English Version | The Ages of Innocence

We spend a chunk of our life running after wisdom and the same amount regretting it arrived so late. Some even go as far as wishing to start the other way around, only so that they could enjoy their youth being as wise as someone who has lived. As if that made any sense. 

“If I was your age and knew what I know now…”, my father used to tell me when I was a teenager and had my whole life in front of me. He would say it just like that, with some undefined, but very clear, three dots at the end, leaving an open end to the concretization of that “if” – “if” that happened, what would you do, old man? For sure you do extraordinary things applying the wisdom that only time could confer, putting it together with the benefits and energy that only youth allow. At the end of the day, you would make everyone’s dream come true: to deal with life having in your possession the ideal dose of maturity, vigor, and future ahead. It’s only normal that the progression of age, which is usually proportional to the diminishing of dreams, carries with it the bitter taste of what was left undone or poorly executed – whether because we took the wrong decision, or because we didn’t realize what was happening at the time; anyway, many of those mistakes and wrong turns originate or, at least, are justified, by our very own inexperience, within the lack of knowledge of this world’s tricks at a given stage of life. That’s how I analyzed that sentence, not so much as a lesson – although I believe the subtext of the message was “open your eyes, be attentive, use your head” -, but more like a regret typical of those who don’t have a second chance. Nobody does, dad, don’t sweat it: for each event, there is but one shot. 

These things that older people tell us, in general, and parents, in particular, gain different outlines as life progresses. As we dwell on them within the differences resulting from the personal baggage that we carry, keep and archive, or the trail we leave behind, what we’re being told acquires different meanings. I believe my father’s quote, today, in a completely different way I used to when I was 22 years old, or 34 or 17 – especially 17. It goes through something like what happens, for example, with Dead Poets Society. When I watched it, at 13, nothing but innocence and kindheartedness, full of hopes and dreams, with a soul full of extraordinary objects I didn’t even know at the time, but that I now recognize as poetry, I believed I was before the most definite of revelations: art as a higher power, the untamed will of men, the desire to transgress in order to create, who knows, our very own fate emerging under the form of talent that awakens without us even realizing it – all this and another universe of wonderful and candid thoughts that came pouring down, as if I was crying (in fact, I did, copiously – that finale, well, there is no cold-hearted 13-year-old that can resist). 

Later, I re-watched the movie and had some reservations: perhaps the main character’s father was not that bad; perhaps the boys were just a bunch of teenagers too excited about what was new; perhaps the system, despite being rigid, was trying to direct them towards a healthy path (even though questionable) so that they could face life and the world a bit more steadily. By the third time I had watched it, I corroborated all my second impressions: despite the conservatorship of the means, the truth is an individual does not have to be a revolutionary to write poems. Kafka wrote his entire work sitting at the desk of his office, he didn’t feel the need to motorcycle through South America to do it. I still added to the disappointing impression that this professor was a frustrated artist, a lost soul of a poet who, unsuccessfully and without genius, took advantage to show off before the gullible spirits without, however, having given them anything substantial – on the contrary, he resumed to sweeten their uncultured appetite for art they did not understand, doing not much else than driving them crazy as if he was inebriating them with words and figures of speech the boys did not know at that point. Truth is that different ages require different reactions. Youth, which has no bridle, drops us in the middle of every appetite and whim. It is age that will hold the reins to guide us through the value of shadows, mirages, and other deceptions we fondly call life. If I knew what I know today, at the time my father would say it to me, I had not the ability to be amazed, for example, by a childly ambitious and clumsy object such as Dead Poets Society. How much of myself would I have lost if I knew what I know today in a time where innocence is the norm – probably, I wouldn’t know what I know today. 

I had a teacher – allow me to rephrase: I had a mentor who would tell me, around that time I didn’t yet know what I know today, that he didn’t believe young people that would tell them “I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing” paraphrasing the famous Plato quote that he stole from Socrates. This mentor of mine would argue that this phrase is always false, unless the person saying it is, in fact, cultivated and even wise, someone with knowledge and lots of life experience. According to him, only great consciousness allows us to access the notion that we’re truly ignorant. And that conscience demands, of course, experience. When we’re so young that we don’t know exactly what we’re in for when it comes to this existing thing. We have no idea, for example, that there is a significant risk that nothing we do here means anything. We don’t have the slightest idea of the ridiculously ephemerous dimension of human beings within the infinity of the universe and eternity of time. Theoretically, we will have a vague idea that this might all go south. But, even that idea, if we have it, is derived from the guilt of having people constantly reminding us that we’re all going to die. Because as young people, we look around to everyone is still alive. Only time will allow us to learn and realize that it might be true – we’ll witness the disappearance, one after the other, of our people, subtracting them from life, deducting that if it’s happening to them, it will probably happen to us too. All this takes time. Initially, we’re invincible, indestructible, dying can wait. Only the decadence itself will prepare us for our inevitable ending. Fundamentally, we’re here learning how to die. We performed a sinister empirical exercise, quite rudimental and useless, and can confirm that yes, that is the most likely outcome. In that case, there is a certain advantage of Benjamin Button, who is born from death filled with innocence and with his entire future ahead of him, walking towards a more and more youthful self until the end of his days. But I fear this curious experiment has its own secondary effects, perhaps even collateral damage. 

Today I think of my father’s quote – “If I was your age and knew what I know now…” -, which I always understood, though considering it from different angles, but never recognized myself in it. I understand the idea that experience and maturity might, at certain times, have saved us a bunch of failures and embarrassments, but I don’t believe that implies happiness. Would it even be fair to be young and wise? And what would be the point of living then? Coming back to Benjamin Button, who lives his entire life backwards, what did it do for him, to be experienced and mature when he was young, if along the way, he lost the best part, being candid, allowing himself to be surprised and baffled? In this universe, all elements are capable to learn. That is our purpose, our endpoint, if there even is one. That is, at least, the magic: we learn. It happens to us, humans, as it does with cells and particles, which educate themselves to do better, whether in creating molecules or building immunity against diseases. We’re born from a belly button onto the world, not the other way around. Benjamin Button is, in this case, an aberration, meaning that his learning curve is happening the other way around, contrary to his physical and mental decadence. What is the point of fighting the course of time? How much bizarreness is contained in the details of growing less old as one grows older – becoming younger and younger and understand less what is modern and technological; to look younger and feeling more nostalgic for the old days; becoming fresher every day and wishing for more and more peace and quiet; to know lots of things and stop having the availability of spirit to be surprised. If I knew what I know today, when my father would have said that phrase, I would have told him about poor Benjamin and his curse of moving against clockwork, against the calendar, and against nature itself. I would have told him about the unfortunate impossibility of Button to feel butterflies in his tummy when he saw the most beautiful girl in the world at school, and the inability of that old man going on teenager to, upon seeing her, feel fear that his thoughts would jump out and leave him exposed and ridiculous. To know what one learns from age is to steal our ability to fall in love with the innocence of virgins. Benjamin Button, as a teenager, was an old man, with a head full of things that, in the end, don’t matter as much as one love felt for the first time and that scares us. How sad that Benjamin did not see the same cartoons as his loved one, nor listen to the same albums, or enjoy the same movies. Even if I knew what I know now, I would want to learn it all over again. 

Originally published in the Time issue of Vogue Portugal, from December/January 2021/2022. Full credits and story on the print version.