Am I Being Grumpy?

Sir;... I don't mind being reminded of my age... I am nearly three times as old as I ever thought I would be... Thinking I was going to die young, I lived fast, and did a whole bunch of nonsense I would never in retrospect have done...Retrospection was only guilt's imagination...If anyone in that time of mine had had a chance to see me fine, and stiff, and laid out in my best, they might have whispered under breath: What an insufferable idiot!!! Such was youth..
I survived my preoccupation with my demise... I survived my premonition, and now I'm on a mission... I began to ask: what if I don't die tomorrow... I knew I had to find some one to share my misery with, or it would burn a hole in my life, like every dollar did through my pockets... And I found a keeper... I was trying to cast a spell on that girl, on every girl; and magic opened a door on anthropology, and anthroplogy on history, and history on philosophy, and philosophy on love until the charm I tried to cast with wired words caught and taught me humanity ...
I don't mind being old because I hated being young... In no place on earth was youth so wasted on the young as where I was idling... I remember being pleasantly pickled at a wedding, and hearing my uncle talking to a friend, saying if I knew at my age what he knew at his, I could have a million dollars in the bank by the time I was his age...Why that???... It must have been a generational thing...
To be intimate with hundreds and perhaps thousands of girls would have been better then, and it is better than money in the bank is now... How many girls can you touch or smell, hold close and care about in one short life... To do one woman justice is to hold one, and to do youth justice infinity does not surfeit... Aah, in life the wisdom to drop nothing, and set all things passing gently down in moving on to new as in some trove of treasures is of a god munificent...
My youth was cursed, and I was born old, with human obligations, but my age is blessed and I will die young... I have followed my star, I have touched some truth, I have felt some love, I have lived my life and have packed my life as fully full of regrets as if I had done nothing and knew it, playing it safe and dying the same of wrinkled age... I am not so cruel as to wish youth on the young, and never do I wish them age; but to all I wish only the meaning of their moments- the certain knowledge that this is life like dew evaporating in the heat of a day...
If you cannot enjoy this moment, then stay and enjoy less the next and next and next until you have lost another day, or find your meaning in your moments before they pass away... If you smile at the sight of me, I will check my fly... If you call me handsome, I will look behind me for the Adonis I once was... If you call me young I will know you are talking to me because I am here to play...I am here for fun... Let's be Joy!!!
Thanks...Sweeney

Sweeney: Poetic,engrossing and bittersweet. I agree with everything you said and I'm a bit jealous that I did not say it , to myself, as eloquently as you have. You are right, it was all about girls who I thought could supply immortality. Salud!

Re: anubis;... The cycle of life cannot be delayed, but only celebrated... It is as if each day is a page and we are its liege, and it armors us and arms us for what ever challenge we must rise to, and if victory is ours today, defeat is more certain tomorrow, and all we are left with is that terrible hybris that invites destruction and makes death justice...
Who are we to complain of age when every day we wished to survive... And what pain is it to be subtly abused by people too small to think us worthy of their caring...Is it not fair and just???... Will they all bright and new and clean not suffer the same in time??? Will they not pay for their lives with the loss of them as every human being does???...
Only we are empowered to make our lives an adventure of joy, of kindness, of meaning...We are the only witness we have to the monsters we have fought, or the giants we have slain... There will be no bands, no triumphs, no flowers, no laural wreaths; and why should there be??? Life is such glory, such will, that its victories are inexplicable, its wonders unexpressable...
Drop the thought that we are created, and gather the notion that we are related, and relate to pond scum the beauty of a sun set seen through a bonnet of foliage green... This life is some kind of wonderful, and the only bich I have with anyone is that so many must spend so much of their only lives wishing for the next moment because the one they suffer now is too terrible to bear...
I certainly cannot complain about my treatment...The only reason I guard my virtues is that I have so few...I never look with pity on anyone, and don't expect it... What I want is another matter... People left freaks by nature or accident have my attention, but never my pity... I have something in common with them, and I can relate... People who think they are normal or beautiful all distant and dignified have nothing to teach me... There lies in some forgotten hollow a place where death awaits to midwife terrors, and I refuse to join with him in fear...Courage and honor are the arms and armor of destiny, and these I will not face fate without...
Thanks...Sweeney

Your column on who fights our wars makes very valid points about the gradual conversion of our military forces into almost a mercenary force, populated by low-income, low-education people.

