The Dharma Bum

By Jaysen Buterin

"I'm old enough to see behind me, and young enough to feel my soul" -- Lenny Kravitz

The first thing I'm going to do is rent a car. It doesn't matter that I won't have anywhere to go; I'll drive around the block all day if I have to. The second thing I'm going to do is to call my insurance company and tell them to lower my rates. Other than that I can't really think of any other grandiose celebratory activities to engage myself in.

That's right readers, as I pen these very words in my usual anastrophic demeanor I prepare myself for the bittersweet arrival of my 25th birthday.

While I've always tended to think of myself as an ageless soul in an aging body, and I always took that notion with a grain of salt, I must admit it still seems rather surreal to me that I will be a quarter of a century old at 3:27 p.m. (CST) on Jan. 31.

Not that I'm waxing circumlocution, Heaven forbid I ever do that, but seriously, I was the kid who 15 years ago sat in utter perplexity that I was going to be turning 10. I sat there with my beloved parents, in soothing happiness with my presents and, if memory serves me correctly (although now that I'm going to be 25, even it probably won't card me anymore) my Thundercats birthday cake.

I sat there thinking I could feel the weight of the universe on my shoulders and wondered how I'd managed to make it that long -- I was 10. Of course, that deep existential epiphany was circumvented by the taunting torpor of my birthday gifts, but still ... I was a weird kid.

So now, 15 years later, that impending and foreboding sense of mortality is coming back again, although it's been residually subcutaneous ever since. There's no cause for concern here. I'm not sitting around in the dark listening to Mazzy Star, chain-smoking like Dorothy on an all night Coca-Cola/Lays chips bender, but I know my fellow "Gen X-ers" can relate to this roller coaster of thought. I know, I know, I'm cringing at the use of that label too, but I assure you, I use it only to make a point.

I remember when 16 seemed so far away, so alien, that anyone over that age was just too old and that they couldn't possible be as prolific and wise as I was because I was the youth gone wild and I knew everything. All the adolescent trials and tribulations I was going through the motions of couldn't have possible have ever happened to those old people. So when I turned 16, 21 seemed to be a universe away -- some taunting cardinal number that I equated with senility and selling out because I was 16 and I bloody well knew everything.

So on my 21st birthday I realized that this was the top of the mountain and once I turned 25, stick a fork in me, I'm done. At 21 I was an amalgam of sagacity, vivacity and pugnacity and I knew it all. Now, on the eve of my 25th birthday I've finally had the true epiphany, that arcane glimpse into the intrinsic workings of the universe -- I'm 25 years old, it's not so bad, 30 sounds fun, and I don't know a damn thing.

In the grand scheme of things, 25 rather pales in comparison. If you put all of life as we know it on a 12-month calendar (and before any of the three callers prepare to impugn the Speak Out call line with disputatious rants on Creationism versus Darwinism -- calm down -- I'm not starting a jihad over this and quite frankly if you don't like it, come back and I shall taunt you for a second time).

Whew, now where was I? Ah yes, if you put all of existence as we know it onto a 12-month calendar, humanity wouldn't appear until the last half of the last second of 11:59 p.m., Dec. 31. Now I don't feel so old. I think it's also complemented by the fact that I own records, books and clothes older than myself, much to the chagrin of my dear Kindal, who is dying to get me into a clothing store that doesn't have "Thrift" or "Second" in the title, and doesn't have the shopping edict of "take all the clothes you can fit into a bag for $1."

Then I try to fit myself into the grand pandemic equation. In 219,000 hours on this third stone from the Sun, I have amassed no financial fortune whatsoever. Yet I have a life I wouldn't trade for anything -- the unconditional love of the two most altruistic and giving parents; the soul-stirring love of the woman I'm meant to be with; superficial things like a great job, an amazing band, the opportunity to write what I do for who I do it for; assuaging things like the fact that I still have all my fingers and toes and like I said before, despite all the stupid, stupid things that I've done, I'm still here.

By all definitions I should consider myself lucky and I do at that, yet I can't help but look at other lads and lasses my own age, even younger, and think about where they're at. Those who are married. Those who have been married and are no longer. Those who have been married, are no longer, and are married again. Those who have kids. Those who own homes, or have mortgages, or escrow, or are making perpetual payments on new cars.

I can't even keep a plant alive. My mode of transportation is 15 years old and defies life expectancy more times than Keith Richards. I'm not even allowed to be in a bookstore or near a tattoo parlor by myself. But like I said, by every definition I'm grateful for who I am and probably better off where I'm at right now.

So I sit here drinking my Earl Grey tea, staving off sleep for yet another night because I can, at least while I'm still young. I sit here thinking about what to do for my 25th birthday. Do I make capricious resolutions vowing to start sleeping every night and take better care of myself physically? Do I plan for my future, which will become our future if she'll have me? Do I stop getting tattoos? The first two I have no problem with and have already set in motion. As for the third, I'm sorry Mama but that promise to stop had a shelf life of that year only (blame Steve -- he was supposed to stop me after three).

The only regret that I have is that on this day when I want to the most, I won't be able to go home to be with my parents. To not see the beaming look on my mother's face when she sees her baby boy walk through the door, or to not feel the warmth of the hug that my father would give me when I come home, that is the only thing I would change on this day of all days. It's my only regret -- it's what has brought tears to my eyes simply thinking about it.

Lord Byron said, "The dew of compassion is a tear." Should that be true my compassion is accentuated by sadness, my sadness pervaded by amelioration, and my amelioration foreshadowed by a hope that one day I can have the best of both my worlds.

So as the sun sets slowly in West I bid you a fond farewell, from behind the wheel of a rented car with cheaper insurance rates, on the way to a pub to drink birthday Guinness, and a dew of compassion for those who can't be here with me.