Summer is coming to an end…

“L’estate sta finendo e un anno se ne va, sto diventando grande, lo sai che non mi va…” (summer is coming to an end and a year has gone by, I am growing up, you know I don’t feel like it…). The Righeira used to sing this, and if you remember it it means you are a grown up, like me.
In a few days I turn 44. 44! My daughters say they don’t want me to grow old. When I was a kid I was more afraid of aging than dying.
My wife says I am more charming now my gray hair, but she’s my wife, so it makes sense that she says that. One thing is for sure, my hair is whiter and if I don’t do my stretching my muscles get stiff more quickly.
I have gone through a lot in life. Sleepless nights, quick showers, double espresso and off to work. Eat 2 sausages with French fries, wine and grappa on demand, to then sleep and wake up without any trouble. I slept on any kind of “bed”, with noise all around me and all sorts of noisy company. I have done things I’d better keep to myself and the day after I didn’t even feel the consequences.
Today it’s different. It’s not just age. It’s responsibility, children, mortgage, commitments… Maybe it’s the way I think that has changed. I don’t realise it, but when I talk to kids it becomes evident.
I know people, and they’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses, that never celebrate their birthday. Some even feel miserable because they’re getting older.
Let’s be honest, it’d be very nice if we could all stay young forever..
But then let us say the whole truth. Sharon Stone says that for people like her, who have survived to cancer, aging is not a problem, it’s a conquest. The President of a multinational company I work with, who also fought terminal cancer, says that in order to live you have to grow old. Growing old is not great, but the alternative is worse.
I remember a short story by Jorge Luis Borges of which I can’t recall the title. The main character is searching for a tribe of immortal beings. He looks for them all over the world, expecting to find some extraordinary people: beautiful, wise and educated. On his travels he meets a group of people who live in mud, like animals. I can’t remember the story very well, as I read it long ago or maybe it’s the ageing, but I remember that at the end the immortal beings are the very ones who lived like animals. They live in boredom, left to their destiny as they have no motivation. They have tried everything, and it will never end.
In vampire stories, not as intellectual as Borges’s ones, the night creatures feel doomed to damnation because they never die. Steve Jobs, unfortunately sick as well, once said death is the best invention of life, because it cleanses.
If we didn’t have death we wouldn’t rush to get things done. We wouldn’t be motivated to do anything.
Growing, growing up, going through birthdays is part of being alive. We need to celebrate, to some people, this day has been taken away.
We, that still have it, should celebrate. And maybe we should celebrate every day, so once our birthday comes we would have to throw a huge party, just to make it different from all the other days.
I am not going to have a big party this year. I will party a lot, but with few people. My actual birthday will be just for me. I’ll spend the evening with my family and the next day with my close friends.
In the meantime I will look at my grey hair and think that each one of them represents one of those nights, or one of the best days of my life. That’s why I have a lot of them. It is said that the great Anna Magnani, sitting at her make up desk, used to say to her make up artist “please, do not cover my wrinkles, it took me a lifetime to get them”.
Have a nice end of summer. It’s over because we have lived it fully. Now it’s time for Autumn and Winter. Two more seasons to enjoy and live. In a different way, but still to enjoy.
Claudio