Getting old, ain't it a b*tch...?!

I recently came into contact with a person I hadn’t seen in about six years. Its funny how time can change people, if it doesn’t get a hold of who they are and warp that slightly, it takes a tight grip upon their youth and exerts its power through taking the shine from their skin or the gleam out of their eyes. I experienced this yesterday; I saw the gray that had taken over the whole person that was my stepfather who I hadn’t seen in years. Granted he is only my stepfather in the sense that he is married to my mother, he had no hand in raising me or anything, but non the less he was a person who I knew well and who I knew when he was quite vibrant and full of color. My stepfather is a truck driver, something he said to me after I saw him for the first time and was unable to hold back my surprise at how he had aged, “Its not the years, it’s the miles.” He said this in his heavy Tennessee accent that anyone else who was unfamiliar with, would have no idea what he’d uttered, but having spent two years in Tennessee and am more than capable of understanding the thickest of accents from just about anywhere. More on the topic of getting older though, I got to thinking about “the miles,” that which can age us more than just the passing of time. Contributors to “the miles” would be children, debt, manual labor, death, serious injury, failures and even success;” it appears as though just about anything can make you age faster than perhaps you were intended to. Its amazing to think that from the moment that we are born, our internal clock begins to tick and from that moment on we are on a one way road that leads to the unknown but non less inevitable out come, death. We are all destined to die, even now I type my thoughts out for you and you read word by word, second by second, our body’s are continuously breaking down, we’re aging, completing a cycle that we have no control over, nor do we fully comprehend why or to what end our souls are racing towards. Although this isn’t a blog about the unknown and this isn’t a blog about death, I simply seek to draw attention to the present. Our current existence, which I personally feel I sometimes take for granted. My youth, when will it be my turn to look into a mirror and say “Where did the time go?” when will you find that you no longer can run a lengthy distance or take on a hard days hike. Everyday we have a new opportunity to cease the day, but do you?