A Vision Of The Future

It was one of those landmark moments people tell you about. Not one of those memorable rights-of-passage like a wedding or a funeral or a graduation – something simpler which told me just as much. ‘You really are a lot more dependent on your glasses than you’ve been before. You need them for driving now as well as reading. Have you thought about varifocals? My mum has them and she says they’re the best thing ever...'

I balk at the word ‘old’. I shiver even more at ‘middle aged’. But I’m definitely ready to admit it: I’m no longer young.

Oscar Wilde said: ‘The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything’. By the multiple choice that this invites, I’m definitely middle aged. I’m shuddering as I type it. I suspect everything indeed, from the phonecalls from an unknown number (I expect either bad news or some kind of unsolicited demand) to the food or hygiene in a restaurant I don’t know much about (they say a temperamental stomach is a sign of growing older), to unexpected advances or compliments from people I don’t really know (what do they want?).

But it’s not just about suspicious minds, even if Elvis claims that this is what prevents us building our dreams. Other things about no longer being young make building dreams hard work. It’s not just declining eyesight which makes you think that there’s less to look forward to shimmering on the horizon. Nothing makes you reassess your priorities more than the grown-up thinning of your Christmas card list: not because you’ve fallen out with people, but because some friends and relations aren’t around any more. Your own health isn’t what it was. There’s that temperamental gut, to say nothing of aches and pains and headaches. A good night’s sleep used to cure all ills. Now there’s that 4am insomnia and then getting up in the morning feeling even worse than when you went to bed. That feeling of a constant hangover without the previous parties, which would make it feel worthwhile. Sometimes I tell myself a little story: ‘no, you’re not tired because you were up late marking A level coursework or reading a new novel on your Kindle. Don’t you remember? You were at a marvellous party to rival anything in The Great Gatsby; you were drinking cocktails and champagne and dancing, and it really was quite fabulous.’ And there’s the invisibility. In younger days (and nights), I was never the centre of attention (and I was fine with that), but I wasn’t invisible either. Now, if I did go to a party, it would be assumed that I was either there because I was someone’s mum, or to work. And there’s the grumpiness. The sotto voce muttering at other drivers has extended to other pedestrians and even other shoppers. My students tell me that my disapproving look has become legendary. My husband is beginning to describe himself as ‘long-suffering’. I’m turning into a cliché. The agony.

When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to grow up. I wanted to do my A Levels and go to university and get a job and have a mortgage and go on holidays and get married and have a family and have a go at everything I could. I don’t think I ever felt I knew it all – but with every year I’ve aged, I’ve felt less and less as if I know any answers at all. Do we enter some kind of Faustian pact when we are young: we’re dying to grow up, but in growing up we end up growing old, so that dying to grow up ends up as growing old until we die? Is this all there is? Is optimism something which just vanishes, a diminishing vision which even varifocals couldn’t fix?

I hope not. I hope that there are still many good things to look forward to, on the horizon. Maybe it’s just that the shimmer is harder to interpret: there’s haze as well, and maybe some sea fog too. You have to concentrate your focus to see things clearly, figuring out what part of the lenses to look through. It was all so straightforward in the past, or so it feels from here. I think there’s still cause for optimism though, and maybe it’s all the more rewarding for having to be thought about more carefully.

I’m looking forward to trying out my new old lady glasses in a week or so… but I think my own way of looking at the years ahead needs some corrective work as well. I’m not quite ready for old age gullibility, but I think it’s time to recover just a little bit of optimism as I look ahead.