Thursday, November 15, 2007

Not that I'm nearing middle age, but for those that are:

A (Secular) Prayer for Those Approaching Middle Age

Oh Almighty Charles Darwin,

We who are staring down Forty, beseech thee to aid our passage into middle age.

Protect us from a Mid Life Crisis. We Gen Xers have always been inclined to question the path we have chosen anyway, and indeed have always been inclined toward red convertibles.

Let us constantly renew our taste in music so that those ten years our junior will not be able to tease us for being old fashioned. Let us always be into at least one artist who's first album came out less than five years ago.

And we beseech thee to not leave us to rely on shitty "yoof" radio stations for these cultural insights.

We beg of you for the time and the stamina to go to loud venues and not feel the need to sit down after an hour of standing, listening to the support band. To phrase it another way: protect our knees from the ravages of time.

May we never become one of those people who prioritizes their superannuation over all else. Retirement is followed too closely by death to consider. May we have careers which enable this business to look after itself. And further let us not degenerate into to time-clock punchers waiting on their widening arses for their retirement.

Protect us from our biological clocks. May our ova be plentiful and our spermatozoa motile, up until the moment we get our shit together and finally combine one with the other.

We also beg of you to provide a steady supply of friends so that when they move overseas or we have falling outs, there is always other members of the circle indeed other circles to provide us with drinking companions.

And let not technology overwhelm us. When the things we are familiar with are inevitably superseded, may we be in a position to swap our vinyl records for CDs, our CDs for downloaded MP3s, our MP3s for whatever comes next. May we move from personal websites to forums to blogs to myspace to facebook and on to twitter with ease. May we not be confronted by some new phenomenon and decide just to give in and leave it to "the kids."

May we struggle successfully through downturns and housing bubbles, and not become a slave to a mortgage. May there never be a day where paying something off means we cannot do brunch. May we be inner urban wankers until the day we die.

And may those of us who mis-place our partners meet new, incredible people and form relationships which are the envy of all. May our children not mock us for reproducing so late, and hence being a bit lacking in the "running around kicking the football" department. To phrase it another way: protect our knees from the ravages of time.

And we bid thee, keep our ears functioning despite far too many loud gigs and thousands of hours with Rob Zombie blasting down our headphones. Yay verily for cupping our ears and saying "what was that, sonny Jim?" at the age of 42 will suck dogs balls.

For all these things we beg thy true grace, oh mighty Darwin.

Thank you. Ramen.

2 comments:

Gervy said...

That's fab - where did you find it?

N-Lo said...

well... I borrowed it from a post of a friend on fb...
great though isn't it?!