No one can predict what will happen in your future… Well not exactly…
And no, this isn’t an article about psychics. It’s about a much more real form of prescience that lies within the works of many great writers that we know and love.
When Joshua Prager, a journalist, turned 44 he knew it was going to be a good year.
How? Because, Norman Mailer, one of Prager’s favorite writers told him so in his book The Armies of the Night:
“He felt his own age, forty-four and felt as if he were a solid embodiment of bone, muscle, heart, mind, and sentiment to be a man, as if he had arrived.”
Passages like these that embody the experience of the writer at a certain age can grant us a sneak preview of sorts into what life at 44 could be like, for example.
“Six years ago, a thought leapt to mind: if life passed into pages, there were, somewhere, passages written about every age. If I could find them, I could assemble them into a narrative” said Joshua. This idea culminated in a book written by Prager called 100 Years which is a collection of literary quotations for every age from birth to one hundred.
Nothing can prepare you for the years to come but as we learn to identify the common patterns we all share in life we can at least make an educated guess. Age gracefully folks!
