I never thought about it in this way before.
Last night I was at a party with a bunch of people I didn’t know. As the evening progressed, I met a lot of wonderful people. Not one of these people asked me how long I had been at the party. I arrived around 8 PM. I wonder what it would have been like if by 10:00 someone who had just arrived at the party asked me how long I had been there? If someone would have done that, I would have responded, “One hour.”
Knowing that, I wonder what this person would have then thought. Would they have thought that I am talking to someone who has been here two hours. Oh, they are so much “older” than I. I don’t have anything I could talk to this person about.
Or someone else might say, “Wow, you don’t look like you’ve been here two hours, you only look like you’ve been here maybe an hour, tops.”
Someone else might want to sell me a pill or something and say, “If you take this, you will look and feel refreshed as if you have just arrived at the party, or at least make you look and feel like you’ve only been here an hour instead of two.”
In a way, this whole conversation of “What time did you get to the party,” doesn’t really make sense. And this morning, I made the correlation with age, and had to wonder if that makes any sense either. I, like so many of us, have gotten wrapped up in that question, “How OLD are you?”
If we equate the analogy of the arrival at the party, to one’s arrival on this planet, I wonder if the question makes any sense or has any relevance? One could argue, that if one were talking to someone who had been at the party a long time, they might know the layout of the party room, or know more people. But that isn’t always true. There are the people who arrive at a party and just sit in a corner and don’t see anything else but what is in front of them and don’t meet anyone else.
Then there are the people who arrive at a party and already know everyone because they were at a party before with these same people, or they may have been to this location before. So, technically, they could introduce you to more people or give you the layout of the party better than the person who had been at the party a long time but had just sat in the corner. Hmmm.
As an aside, of course you can tell who has been there for a while, for too long or has just arrived. The lady who has just arrived might still have her coat on, and a purse in her hand or have no where to sit. The lady who has been there a couple hours might have her coat off and her purse may be where her spot is, that she has chosen to spend much of her “time/life,” at the party. The lady who has stayed “too long,” might be drunk and have half of her clothes off. (Just being funny, but you get what I mean).
I could go on and on with this analogy, and maybe someday I will. But for the time being, I like the idea that my obsession with “how long someone has been at a party,” or rather, “how OLD they are,” is a made up thing that has been passed down to me and my culture that has no relevance. And that quite possibly it was made up so that “older” people, who have arrived at the party sooner, could feel better about themselves or could control the “younger” people by saying, “I know better than you, I’ve been at this party longer,” even though they may be one of these people who just sat in a corner the whole time.
It also could have been invented or propagated by people who want to sell things that make one feel like they haven’t been at the party very long, or by people who want to keep other people at the party longer by selling them things to help they not feel like it’s time to go home and “sleep.” Wow, I’m really going deep with this.
Before I get lost in all of that, I will make one point, to sum it up. I, like so many of us, have been hooked on and caught up in this age thing more than we have to be, want to be, need to be or possibly should be. I thought by giving it another perspective it might help me/us to look at the relevance of it differently, and hopefully for the betterment of our enjoyment at the PARTY!