{"id":65,"date":"2010-05-16T03:22:53","date_gmt":"2010-05-15T22:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=65"},"modified":"2010-08-02T01:09:05","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T20:09:05","slug":"on-turning-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/?p=65","title":{"rendered":"On Turning 50"},"content":{"rendered":"

Johnny_Cash-Ring_Of_Fire<\/a><\/p>\n

[Remarks delivered at 50th<\/sup> birthday party; Zionsville, Indiana]<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was recently asked if I felt old now that I have turned 50.\u00a0 I pondered this and thought back to when I turned 24.\u00a0 It was New Year\u2019s Eve, 1982.\u00a0 I sat at home in Goshen, Indiana, alone.\u00a0 My fianc\u00e9e had recently dumped me, and I sat alone in the living room of my parents\u2019 house, watching Dick Clark\u2019s Rock\u2019n New Year\u2019s Eve Party.\u00a0 My younger brother was out with his friends, my oldster parents were out at a New Year\u2019s Eve party.\u00a0 EVERYBODY in the world was out at a New Year\u2019s Eve party.\u00a0 Pathetically, I called my ex fianc\u00e9e to see if she\u2019d reconsidered her position.\u00a0 She was at a New Year\u2019s Eve party and not available.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Enough, I thought to myself, I gathered myself, and headed for the true hot spot of Goshen, the Holiday Inn bar.\u00a0 Any lonely person, no matter how rejected by the world, could at least find some fellow losers at the Holiday Inn bar with whom to fend off the crushing burden of loserdom.\u00a0\u00a0 I drove my pathetic green loser Pontiac compact car to the Holiday Inn.\u00a0 I walked up to the bar\u2019s entrance.\u00a0 \u201cCLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY\u201d read the sign on the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sad, but not hopeless.\u00a0 Goshen\u2019s twin city, Elkhart, boasted an equally hopping Holiday Inn bar.\u00a0 Elkhart, while being a bit more seedy and blue collar than Goshen, actually possessed a more \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d atmosphere (by Indiana Mennonite standards anyway), and so braced to bite off an even bigger slice of life at the wild, urban Elkhart Holiday Inn, I drove on into the night.\u00a0 A twenty minute drive later, I faced another sign:\u00a0 \u201cCLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now officially crushed, I returned to the living room, and Dick Clark\u2019s rockin good time.\u00a0 As I sat there, it occurred to me that I felt \u201cold\u201d—old to the core.\u00a0 This is what it feels like to be an old person, sitting alone, with no friends, no purpose, nothing to look forward to but further old age and death, nothing to look back on but being a loser.\u00a0 I don\u2019t imagine that I could ever feel more old\u201424 years OLD.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Now I look at 50, and I think of my two favorite movies:\u00a0 Apollo 13<\/em> and It\u2019s A Wonderful Life.\u00a0 <\/em>I mention Apollo 13 <\/em>because at 50 it would be easy to look at your life and identify all of the ways you have fallen short.\u00a0 I am not a billionaire, I am not a professional athlete, I haven\u2019t gotten my manuscript published, and oddly enough, I am not ruler of the Western Hemisphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the movie, James Lovell, the commander of the space craft, who never got to step on the Moon, but successfully returned the crippled space craft to earth with no fatalities, referred to the mission as a \u201csuccessful failure.\u201d\u00a0 I look at my own life and my meager accomplishments, compared to my goals, and say, yes, my life is also a successful failure.\u00a0 Many childhood goals remain unfulfilled, but I look at my three successful children, my beautiful and vibrant wife, and pleasant home with no holes in the roof, and say it hasn\u2019t been a complete bust.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This brings me to my second movie, It\u2019s A Wonderful Life.\u00a0 <\/em>At the end of the movie, after George Bailey had thought his life a failure, he is surrounded by friends who come to his rescue in the nick of time.\u00a0 As he ponders this, he receives a message from his \u201cguardian angel,\u201d Clarence.\u00a0 Clarence\u2019s message:\u00a0 \u201cNo man is a failure who has friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So tonight, surrounded by about 80 friends, my three children, and wonderful wife,\u00a0 I reject any impulse to consider myself a failure or a loser.\u00a0 In fact, tonight, in sharp contrast to that 24th<\/sup> birthday, I do not feel 50 years OLD; I feel 50 years YOUNG!<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you all for coming tonight, and may God bless you in the year ahead!\u00a0 Happy 2009, and God bless us all, every one of us!<\/p>\n

Copyright 2009\u2014David J. Carr<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johnny_Cash-Ring_Of_Fire [Remarks delivered at 50th birthday party; Zionsville, Indiana] \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I was recently asked if I felt old now that I have turned 50.\u00a0 I pondered this and thought back to when I turned 24.\u00a0 It was New Year\u2019s Eve, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.davidjcarr.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}