The Old and the Restless

My experience of time – amongst other things – changed, as of about 15 years ago or so, when I became a Muslim.

I went from measuring a year as the time it takes for the Earth to rotate around the sun, to include another conception of a year – the lunar Islamic year.

The Islamic year is shorter than the solar one by around 11 days each year. If you contemplate this, you’ll note that you “age” quicker as a Muslim. I’m 38 sun years, but I’m 39 in lunar years.

Sure, this new appreciation of time may not be as profound as Einstein’s on relativity. And truth be told, it has only begun to pique my interest quite recently, as I approach 40.

You see, for many of us men, the proximity to 40 brings along the spectre of the mid-life crisis. I’m getting there much faster as a Muslim, and no man should have to visit the onset of his mid-life crisis earlier than he should.

The significance of 40 is highlighted to me as a Muslim too. This is the age of full maturity as told by the Prophet Muhammed – peace be upon him. It’s the day we have officially cast off (let slip?) the last vestiges of youth. Not that I’ve been called youthful for a while – in fact, last year for the first time I was called uncle (a sign of respect for elders in many cultures) by an old friend's grown son.

I’ve fought this idea of aging for a while now, relatively successfully. I spied my balding spot once in a photo taken from some indecent angle. But I convince myself it’s not there as I can’t see it in the mirror. And I keep my hair short to temper the contrast if people from a higher vantage point see me from behind.

I developed my first grey hairs even earlier, in my late twenties. They’ve grown on me progressively – biologically and as the pun intended.

When I see someone who’s about my age, I automatically think they’re older than me. If I unwittingly discovered they were in fact a little younger than me, the cognitive dissonance would kick in and push the epiphany promptly out of my memory. I carry on relatively un-scarred, despite the invisible internal injury.

But mostly, I’ve known that where I can put a three in front of my age, I’m in pretty good stead – at least psychologically.

But that’s about to end. Now I’m faced with peak Hisham – the trend will never incline again. That brings the idea of aging – or shall we call it mortality – starkly to life.

What many won’t and perhaps cannot understand – those that are young – is the closeness of death and your place within time and history, not outside of it. It’s hard to describe without the experience.

I once processed the moon landing as transpiring in another epoch, occupying a place before reality really became real for me. On the 50^th anniversary of it last year I finally realised that it had occurred only 12 years before I was born. So close! Yet it seemed so far that it was more folklore to me. 

And now I think about it, the hyper-colour 90s where I took my first year as an adult is not really real for the many millennials around me. I’m part of history for them, at one time outside their reality – and that is not something I contemplated before. I'm not the centre of the universe, not even mine anymore.

As I face mortality in the mirror and in my mind, I see death. This pandemic we are living through is a case in point. It heightens anxieties while we’ve largely been cloistered from mortality in this modern world. I fear for the vulnerable and question my own.

Along with anxiety, there is also something else I feel. A feeling not unfamiliar, though its current harbinger is novel. It's a deep, raw presence. A wisdom I feel I once knew - now freed in the time I now have to reflect, and on the quiet roads, and in the new way people look at me. Do you feel it too?

And while confronting, it's humbling and perhaps a source of comfort. While the Prophet Muhammed – peach be upon him – did talk about the end of youth at 40, he was signaling the start of something else much deeper too. He received his first revelation from God when he was 40, and that’s when his mission commenced. At 40 he was motivated by the Divine and that’s when he started to change the world.

For me, this coming of age presents both mortality and revelation. These ideas pose two very different questions. Am I destined to distract myself from the gaze of mortality or will I pursue my revelation? I sit here after another attempt to write this, and I hope it is the latter.