As I think back to over a half century ago, I often wonder what happened to the little boy who was me. Probably the main thing I was known for was my carrot-eating habit. If ever there was a candidate to disprove the beta-carotene poisoning hypothesis, you're looking at him, or rather his photo.
I used to easily put away an entire bag of carrots at one sitting. Mind you, this was long before the gourmet offering of peeled "baby carrots" we feed our young today. Nope, I ate 'em, skin and all, the bigger the better, in very large quantities.
My favorite carrots were the ones I pulled from our back yard garden, fresh and firm and ready to be be consumed -- the way rabbits eat them. I'd wipe off most of the dirt, but what was left didn't bother me at all; it was part of the raw, organic experience of munching a sweet orange carrot.
Only when I was living in Afghanistan, and teaching English, did I encounter the many other types of carrots that grow in this world. Red carrots, yellow carrots, white carrots.
My Japanese friends seem surprised that I love raw daikon so much, but to me, it is just another radish, the little round, red sister to the big brother, elongated carrot.
***
As time has its way with us, as we all know, we wrinkle and gray, we sag and we sway. Our memories become foggy; our night vision deserts us. If we are lucky, our digestive systems adapt, albeit slowly, to our shifting dietary habits.
Yet the old and the young share many traits. Maybe we can be most ourselves at the extremes of life. Today, I was blessed by the company of a lovely young woman, aged 29, trying to figure out the next moves in her life.
That she trusts me to be her adviser is one of those precious aspects of growing older -- certain younger people sometimes ask you for advice. The thing about this friend is the struggle I sense around the corners of her lips when she speaks of her self-confidence.
Like many of her contemporaries, she is struggling with the reality of a world that is changing so fast, she worries whether her skills, her education, her experience will truly qualify her for the opportunity to earn a living doing something more closely related to her passions and dreams than has yet been the case.
It always breaks my heart, a little bit, to talk to a person in that state. What she feels internally and what I see externally are two different beings. She expresses doubts; I see a leader.
I know, given the benefit of age, what she still must learn -- that she can be anything she wants to be. Nothing can stop her, once she puts her mind to it.
The good thing is I suspect she knows, deep inside, that she has what it takes to achieve her dreams. Now the hard work begins, however: Which among her passions and skills might yield a career path that will allow her both to support herself and live a life with meaning?
Looking back to that carrot-eating boy in the photo, I wonder how successfully he made these transitions, and how many of his dreams remain unrealized, let alone how many strategic choices remain to help him do what he must do now. In this way, my younger friend and I stand at the same crossroads of life.
-30-
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