I’ve been in Chapel Hill, NC now for about 29 hours, having come here to attend PodcasterCon2006. My brother Howard, one of the other Word Nerds, was here as well.
Howard and I were undergraduates here in the 1970s. I graduated over 30 years ago, and Howard 28 years ago. Chapel Hill is where I met my wife, and we got married while we were graduate students in Dramatic Art here.
Chapel Hill is one of those college towns you never, ever forget once you have been a student (or even a resident). It is the essence of youth and intellectual ferment. Even now, in the dead of winter with no classes in session, there’s a buzz in the atmosphere. It feels like a cool, happening, important place.
And when you’re 52 years old and in town on your own for the first time in about 25 years, it also feels like a very young place.
Last night I had checked into my hotel about halfway between Chapel Hill and Durham, and I decided to drive back into town and stroll around on Franklin Street, the main drag. This was an activity I did countless times in my late adolescence and early adulthood. I learned to be an independent person in this town, learned to spend and save my own money, drink beer, browse for books in a bookshop–in short, to define my adult personality.
This time, however, for the first time in my life, I felt out of place on Franklin Street. A few of the same businesses are still here as were here 30 years ago, and the restaurants and snackbars are the same kinds of places we freqented as young people. But last night I looked at my reflection in the store windows, and I saw an old guy. Not even a mature professor-type, but an old guy.
My undergraduate and masters-degree years faded into history long ago, but I’ve also passed the age at which I could dream of bringing my Ph.D. in German to this school to be a faculty member. That is, I’m now too old to re-enter this community in any legitimate way–except maybe, in 13-15 years, as a retiree.
At dinner tonight, Howard pointed out that our (baby-boomer) generation tends to view ourselves as stuck in age somewhere between 18 and 25 years old. I think he’s right. We somehow assume we can stay in that young-adult mode forever. But we need to let it go and allow ourselves to become “mature adults.”
I love it here in Chapel Hill, it brings back great memories. But it sure is a stark reminder of the inexorable passage of time. And at the same time, I think my pensive regret at being an older person in Chapel Hill is precisely a reflection of that baby-boomer sense of entitlement to our years of youth.
Categories: midlife, podcastercon2006, university
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You feel like this when you go back to College. I feel the same way when I go back to school. I feel too old too. Out of place. Like I ought to be doing my thing elsewhere or something. School was such fun, I really miss it, but I’m also happy with my life today. It’s just that every time I think about those years, I get flooded with memories, mostly good ones and I feel nostalgic and want to go back. But that’s the thing, I can’t and you, Dave can’t either. We just have to go on doing what we have/want to and try and make the days we are currently experiencing fun and happy. That is but my opinion and nothing more.
Dave, I think you’re right about Baby Boomers hanging on to that young adulthood. When we were really young adults, in the 60s and 70s we were such a force, and the headiness of our youth has defined so much of our lives. I think we’re not totally sure that the rest of our lives really have lived up to that time when we idealistically believed that we could change the world.
And it does not seem to matter if we were really part of it. I had a baby at age 19, and never was part of the great protests and happenings of the time, but I still feel like part of it.
About 8 years ago, when my brother got married in Elmira, New York, I traveled back to the University of Rochester, which I attended for a year and a half in the late 70s and early 80s. It was wonderful to go back and have all those experiences, but I too felt really old there. And this was at the same time as I was a graduate student at George Mason University.
I think, Sim, you’re right that you can’t go back, but I think that what Dave is talking about is a little more, well, existential. It’s about self image, and the difference between the young self image and the much older reality.
Oops, forgot to sign that.
Julie Holm
You can feel old no matter how old you really are. I’m 30, and since I’m back to university (teaching at UNC Charlotte), I also feel rather old at times. When I was still in Vienna (the one in Austria, not in Virginia ;), I was really shocked when the students started using the Sie instead of the Du. I always felt as being one of them, not of the faculty “establishment” (in Vienna I wasn’t, I just taught as a hobby).
This lack of “feeling like a grown-up” isn’t just a Baby Boomer thing, I think that many people of my age feel like that too. There’s just nothing anymore that forces us to behave so differently, or that would define adulthood in a way that was there perhaps several generations ago.
This probably also has to do with a general lack of orientation that we are now facing. Our roles just aren’t as clearly defined anymore. And that’s not just a gender thing, but also influences what we think we are supposed to do or stand for at different phases of our lives.
We can now decide for ourselves. That’s wonderful, but it’s also more work and we have to find out what we want to be for ourselves, too.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with perceiving yourself as younger than you are. I would even say that that’s a great thing. Don’t give it up just because of that old man looking at you in the mirror.
