Time, time, time

Last year on the evening of my twenty fifth birthday I stood at the edge of a lake in Lethbridge, Alberta with the sun going down behind me and felt a tremendous sense of closure to my old life. I had already lived a whole quarter of a century, I had just graduated from college, it was the last day of our road trip to Canada and we were heading back south the next day. Everything I had looked forward to was over with. And the future more than at any other time in my life was a great unknown.

Today, one year later, it's my birthday again. I am twenty six. In talking to who are the close to the same age I am or a few years older, twenty six is when people start to become more and more surprised at how old they're getting. I've heard younger kids joke (and I've done it, too) about how old they're getting when they turn twenty or twenty one. But they don't fool themselves. They really know that they're still young. But at twenty six you start to get a sense of youth slipping away from you. It becomes stronger and stronger every year. And for a lot of people it's frightening. Time zooms by faster every year with more speed and force, and we feel more and more powerless to slow it down. It will be in a little while that we will be truly old.

From conversations I've listened to amongst people much older than me, this surprise at how old we're becoming never stops.

"I can't believe I'm thirty five already!"

"I can't believe I have a kid in high school already!"

"I can't believe I'm forty already!"

"I can't believe I have a kid in college already!"

"I can't believe my youngest has already graduated high school!"

"I can't believe we're grandparents already!"

Realizing that people are surprised by these things every day makes me determined not to be surprised by them, and by their accompanying sense of oldness. I know we can't stay young forever but we don't have to feel old if we don't want to. Right now, I am in the best physical shape of my life. I eat healthier and run six miles at least three times a week. I feel much more energetic than I did when I was a fast food guzzling twenty two year old. So in a way I feel younger now than I did four years ago.

Apparently I look young, too. A couple of days ago someone my age asked me if I was fresh off my mission. No, I said. It's been five years. But apparently I can still pass for a twenty one year old.

And we can still love birthdays, no matter what number is attached. Rather than seeing a birthday as a harbinger of decrepit old age, it's always a terrific reason to have a party.

Hero of Our Time

I've been looking forward to writing this post for a long time.

No matter what any one says, movies really do have the power to influence us for good or for evil. "The Matrix" influenced many an awkward teenager to dress in black and look like Keanu Reeves (Keanu Reeves is not the Hero referred to in the title of this post). "Rocky" inspires every one who stands on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to run up and throw a few punches into the air, even if they only saw "Rocky" once when they were five years old (as much as I would like it to be, the Hero I mentioned isn't Rocky Balboa, sorry Rock, next time). "The Lord of the Rings" movies to this day inspire legions of people to dress up as wizards and hobbits (I'm talking about a Hero of our time, not the third age of Middle Earth). "Top Gun" inspired a whole generation of impressionable young men, who wouldn't be caught dead in a hobbit costume, to become Navy fighter pilots (Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, sorry boys you're not the heroes I'm talking about either).

But through out my life no movie or Hollywood star has been more a constant mentor to me, and as good a friend, as Will Smith.

When I was thirteen years old, I found myself in the middle of the target audience of "Independence Day." I saw it opening day with my friends Mike and Jordan (this is the same Mike I went to the midnight showing of Indy 4 with twelve years later). We went to the largest and best theater we could get to at the time: Tigard Cinema. When we arrived it was already crowded so we had to sit down in the first few rows. These turned out to be ideal seats for the scenes when the gigantic alien spaceships show up. Like those poor people in the movie we just looked straight up at them, the edges of the ships spreading out past our peripheral vision. And when they started blowing everything up, the gigantic fireballs surrounded us.

And then Will Smith came and took down one of the little alien space ships, which is more than any one else could have done. Then he opened up the little alien spaceship, and an alien reared its nasty head through the smoke. A woman off to my right screamed. Then Will Smith gave the alien a right hook and said: "welcome to earth!" The audience cheered and applauded. It was awesome.

Will Smith taught me how to fight aliens that day. What other lesson does a thirteen year old boy want to learn? To attract girls, maybe? No. For the type of kid that I was, fighting aliens seemed much more important, and more probable, at the time. That's how pitiful I was.

Will Smith taught me how to fight aliens again a couple of summers later in "Men in Black," but he taught me how to look good while doing it.

It wasn't until a movie called "The Legend of Bagger Vance" came out that Will Smith fully embodied his role as a mentor, by coming out of the mist and teaching Matt Damon (and us) about golf and the mysteries of life.



In "I, Robot" he taught us how to fight robots, just like he did with aliens, only this time he showed us that you can overcome prejudices against robots first, and then fight them. But by the time "I, Robot" came out I wasn't interested in learning how to fight robots and aliens any more. I had grown up and moved on.

Will Smith moved on with me. In his next movie, "Hitch," he stepped back into his mentor role and gave me some much needed tips on how to impress women and dating.

But he didn't stop there. He amazed and educated me yet further in the "Pursuit of Happyness" by teaching me how to jump on the corporate ladder, even when all of life's forces are trying to keep you off of it, just like they're doing to me right now.

Then again, during a lonely time of my life, "I Am Legend" came out and Will Smith showed me how to deal with loneliness by being the last man on earth.

For all of these movies, I would like to shake Will Smith's hand one day and say "thank you," or "thanks, man."

Now after so many life lessons, when a new Will Smith movie comes out I can only ask myself: "what is Will going to teach me this time?" Today a new Will Smith movie is coming out: "Hancock." What can I expect Will Smith to teach me? After watching the trailer



I can't hazard a guess.