A Goal While Aging

The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,

Old, learned, respectable bald heads

Edit and annotate the lines

That young men, tossing on their beds,

Rhymed out in love's despair

To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;

All wear the carpet with their shoes;

All think what other people think;

All know the man their neighbor knows.

Lord, what would they say

Did their Catullus walk that way?

-William Butler Yeats, Selected Poems and Four Plays (1996). Edited by M.L. Rosenthal, Fourth Edition

I keep a journal.  Mostly I do so because in writing about events I gain valuable perspective.  I see where I could have handled things better, where I handled them well, and where I'm being flat out ridiculous.  There's an excessive amount of my being riddikulus.  But I also journal because time changes a person's perspective and I want to better remember exactly how I felt when faced with a challenge, a wonderful event, and anticipation.  It's important to be able to relate to people and if, in old age, I do not remember how it felt to be desperately in love, as the old men in this poem have forgotten, then I have lost something precious to me and, even more precious, I have lost the ability to closely relate to how younger people in my life are feeling.  So I write and hope that in fifty years my journals help me remember.