This is 37

An impossible number of things can happen in 37 seconds.

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, on an otherwise crisp, clear night, a haze can appear on the water. A ship’s lookout can phone down to the bridge: “Iceberg, right ahead!” One officer can relay the message to another, who can signal down to the engine room and to the wheelhouse. The engineers can scramble to reverse the engines. The quartermaster can grasp the wooden handles of the ship’s wheel and heave it four full rotations to starboard, as far as it can go. A breathless few more seconds of waiting can feel like years. And then a grinding jolt can change everything.

All that can, and did, happen in less time than it took the minute hand of the ornate clock at the top of the Titanic’s Grand Staircase to tick from 11:39 to 11:40 pm.

An impossible number of things can happen in 37 years.

Two cells can conjoin, form bones and nerve endings, make purple handprint art and lead an a cappella group and learn to have a job and suddenly own a little patch of front yard overrun with black swallow-wort and a back deck with herbs sprouting from a window box.

I turned 37 today. It’s as unremarkable a number as can be.* Not a zero or a five, those nice round milestone shapes. Nor a multiple of 18, the symbol of life in the Jewish tradition, like last year’s.

But 37 feels like a transition — from mid-30s to late-30s. And whereas mid-30s still felt like youth, late-30s sounds, well… later. In life. A curve in trajectory, toward middle age.

I’m not sure what I believe about God. I don’t believe there’s a guy with a big fluffy white beard like my dad’s up there on a throne watching my every move and jotting down the score in some great cosmic moleskin notebook. I do believe that science satisfactorily explains the how but not the why of life, and that that leaves room for something bigger out there. But I don’t know if I believe that higher power is sentient in the way we are, or if it exists in the electrical pulses between two or more human beings connecting and creating something more than the sum of their parts, or in some ineffable cloud of sparkles somewhere.

37 years, to God (or sparkle cloud) probably feels like 37 seconds to me. I think about this as I squeeze droplets of ant poison onto little squares of cardboard by the windowsill in the kitchen where the summer ant parade has begun. Even without this poison, depending on what type of worker ant they are, they’d only live a few weeks to months. They must experience time differently from me; a year is unfathomable to them. Of course, this poison that they’ll carry back to their colony will shorten that lifespan further, to just a few ticks and tocks on my kitchen clock.

Every drop feels like playing God. But I do it anyway, because at 37, I’m the co-president of the condo association — a very grown-up thing — and it’s my duty to keep the vermin out of our home.

*

“You talk like a much older man.” So said a therapist I saw for three sessions ten years ago, back in 2016. “You’re asking really big questions.” I told him I’ve always been like this: I consider my death bed, what I’ll say I did and didn’t do, what regrets I might have or advice to bore the great-niece beside me waiting for me to die so she can go to brunch with her friends.

“Doesn’t everybody?” I said.

That conversation doesn’t feel a decade old, perhaps because I haven’t changed much in this regard since then.

*

“How do you guys feel about being in your late 30s?” A week before my birthday, I’m out to dinner with two friends. We’ve just finished talking about some hard shit going on in their lives. Still, all three of us agree: Being in our late 30s is the best so far.

And it’s true: job, partner, home — the traditional and increasingly rare markers of this phase of life, markers that mean stability and comfort — I have them. And even more remarkably, I love all three.

But… There’s so much more I’m itching to do. I dream of opening a bakery / café / organizing hub. (It’s called The Living Room, and I have half the lunch menu written already.) I want to finish and publish my book. I want to become a flight attendant. And also a graphic designer. Sometimes, a psychologist. Sometimes, a rabbi. Sometimes, a city councilor, or at least a member of a city commission that does something meaningful.

Meanwhile, the world is hurtling full steam ahead through fields of icebergs, and I’m itching to do more about that, too. To stop concentration camp construction, to spur clean energy, to help neighbors struggling under war-fueled inflation.

Guilt, anxiety, obligation, and passion all swirl inseparably, whispering in my ear: So much to do, so little time. Sometimes I crave a jolt that will change everything.

*

And then there are days like today.

This morning, I did my annual birthday hike. Since 2020, I’ve taken the day off of work to climb two of my favorite mountains in New Hampshire. I’ve blasted out an invitation to everyone I know within a few hours’ drive, and a handful of people answer the call. Last year’s stint in Germany interrupted the tradition, and I didn’t leap to resurrect it. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m in a more introspective, less social mood. Or maybe I’m just tired and busy and sick of email, like everyone else I know.

In any case, it was one of those sunny days that prove my claim that June is the best month — clear, blue-skied, birdsong straight from a Disney movie. I climbed with Danny and a dear friend beside me. At the top, before we sat down to our picnic lunch of peanut butter on challah buns, dried mango, and Girl Scout cookies, I looked out at the Waterville Valley. I was panting slightly, but I felt strong of body and clear of mind.

And I thought to myself:

I have enough time.

I’d like to think I’m the ship’s officer of my own life, directing my own path into or out of its collision courses. But maybe the best I can be under the circumstances is the lookout, peering into the haze ahead and trying to make sense of it, or the quartermaster, hands on the ship’s wheel. Whether or not some godlike figure/universe/cosmic energy sparkles is at the controls, I am not. But I can choose where I turn next.

On the one hand, my life so far has been just a few ticks and tocks partway around some grand celestial clock adorning some grand celestial staircase.

But on the other, an impossible number of things can happen in 37 years.

When I get antsy, that’s what I remind myself: With a bit of luck, I may well be less than halfway through my time on Earth. Look how much I’ve changed and become in the last 37. There’s no telling what the next 37 might hold.

Thanks for being a part of the first 37.

Love,

Ari

*Danny, my copy editor and resident physics major, reminds me and therefore you that 37 is a prime number, which is special, and that it’ll be four more years ‘til my next prime number, and that they’ll get increasingly rare and therefore special.