Movie - This is 40

[Arab Nights (imported)]

Saw the movie ‘This is 40.’ There is definitely some humor there, but also a lot of truths that are uncomfortable. Life is great during the early 20s. It is all about partying and the pleasure of the moment. The characters in the movie have moved beyond that age. The movie is set in the beautiful life, beautiful cars (the BMW gave me an upset stomach by its presence), beautiful restaurants, beautiful homes, etc. of southern California, but their private life is not so beautiful. Both have poured their hearts into businesses which have employee and financial issues, maybe making some bad business decisions along the way. Both have family with issues. Their daughters are at the age of a lot of squabbling. They are on the verge of losing their home. She turns up pregnant and is afraid to tell him. Life seems to be this never-ending series of crises and there never seems to be time to just get drunk and screw.

In a way I had the same thoughts about the movie ‘Lincoln.’ The guy kept his composure through all the issues of being president during the Civil War and then going home to Mary Todd.

I know I have gone thru times when life seemed like that. Sometimes it seemed like there would never ever be even a tiny slice of time for me to just do what I wanted. I look back and feel like a totally different person than I was in the past just to accommodate that reality. Wife has actually made the same comment a couple of times about being a different person. While I could half seriously joke about just shooting myself at age 30 to avoid the reality of later life, there actually is something, and I cannot really express it, but there is something if you put up with all the problems and bend yourself to accommodate work, spouse, children, you end up with something that when the cards are down you would rather preserve than walk away.

Does anyone else feel the same? Like they have had to change and are now a different person, but in the end have something that does have value despite all the traps along the way.

(Sorry, I have given away the ending).

[Dave (imported)]

I haven't seen the movie yet. I'll wait until it goes to cable and becomes a freebie on some channel.

However, the ideas you express -- Life doesn't meet the 20-somethings expectations of being a perpetual rose garden of delights...

In my opinion is brought about by "success or getting it all" before understanding what "success or getting it all" means.

We all will reach the stage where we say "I have achieved my dream" and discover that there is life left to live and more to life than just our success.

What do we do after we achieve our dreams?

[Arab Nights (imported)]

The John Mellencamp line jumped to mind: "Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone."

Yet there are people who stay interested and involved with life. I would think you, with varied interests, might be one of those. Has it worked out that way, if you don't mind me asking?

[Dave (imported)]

The John Mellencamp line jumped to mind: "Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone."

Yet there are people who stay interested and involved with life. I would think you, with varied interests, might be one of those. Has it worked out that way, if you don't mind me asking?

Life always changes. Nothing is static.

I make the statement that Iw as the little boy with an erector set who said "I want to be an engineer."

Well I got my Bachelor of Science degree from an excellent university, found a job and and my lovely huge 4 ton project with wonderful new construction. That lasted about five years and when a new president came into office, everything changed. So I learned about pilot plants, autoclaves, higher pressures and 3/8 inch armor plate barriers. I also learned about what coal is and the chemistry involved. I know enough mining. I also know enough about explosives to understand how to use very high pressure hydrogen. Lots of safety and health practices.

I worked with a team on heterogeneous catalysts which I can explain as the tiny versions of an automotive catalytic converter. That was a challenge and I loved it. I got to learn so much new and amazingly fun.

Eventually, I went from building the pilot plants to designing them and buying the pieces and letting other build and operate them and finally to designing the units. At that stage, to move ahed, I started to help the younger engineers plan their experiments and design and build units with proper workplans and data analysis and analytical systems. That's not quite management but close. Eventually, I ended up with generalize experimental design for more than the Coal Liquefaction and Hydrogenation I started with.

FOR ten years I schedule a monthly meeting and people in the business got to know me and I got to know them. I've met scientists from all over the world.

My last assignments were ISO 14000 and ISO 9000 and I learned all that new. I could, with some courses and effort, teach it and work as a consultant to companies that want to implement it.

So what did I do when I retired?

I write short sci-fi and horror stories and I'm getting them published (And sometimes getting paid for it) ... Lots of fun.

AFter writing all of this and thinking about it. Yes, I fulfilled my childhood dream. I'm a chemical engineer with some accomplishments behind me. But the nature of research in my area chemical engineering is such that it kept changing about every five to ten years and although there were rough spots, I changed with it and each change was a new goal.

[transward (imported)]

Why should not old men be mad?

Some have known a likely lad

That had a sound fly-fisher's wrist

Turn to a drunken journalist;

A girl that knew all Dante once

Live to bear children to a dunce;

A Helen of social welfare dream,

Climb on a wagonette to scream.

Some think it a matter of course that chance

Should starve good men and bad advance,

That if their neighbours figured plain,

As though upon a lighted screen,

No single story would they find

Of an unbroken happy mind,

A finish worthy of the start.

Young men know nothing of this sort,

Observant old men know it well;

And when they know what old books tell

And that no better can be had,

Know why an old man should be mad.

by William Butler Yeats

People fail more often then they succeed, and oft when they succeed it is at the cost of something even more precious. See the Faust myth or David, weeping for his son, ": "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" And at the end gravity and Death always win.

But simply enduring is a victory.

Old civilisations put to the sword.

Then they and their wisdom went to rack:

No handiwork of Callimachus,

Who handled marble as if it were bronze,

Made draperies that seemed to rise

When sea-wind swept the corner, stands;

His long lamp-chimney shaped like the stem

Of a slender palm, stood but a day;

All things fall and are built again,

And those that build them again are gay.

...

Those Chinamen climb towards, and I

Delight to imagine them seated there;

There, on the mountain and the sky,

On all the tragic scene they stare.

One asks for mournful melodies;

Accomplished fingers begin to play.

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,

Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

Transward