🎂The Year I Would Re-Live

🎂 The Year I Would Re-Live

✍️Author’s Note

This reflection marks my eighty-second birthday — a moment to pause between past and future, to raise a glass to both memory and possibility. It is not nostalgia I feel, but gratitude: for the road travelled, for those still beside me, and for the privilege of having lived through so many seasons. As Picasso said, “It takes a long time to become young.” Perhaps that is the secret to staying curious, even at eighty-two.

P.S.

Thank you to those who have walked with me, read with me, and shared their thoughts along the way. Life, like good wine, is best enjoyed in conversation. 🥂

— WJJH

The wine of my 1943 birth year, as my father liked to say, was a rare vintage — not one to turn your back on. He would raise his glass with a twinkle in his eye, and I’ve tried to do the same ever since.

Today, I turn eighty-two. A fine age, and a suitable moment to entertain one of our dear prompt’s impossible questions:

Is there an age or year of your life you would re-live?

Such questions invite both philosophy and folly. When we grow older, our reflections acquire a life of their own — like autumn leaves refusing to fall before one last dance. Life, like nature, has its seasons. I’ve entered the last one not in regret but in gratitude, aware that each season has its necessity and its beauty. My mind still lives in the future, though it occasionally takes a pleasant detour to the past — and each morning, I still look forward to the sunrise.

The human brain, of course, remains the most mysterious instrument in existence. We know something about its connections, but little about the inner concert that produces consciousness. That, however, is a topic for another day (and perhaps another glass of Pol Roger).

As for my own mechanism — after a two hundred blog posts or so, I confess I may repeat myself, a habit of age that I prefer to call consistency. Still, I consider myself a well-preserved octogenarian, physically and mentally, and have no intention of leaving the table of life before the ninth decade is served. In my country, only about one in five reaches this stage still “alive and kicking,” which makes me a proud member of an exclusive club — honorary status, no subscription fee.

I have, however, not yet drunk my last glass of Pol Roger or Hennessy XO, though prudence suggests one should always be ready for eventualities.

Looking beyond my glass, I can’t ignore the walls being built again by our national populists — proof that life remains uneven and unfair, often determined by the simple lottery of birth. Some may look at their circumstances with anger or despair, but perspective changes when one visits Africa, South America, or Asia. Our Western complaints shrink in size when viewed from the broader theatre of humanity.

Would I wish to re-live my life — or part of it? Certainly, the thought tempts. There are moments I’d revisit, decisions I might reconsider, opportunities I might seize with more courage. Yet as I once reflected in Tears and Yin & Yang and No Guarantees, Only Life, every choice is part of a sequence — change one, and you change the whole melody.

Still, if given the chance, I would not mind being five again — the age of innocence and discovery. I’ve written about that carefree time in Being Carefree at Five and about Benno, the Newfoundland dog who guarded my childhood kingdom in Soestduinen. I’d gladly revisit that lane again, to see my graceful parents and my brother, who left the table of life this year.

When I visit our family grave in Hilversum, I sometimes wonder if I said enough — if gratitude and love were expressed clearly enough. But then I remember: affection doesn’t fade; it simply changes form.

To borrow from Picasso:

“It takes a long time to become young.”

And from Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr:

“The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

🥂So here’s to another sunrise, another glass, and perhaps — who knows — another detour into the past.

📌Blog Excerpt

At eighty-two, I pause to consider a question: would I re-live a year of my life?
Perhaps only to feel again what made it all worthwhile.
A reflection on gratitude, memory, and the quiet joy of another sunrise.