Letter from the Editor

Have a Heart

Mid-life crisis at 100 BPM

Sometimes I get these wackadoodle letters to the editor complaining how I’m out of touch with certain segments of this magazine’s readership (read: those on the more autumnal end of the life cycle).

Unfortunately for all of us, I’m not one to sigh, “Ok, boomer,” and call it a day. Like those Pantene shampoo commercials from the ’80s, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful,” hate me because I’m a confrontational personality enamored of courting controversy and liable to run a scorched earth campaign that leaves my professional reputation in tatters and my Google search history proof that I'm a cyberstalker, a rogue intelligence agent with a grudge or both.

Yes, I’m a B-movie subplot with wifi.

Then I remember that my doctor encouraged me to lower my resting heart rate with meditation and an app that chides me for failing to do so. To wit, I think this recent editorial paroxysm broke my phone. So, here I go downshifting further in self-parody, lest my heart explode (though that’s cheaper to replace than a new phone).

I admit that I'm on more of the “50” side than the “Up” side of our demo (see what I did there?). In fact, by the time these words print, I'll be staring down the barrel at my 50th birthday.

Two notions simultaneously come to mind. First, I wish I had the free time to write letters to the editor that some of my readers apparently have. Second, I have a vague memory that the plot line of Herman Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf involves a man having an existential crisis on the eve of his 50th birthday. Since I never finished the book, I’m clearly not benefiting from its Jungian-steeped wisdom. I suppose I should open my heart, or at least my heart app, and welcome the wisdom of my elders. Perhaps that’s what my letter writers have been attempting to do all along—impart some much needed wisdom upon me. Ok, boomers, I’m here to learn. Make me wise beyond my jeers.

—DAEDALUS HOWELL, EDITOR