This may not have been a deliberate policy, but the result is just as you indicated, and puts an entirely unfair burden on those who end up in our armed forces.

Those of us who have served in combat recognize that draftees are not always the most dedicated soldiers. But this is a small matter compared with the terrible, discriminatory societal results of the current "volunteer" system.

We need to get back to a system where all classes of society serve in the military--one where the children of the well-off do not have easy exemptions.

Mark, as a Marine veteran you (and your readers) would be interested in a book by a former Marine (and Rhodes scholar) who details his experiences leading a platoon in the thick of the bloody fighting in the Vietnam DMZ: "WHAT IT IT LIKE TO GO TO WAR", by Karl Marlantes. The book is on several lists of the 10 best books of 2012

Re: tom macdonald;... Sir, I must disagree... Yes; we are very mercenary oriented in the way of contractors... The U.S. Military, judging by the one I know may be relatively low income, but not low intelligence, and they do train to specifications... These people are not cannon fodder; and they are often in many respects the best we have to offer taking the only possible step to something better in life... As Dirty Harry must have said: Dying ain't much of a living... Death is only a fraction of what many of these people suffer... The damage that bullets or high explosives can do to the human body is beyond survival and yet people some times do survive to lives of hell and poverty... Worst of all is the mental and moral diseases such experiences cause... America still has Vietnam Vets wandering around in the woods unable to socialize... Judging from my buddy who did thirteen patrols over there, it can work on you... He said in the first year he was home he never once woke up in his own bed... He lived in Texas, and had no basement, but he would have a dream, or hear a noise, and would jump out of the window and wake up under the house...You know, this short term small scale war along with the general poverty of the people gives the military the pick of the litter...They are not dummies, but good people usually with good families, strong, healthy and athletic... They have some ambition to go with their ability, and the courage to hold the line...
I would say however, that the attempt to outsource the hardship and expense of the military to private concerns is a mistake... It costs more because less stays in America, and you can't really buy loyalty or good service; and they are not reserves trained, and ready to cycle in... Consider what cost it used to be... In Vietnam 90% saw no actual combat, but the 10% that saw combat took 90% of the casualties...
How do you eliminate those 90% of the casualties when you have only that ten percent doing longer tours of duty... It is cool if you want to keep the madness resulting located in a small and tractable part of the population, but incredibly unfair to those who serve... You can not sanitize war, or profitize it... Those profiteers who push nations into war as if patriots should be pushed up against a wall and shot... Some where some one is going to have to go out in the world, man to man, and strike down the enemy as a decent human dignity... Trying to make killing to easy makes morals immoral... We have to respect the humanity of those we kill, which is our own humanity, and kill only with the deepest regrets, and honor their dead as our own... That neglect of honoring the dead was as much the crime as Murder in ancient Greece, and it sent furies flying... We have to remember that killing is not a choice, but what people do for want of a choice...
Soldiers some times commit suicide...
Can we say no fury had a finger on the trigger??? Is it possible these people find themselves guilty of some rank offense and execute sentence??? We are able to deal with stress for short periods of time, but longer periods result in serious mental and physical disorders... Few people are equiped emotionally for it, and I think they who are may be borderline criminals... And I am no doctor, so what do I know???
My job came with a lot of stress, and it would destroy some people; but it was nothing like being in a combat zone...Some times people would simply fade away... Others would go quietly mad, and drink themselves into serious consquences while all the while cheerful and encouraging... Some people would end their lives and some times the lives of loved ones they had first driven away...As one counselor told an ironworker: From my experiences, ironworkers do not form relationships; they take hostages... No doubt... Who would share the lives of such men... Who would choose to share their love with one so close to the edge of animality...Pity them; but don't love them...They are beyond rescue...