You Can Judge Your Age – updated 2017
Ok, one final drawing for ‘Aging week’. Next I think I will do completely random stuff that comes out of nowhere.
My feelings about aging all seem to revolve around not doing it. I don’t mean physically aging, and I don’t mean growing in wisdom. I mean becoming old in attitude.
The attitude that so often sees things ‘as they had been’ as being the best it will ever be. ‘Back when I was a kid’ or ‘When we were raised’ are clichés that are covers for not being willing or able to see new ideas and new ways of doing things.
The resistance to the new can start early, just think about how the best music ever probably was the music that came out when you were in high school and college. After that it all went down hill. Did it really? Didn’t you simply get use to certain musical ideas and then closed yourself off to new ones?
When Igor Stravinsky debut of the ‘Rite of Spring’ the audience became enraged and revolted against it. Why? Because it was an idea so new that it actually caused them pain. That of course changed over time, until now that same music is seen as almost safe and boring. It took time, but people have accepted it, it’s not new, it is not painful.
What I try to do is withhold judgment of the new until I can get use to the idea, start to understand its value. It is one way I work to not be ‘old’.
Drawing © Marty Coleman
“You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.” – Pearl S. Buck, Author