So as we slowly descend into summertime, I've noticed that people aren't as partial to good old fashioned fun as they used to be. In a society where we're all connected to our iPods on the bus, where we sit with our roommates in the living room, watching the tele, our PowerBooks on our laps (btw, that comes from personal experience), it's easy to get lost in the throes of techno-fun.What ever happened to the type of fun that we used to have when we were little kids? I remember being completely satisfied with spending an entire day on the playground, immersed in the world I created for myself. I could easily sit in my room, totally happy with building a fort and pretending to be a lookout for some secret society.
I really believe that while our current society has many advantages over the world that existed in the 1980s and early 1990s, kids these days don't have the capacity to build their own imagination, because everything comes ready-made and processed for them already. That video game my brother played every day after school? All of the characters and premise come pre-programmed, all you have to do is push the right keys in the right order to win. Instead of having free time to envision a world of their own, children's time is structured around events and plans that their parents decide for them.
I remember daydreaming about my future careers, always having so many options to choose from. I aspired to be a surgeon, engineer, laywer, President of the United States. At a young age, I would answer questions about my future with confidence and ease, always believing that my dreams would be accomplished. Have we abandoned the curiosity of our childhood? Are we really growing as we grow older?
I'm left with a lot of questions that don't really have tangible answers. While it's perfectly easy for me to reminisce about my youth, it's certainly more difficult to address the unknown that looms in the distance.
With all these thoughts regarding growth and age, it struck me that I didn't really know that much about aging, other than the obvious. While modern humanity seems to have mastered the art of hiding any signs of age with botox, plastic surgery, and makeup, Mother Nature has been doing it on her own for quite some time.
Someone asked me the other day if I'd ever heard of the Methuselah tree. In 1957, a bristlecone pine tree was discovered by Edmund Schulman at 11,000 feet above sea level in the White Mountains of California. Scientists dated the tree to 4,789 years old when they found it; the estimated germination is in 2832 BC. That means this tree has been around longer than Jesus Christ himself. Currently, it's known as the oldest living organism on the planet, and no one knows its exact coordinates to protect it from vandalism. The tree was named Methuselah, after the man with the oldest recorded age in the Bible (at 969 yrs old).
It amazes me that the tree has survived for so long, in a nearly solitary state, against all odds. Just knowing about its existence is enough to convince me that no matter how much we think we know about the world, there's always something out there to trigger the curiosity of those who are not afraid to admit they still have a lot to learn.
