The other day I met with a client who is a 62 year young middle-age man medical doctor and after discussing his taxes we spent a few moments chatting about this and that. He’s been a client of mine for over 20 years. He can best be described as someone part of the mainstream medical community, a “what you would expect” character from a middle-aged male M.D., and quite different from the character I recall 20 years earlier. He was more comfortable in those days walking down the beaten path, feeling more at ease in that zone than the middle of the road he now walks. He didn’t buy in to the lifestyle and mindset that most of his peers chose, perhaps resisting the career and financial success that his education offered.
I shared my observation with him and he agreed. He attributed his former self to the times in which he lived as a teenager in high school and young man in college and medical school. Profound changes were taking place in America that had a huge impact on young Americans; changing the music they listened to, the beliefs and values they formed, and curiosity they had about their life to come. An unpopular Vietnam War, the hippie movement, and an emerging drug culture cultivated a questioning character and a rebellion against the government and religious institutions that would have been unthinkable by their parents’ generation.
He further explained that moving along the life continuum from young man to middle-age man, getting married, and buying an expensive home were strong influences of shifting his tide. Many wild stallion young men and early-stage middle-age men have been tamed into respectable citizens by a good woman and wife. He is one of those tamed stallions.
But despite his calmness and tamed demeanor, I told him that when I look deep in his eyes I see someone who I often see in myself; we are both rebels in remission.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
I shared my observation with him and he agreed. He attributed his former self to the times in which he lived as a teenager in high school and young man in college and medical school. Profound changes were taking place in America that had a huge impact on young Americans; changing the music they listened to, the beliefs and values they formed, and curiosity they had about their life to come. An unpopular Vietnam War, the hippie movement, and an emerging drug culture cultivated a questioning character and a rebellion against the government and religious institutions that would have been unthinkable by their parents’ generation.
He further explained that moving along the life continuum from young man to middle-age man, getting married, and buying an expensive home were strong influences of shifting his tide. Many wild stallion young men and early-stage middle-age men have been tamed into respectable citizens by a good woman and wife. He is one of those tamed stallions.
But despite his calmness and tamed demeanor, I told him that when I look deep in his eyes I see someone who I often see in myself; we are both rebels in remission.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
3 comments:
Your writing style is good and getting even better.
How can we tell when you're out of remission and the revolution is about to start? As a middle age man, I don't want to miss it.
Hi Brian & Charles and thanks for dropping in.
Thanks Brian; I'm having fun with my cyberspace uttering.
Charles, if go down to your local Harley Davidson dealer and buy the biggest bike on the floor, you are a rebel in remission. If you grow your hair long and pull a pony tail, that is a rebel in remission. There are other tell-tale signs but those are two obvious ones.
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