had their own race to run, as redundant as that one was, as well. Two different types of people running their own race that their respective finish lines held no trophies for. He started to care more about how his family viewed him, and how they would view him after his passing. It wasn’t about him anymore, and it certainly wasn’t about snubbing his nose at societal norms. The end doesn’t matter much when you strive to gain acceptance from your bloodline. Love matters because love doesn’t care whether you “win” or “lose.” It only cares that you earn what you gain and that you reciprocate the good that comes to you. 

Jason realized he wasn’t so different after all. We all have limited time, and after a lifetime of self-regulation and self-control, we cannot come to terms with the fact that there is a finality we have no control over. In our final days, we are not concerned about what we did or did not accomplish. We are more concerned about how something will happen to us, and we cannot control or understand it. Spend your life looking through mature or juvenile eyes, it doesn’t matter. What matters is what Jason now sees when he realizes it’s going to end soon. 

Jason participated in cross-country racing in high school. Through that activity, he learned not to focus on the competition itself, but the fact that he had to do his best. When he knew the finish line with its yellow tape was coming soon, he picked up the pace to get there sooner. This is something Jason learned from watching other runners and, in this context, it made sense. But this method doesn’t translate well into the race of life. As he has done most of his life, he’s still sitting in the bleachers watching the feet run their race, and picking up the pace as they near the ultimate finish line. In this context, that practice makes the runners look extremely short-sighted, and makes them look like they didn’t know what they were doing all along. 

He knows he can’t change the outcome of this race, and he knows the race will end sooner than the time it took to get here. Time can do funny things. He has lived a life dealing with unknowns, and they were unknown because of the way he chose to live his life. There is the light of conformity, and the darkness of non-conformity. There is comfort in living in a limited sight-line with the majority, and there is fear in living blind with the minority, and he chose the latter when he was walking to school one day as a child. His can be a lesson to learn if you are disposed to learning new things. 

He isn’t stressing the end of the race. He doesn't fear it, and he isn’t overly concerned by the personal legacy he’s leaving when he breaks that yellow tape. By all accounts, he has done just as good if not better than most of his generation from the same socio-economic class, and he is leaving written words that will be remembered long after he himself is forgotten. actions to learn from can also be a legacy. He looks at the other runners from time to time, and feels a little sadness for them. A lifetime spent playing by the rules through “mature eyes” has left many of them desperate. Their earning potential is always at risk, they didn’t pay attention to the slow deterioration of everything that once made America great, and their eyes look lost and afraid the more they age. To quote Jackson Browne: “Looking into their eyes, I see them running too.” Maybe Jason had it right all along. Don’t take any of this too seriously. The end is going to be the same, regardless of how you live.

Jason is satisfied with the way things have turned out thus far. The finish line doesn’t look imposing. There are only two things left he wants to do before it’s all over though. Look family members in the eye and make sure they know he loves them, and take another walk down that street when he opted for the wait. After all these years, all the happenings and changes he has been through, he still remembers where that eight-year-old boy was when he told himself to be a hold-out. He may have four years left or 40, he has no idea, but he just feels it’s time to come full circle with it all. Time to stop running away from time and start living with it.