Hi
Wherever you are and you recount on your youth you always feel the twinges of time, but the good thingis you have it all to look back on and remember. Hey tomorrows another day and time to make another memory.
Tonight I downloaded (via iTunes) the Brunner & Brunner album “Mitten im Meer” and in the process translated for my husband the lyrics to their song “Wir sind alle über vierzig”. Note that today because it really fits this theme. It almost deserves to be the current music for this thread:
Der Spiegel lacht wenn er mich sieht.
Was hast du dir da weggenschminkt?
Ein graues Haar tut doch nicht weh,
es sagt dir nur, dass du noch lebst.
Wir sind alle über vierzig, haben im Leben nichts vermisst.
Tiefe Spuren in unsren Herzen, tausend Sünden im Gesicht.
Die nächste hundert Jahre, die liegen noch vor uns,
Wir sind alle noch am Leben.
Ein Glas zu viel, das schadet nicht,
denn manchmal braucht die Seele Licht.
Wir drehen auf, hauen auf den Tisch.
Es ist egal, wie alt du bist.
Wir sind alle über vierzig, u.s.w. . . .
Die Zeit vergeht; so wie der Wind zieht sie vorbei.
Kannst sie verleben, denn du fängst sie niemals ein.
Wir bleiben jung, solang die Leidenschaft noch lebt.
solang in uns sich noch was regt.
Wir sind alle zuuber vierzig, u.s.w. . .
I love this song.
Julie Holm
Well, that was incomplete.
I meant that the song above reflects that Baby-Boomer holding onto youth thing. It’s almost an anthem to that generation. For you young whippersnappers, I think you may have gotten it from us. I see the same in the generations that follow us, and in my kids, but I think that my parents’ generation was much more serious about adulthood. While of course aging will bring with it some looking back and regrets, my parents never acted as if they saw themselves as continually young. I was in my late thirties, with teenaged kids, before I really began to see myself as “grown up” and I still like to encourage that “kid inside.”. I don’t think my parents’ generation did that.
I do think the generations after me do, though. I am pretty sure, that this is a good thing, because we are holding onto a certain creativity and openness much longer in our lives, and I think that is good.
Julie
Der Spiegel lacht wenn er mich sieht.
Was hast du dir da weggenschminkt?
Ein graues Haar tut doch nicht weh,
es sagt dir nur, dass du noch lebst.
—
Sehr schön! Was für eine Strophe. Sie hat mir sehr gut gefallen.
I’ll go and listen to the song.
It really makes you think. This life doesn’t really seem that long. One minute your a kid playing cricket with your friends in the garden and the next your all grown up and struggling with you education and what you want to do with your life. But the fact that we have the time and the patience to think about such things itself implies that our lives are actually long enough. According to me, one must just go on not thinking about the future or the past, just living and moving on. It’s the only way we can stay peaceful and not be bothered by all of this. And honestly, I don’t see why we should be………
PS: I couldn’t find the song. Julie, could you please post the link?
Sim, I got the song off iTunes, so I don’t have a link per se.
And it is amazing how soon after being a kid you find yourself preparing for your youngest child’s college graduation.
Julie
It’s probably like that for my mother. One day she’s in school and a few years down the line, her son graduates high-school….
I searhed iTunes, I can’t find it.
Could you please right click the song and choose “Copy iTunes Music Store URL” and paste it here?
Here’s the link to the Word Nerds in iTunes: The Word Nerds
(http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=74362633)
Wir sind alle über 40 is at:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?playlistId=19531568&s=143441&i=19531492
I’l note that I could not find it, or Herbert Gronemeyer’s Mensch, which I also wanted, but I was browsing a lot of German Pop music, even browsed the Germany store, and suddenly one day I could find both of the others. I think there’s some intelligent software that figures out what your preferences are.
Julie
oh ok, thanks for the link!
it probably does keep a track of what you browse, just like Google’s personalised search. It had stored every site I’d visited after searching for like the last 5 months. It was very cool to go back and see what all I’d requested.
The sad thing about iTunes though, is that I can’t buy anything!!!
I’m in India and they don’t have a store here yet, so I have to wait a while….
Chrisitan, one of the guys who I’m going to be starting Die Wortklauber with, did something really nice. He gave me his home address in Switzerland, so that I could sign up with iTunes to at least receive gifts. Damn them iTunes for not coming here, I do live in the country with the second largest population in the world! If only they all connected to the internet!