The World is Round: The Age of Age

I've kind of been looking forward to my birthday this year, as opposed to past years when I really didn't. No reason in particular-just a general aversion to event-oriented, calendar page turning. This year I'm turning 50, which is a half-century to you and me, but especially me, unless you're turning 50 too, in which case, happy birthday to you.

I've been looking forward to this year's birthday because, well, I just want to get it over with and done. I guess turning 50 is a big deal-well, it should be; it's one hell of an achievement for anybody, right?-but I don't expect I'll feel any differently than I do today. I likely won't feel any older, at least no older than I usually feel thanks to increasingly annoying lower-back pain, bad knees, and other assorted chronic body part-itises.

I don't feel like I'm going to be 50. In most ways, I don't feel older than I did when I was growing up. Oh, I've grown more mature-at least I hope so-and I've had to take on the responsibilities of life in ways I never imagined. But I still like the same things I liked when I was 10. I pretty much think about things the same way; if anything, I'm more passionate about certain ideals, like free speech, as any regular reader of this column will be aware.

So, what do I still like? I still like comic books; ice cream (but in teeny-tiny amounts-the diabetic's dessert nightmare); movies (all kinds, pretty much); books (mostly non-fiction); television (I could watch it all day, but I don't); computers; the Internet; and pop music, especially if it's got that special sixties or seventies zing.

I still get turned on by a great pop song. There's just something immediate about it, in the musical sense; it either hits you squarely between the eyes, travels through your skull into some part of your brain and stays put there, or it bounces off your forehead, never to be heard from again. In other words, you either like it or you don't. I like it, just about most of all.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty much the same person I've always been. I make mistakes, but I learn from them and move on. I endeavor to always do the right thing. Sometimes I don't. But there you go.

I've been taken to task over my seeming obsession with age. "You're only as young as you feel," it's been said. A friend told me recently that he didn't think I was as old as I am, that I come off as a younger person. Well, thank you very much. Despite my rapidly graying (and falling out) hair, I'm a pretty youthful specimen. No Brad Pitt, but there you go, again.

I've been trying to come to a conclusion about what drives us to think young. "Stay young/Keep yours wheels in motion," Gallagher and Lyle have sung, and I guess that's one of the secrets: Always keep moving, trying new things. What else? What else keeps us young?

Well, music, of course. I think music of all kinds keeps us young. Music is invigorating, thoughtful, exciting, somber, tearful, happy, and sad in one extraordinarily versatile package. Music's healing powers are legendary, at least in the Haber household, where, at various times, you can hear sounds from the forties and every decade thereafter, sometimes coming from more than one room at the same time.

Like life, it's somewhat of a cacophony, but what sweet sounds.

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