“Everyone has eight-grade syndrome all their lives.” Well, I certainly have. The fact that I roleplay a superhero online pretty much every week is proof enough of that. I wish I could grow up soon though.

I turned 54 today. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!  I find that I am still in many ways young at heart. I really want to change that, but I am not sure how. I have tried so many things. There is a saying here in Norway that “youth is not a big drawback, you outgrow it”, but this seems to take its sweet time for me.

We live in a society that sees youth as a good thing, and for the body that is certainly true. It reaches its peak shortly after 20, and by my age it is already declining fairly rapidly. (Although some people take up long distance running in old age, most other physical feats are getting rapidly harder after 50.)

When it comes to the mind and personality, though, I agree with the ancients: While old age does not always bring wisdom, youth is almost always foolish. The current flood of education does not really change that. There is a fundamental difference in how the young and the old brain process information. As children we start with no insight and no connections, but a sponge-like ability to absorb random data we come across. As we grow up, we gradually lose the ability to learn random unrelated things simply by stumbling across them, but instead we develop our ability to learn by association, like filling in the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Now that I am in my mid-fifties, the images of the jigsaw puzzles should be what I see, not a jumble of pieces. To some degree that has happened, yes, but the picture is still so flat, it has not really become the real thing. It has not come alive. I learned, now I understand, but I don’t really understand, for I am not changed, I am not transformed. How long will that take? How long before I become wisdom lived rather than wisdom perceived? I could write books, innumerable books of timeless wisdom. Except I am not that wisdom, it is not really mine and certainly not me. So it is not finished, and will be destroyed if poured at this stage. One should be the wisdom before sharing it. Like valuable beverages that need years of processing alone in the dark, wisdom needs to be kept under lid to transform into its final and valuable stage.  Will I even live to see that happen? What can I do to move on, except shut up? That would probably be for the best, but it makes for a lousy journal…

I don’t want the impatient heart of the young. At least I have shed the seeking of popularity and even attention. I don’t write this journal to impress or be looked up to; Light save me from that for as long as possible. I write it for those who travel the same path as me, for friends known and unknown, and for the future yet to be seen. I write it because I don’t have children that can bring a part of me into that future. At this age I often think of the words of wisdom I heard from my father and my mother, but for many reasons I am not going to bring that wisdom into the future the same way they did. Luckily I have my brothers for that. The world is teeming with small Itlands, so that is good. But I shall have to bring my memes into the future without my genes. (Although they are mostly very good genes; I really undervalued them when I was younger. Oh well, a bit late now.)

I was never cut out to be a parent, but I think I would have made a decent grandparent. Well, that is not how the world works. But I look forward to becoming old at heart. I’ve been young long enough, I think.