Transience and Tasmania

Painting by me

 One of the first things I noticed when moving to Tasmania was the number of elderly people. They make up most if not half of the local population. And I don’t mean this negatively; I admire the diversity in the community, the blend of ages in social settings. 

Most of our customers at my work are older folk and I love them. They offer an immediate ease and comfortability I appreciate. 

But it’s hard not to look for your future self in those beautiful sun-faded faces. Tasmania has forced me to face my mortality otherwise lost or ignored. Every one of them were young once. I overhear ladies celebrating their 70tj birthdays with bewilderment. “I never thought I’d make it this far,” one toasted to their friends with glasses of bubbly. One day not far away that will be me. 

It’s hard not to feel sorry those with disabilities and impairments brought on by life. I am not naive enough to think my own body will be immune to the ways of time and I find myself wondering/worrying that the way I sit and sleep and spend my leisure will bring me pain in the future. But I’m not scared. It is simply life; our life habits imprinting on our skin and bones and there’s a sort of beauty in that, I suppose. 

I spoke to a regular older couple on my birthday and told them my age. “Three years until thirty,” I said. Understandably, they had little sympathy for me and made that clear but I was not seeking that. It was more the disbelief that I was trying to convey; time is faster than our minds can comprehend. 

I think the hardest part about getting older is not the aging or decaying but more so the realisations of not being where you thought you would be and the accompanying guilt of letting down your young self. 

But I still have time. Maybe i ought to start doing something with it.