I hold my own controversies as I sleep and dream about thinking.
Last night, I was acting as a kind of developmental biologist on the look out for time markers, examining speech and behavior to guess the age of populations. How old are you, really? This is what I asked in my dream. Arguing that we age at different rates, in different ways, different signs indicating the length of time one has lived.
Some of my teenage students being hardly more than five years old in maturity, others in their twenties branded by the distinctive nature of centenarians. Similar results, on might say, but it’s the path that perhaps matters, how we get to be who we are. And how long it has taken us.
Wondering whether a chronological perspective to human aging could correlate with how we feel about the past, what has elapsed, how light or heavy some days have appeared to us. The speed of minutes, the ones filled with happiness, others with pain or fear. How deep are such traces, and what do they reveal about our own personal duration.
Do biological signs translate the way we perceive the span of existence. Is there a reliable age-estimation procedure to render with accuracy the amplitude of life’s extent. What’s the best time scale. As I dream about thinking, questions take the appearance of people I’ve known.
My mother died without a wrinkle on her face. A cousin had completed all of her life cycles before the age of three, and a fatal car accident. A friend succumbing to the scorching fevers of AIDS, his 30-year old body consumed by a millennia of suffering. An adolescent having never known anything else than leukemia, dying with a serene, youthful smile in her father’s arms. But living creatures around us, many clutching to short ideas and overwhelming beliefs, unable to be light, incapable of bending, grayness in each glance, attached to arrested opinions about the world and themselves. I have met, quite recently actually, a 14 year-old who was no spring chicken, I tell you.
Age is a number. Yet, it is an approximation. It certainly indicates when I was manufactured, but it says little about my difficulties to become a mature individual. It reveals nothing about how embryonic my personality has remained throughout the years. It doesn’t explain why I still feel inexperienced, never quite ready. Filled with hesitation, still expecting to grow up and acquire problem-solving skills. Intuitively aware I’m unformed, unfinished. Still in the making. Anticipating the threshold of an upcoming birth as a start to the accumulation of valuable data on how to conduct myself.
How can I provide a full-proof answer, dispute what legal documents say about my age. Produce evidence of my unreadiness. Demonstrate that I’ve never outgrown the fetal stage. I’m not childish. On the contrary. I’ve never been a kid. All along, I’ve been rudimentary. On the edge of nascency. Displaying signs of potential. Announcing that I may have a future. Nothing infantile about my mind. It just never came to be, still preparing itself.
In my conversational dreams at night about thinking, I fantasize about being pensive. Becoming a thoughtful individual. Discussions where I’m wise and insightful, corroborating my biomarkers.
I dream I have a philosophy. That events have added up to lessons learned. Circumspection and judiciousness. That when I speak, sagacity can be heard. My dreams are that I am exactly my age. Talking in my sleep with discernment and balance. Showing, with insightful words, what more than half a century should sound like. I dream with perfection that I can handle decades of exposure to events, and then I wake up, still ill-equipped. Unpracticed. Unrecorded history as a relic. Things that can be as memories.
Can genomic studies disclose one’s true age. Can research into dreams create a dialogue worthy of time since one’s birth date. Can personal development be unveiled as much by the lines around the eyes as the ones spoken. Can these ever match.
Laolao
Last night, I was acting as a kind of developmental biologist on the look out for time markers, examining speech and behavior to guess the age of populations. How old are you, really? This is what I asked in my dream. Arguing that we age at different rates, in different ways, different signs indicating the length of time one has lived.
Some of my teenage students being hardly more than five years old in maturity, others in their twenties branded by the distinctive nature of centenarians. Similar results, on might say, but it’s the path that perhaps matters, how we get to be who we are. And how long it has taken us.
Wondering whether a chronological perspective to human aging could correlate with how we feel about the past, what has elapsed, how light or heavy some days have appeared to us. The speed of minutes, the ones filled with happiness, others with pain or fear. How deep are such traces, and what do they reveal about our own personal duration.
Do biological signs translate the way we perceive the span of existence. Is there a reliable age-estimation procedure to render with accuracy the amplitude of life’s extent. What’s the best time scale. As I dream about thinking, questions take the appearance of people I’ve known.
My mother died without a wrinkle on her face. A cousin had completed all of her life cycles before the age of three, and a fatal car accident. A friend succumbing to the scorching fevers of AIDS, his 30-year old body consumed by a millennia of suffering. An adolescent having never known anything else than leukemia, dying with a serene, youthful smile in her father’s arms. But living creatures around us, many clutching to short ideas and overwhelming beliefs, unable to be light, incapable of bending, grayness in each glance, attached to arrested opinions about the world and themselves. I have met, quite recently actually, a 14 year-old who was no spring chicken, I tell you.
Age is a number. Yet, it is an approximation. It certainly indicates when I was manufactured, but it says little about my difficulties to become a mature individual. It reveals nothing about how embryonic my personality has remained throughout the years. It doesn’t explain why I still feel inexperienced, never quite ready. Filled with hesitation, still expecting to grow up and acquire problem-solving skills. Intuitively aware I’m unformed, unfinished. Still in the making. Anticipating the threshold of an upcoming birth as a start to the accumulation of valuable data on how to conduct myself.
How can I provide a full-proof answer, dispute what legal documents say about my age. Produce evidence of my unreadiness. Demonstrate that I’ve never outgrown the fetal stage. I’m not childish. On the contrary. I’ve never been a kid. All along, I’ve been rudimentary. On the edge of nascency. Displaying signs of potential. Announcing that I may have a future. Nothing infantile about my mind. It just never came to be, still preparing itself.
In my conversational dreams at night about thinking, I fantasize about being pensive. Becoming a thoughtful individual. Discussions where I’m wise and insightful, corroborating my biomarkers.
I dream I have a philosophy. That events have added up to lessons learned. Circumspection and judiciousness. That when I speak, sagacity can be heard. My dreams are that I am exactly my age. Talking in my sleep with discernment and balance. Showing, with insightful words, what more than half a century should sound like. I dream with perfection that I can handle decades of exposure to events, and then I wake up, still ill-equipped. Unpracticed. Unrecorded history as a relic. Things that can be as memories.
Can genomic studies disclose one’s true age. Can research into dreams create a dialogue worthy of time since one’s birth date. Can personal development be unveiled as much by the lines around the eyes as the ones spoken. Can these ever match.
Laolao
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