Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu? — Vientiane, Laos | May 2022 (50!)
“Où le temps est-il passé !?”
Six years ago I wrote, “Today (6 May 2016) is my 44th birthday which is an interesting number,” and today (6 May 2022) I turn 50! Where did the time go!? When I was 25 (for another month before turning 26), my father turned 50. This seemed ridiculously old and so my sisters and I made quite a big deal out of it. And now I’m 50? This seems even more ridiculous.
On the left, the 25-year-old infantry sergeant, who knew no fear and didn’t worry much about anything, I used to be. And on the right, the now 50-year-old éminence grise (as I like to think of myself 😉) I am today, worrying about everything and afraid of things that never used to scare me before.
I used to live a very exciting life: the army, travelling around the world, skydiving, scuba-diving, emigrating to Laos and … all those girls. But then, in 2007, I decided to press pause [Read: Out of Africa]. I never intended this to be a permanent break, but gradually my once spine-tingling existence has become awfully mundane and time itself seems to have become just one continuous stream of slow days and fast years.
I’ve had the same job at the same company now for 13 years and counting. Most of my friends from the early ‘wild’ years (2002-’07) living in Laos have either settled down or moved on to other places, so the drink, snack and talk sessions with them in late-night bars and dim sum shops in Vientiane or the mornings waking up on the floor at a friend’s house or at home next to someone rather unfamiliar have been replaced by binge-watching shows on Netflix with a glass of wine.
Recently I even did something I never ever thought I would ever do: I (we) bought a house. I honestly can’t think of anything more pedestrian than that; I betrayed my younger self. I’ve always been at my happiest living out of a suitcase and during my first five years in Laos, everything I owned fit into a simple carry-on suitcase. When we moved to our current house (the one we own!) in June last year, it took seven journeys with a fully loaded pickup truck to move all the stuff we’ve collected over the years.
A stable career, a family and a house … where did the time go!?
Twenty years ago, after leaving the army, a trip around the world, and a short stint with an airline operating in Spain, I sat on my sofa at home in the Netherlands and thought, “I’m 30 years old. This life is too easy and too boring; this can’t be all there is …” I decided that I needed a new challenge and should move to a place I knew nothing about, couldn’t speak the language and wasn’t even able to read the script. So I packed my belongings, boarded a plane and moved to the small South-East Asian, landlocked nation of Laos.
Then 15 years ago, still living out of a suitcase, I sat on a mountaintop in Kenya and thought, “I’m 35 years old. I spent most of my twenties playing around in the army, then travelled the world for nine months, and now I’ve spent the past five years partying in South-East Asia; maybe it’s time to grow up …” It seems like I did, with a stable career, a kid in middle school and a house. Yet, if I look at that preposterously innocent-looking photo of my 25-year-old self, I can’t help but wonder:
Dis, quand reviendras-tu,
Dis, au moins le sais-tu,
Que tout le temps qui passe,
Ne se rattrape guère,
Que tout le temps perdu,
Ne se rattrape plus.
Well [t]here we are, I’m 50 years old today. I spent most of my twenties playing around in the army, then travelled the world, spent five years partying in South-East Asia and now I’ve spent the last 15 years being a settled down grown-up in Laos; maybe now the time has come to buy a sports car and find an inappropriately young girlfriend. 😎🥂🥳
Joyeux anniversaire à moi!
Orlane Willems – Dis, Quand Reviendras-Tu. [Live]. Brussels, Belgium: The Voice. (2021)
I know it’s silly, but I find it really hard to believe that I’m half a century old now; it’s not an age that matches my soul. Below some (there were many more) of the other songs I was considering as the title for this short self-reflection. I think they kind of reveal the mess that’s in my head at the moment.
