I ran into someone from my past while getting coffee on Sunday. It's been about 10 years since I've seen him and I was shocked by how he had aged. Gone was the strapping young enthusiastic happy canadian boy in his 20's and in his place was an older, greying around the temples somewhat bitter and tired older man.

Running into him, I wonder if I have aged as much as he has. I can't tell. Too me I look almost exactly the same, maybe a lot heavier, a little more wrinkled, but still the same. And I am more secure, more confident and happier than I was when I met this young man, so for me aging has been good in some ways. Not that I like aging. I hate it and I fight it every step of the way and spend way too much on time and money on ways to hold back the clock. But other than the physical ravages of aging, emotionally, intellectually, psychically, psychologically I feel so much better than I did in my youth.

Sometimes in unexpected moments, I mourn my past, but those times are few, so as not to even occur as an exclamation point in any moment of my life.

After we had parted, I wished that I could meld my personality back then to my personality now. I was so different in my 20's than I am now. I can't even tell if anything of me back then has survived, although I'm sure something has. I want the best of both worlds, but I don't know if that's possible anymore.

I was in a seminar where the leader said we live in an "either or" world. We're either this or that. He said that this either or thinking is just a mental construct and that we can live live in "and" world. We can be this and that and everything in between. I used to believe him, at least for the time, when I was in that seminar. But now, I'm not so sure. Can I still be who I was in my 20's and still be who I am in my 30's? Is there a compromise somewhere? I guess I shall have to find out.