So what is this? What's going on?
I'll tell you.
Yes, we are older. Of course. No reserve of youthful energy can slow the frantic pacing of modern time. And life, it is always everpresent and always everchanging and we just have to deal with it. Really.
We are little bodies. Look at the stars! The first dream of flying came from one organized batch of cellular tissue, one brain, infinitely smaller than the idea itself. But beyond the tissue, what then? Was the dream an incidental chemical exchange? This is the realm of the mind, our only key to accessing the present moment.

Cities make me sad.
Maybe I just hear too much. Do you believe some of the things you catch slipping off strangers' tongues? Or the people who have so much fear, so much they want hidden, all you pass on the sidewalk are candy-wrapper people; even what is inside (if they ever let you see) might still rot your teeth.
But then again, you know, maybe I'm just the fucked up one. I need to jumpstart my career! Time to get materialistic! Don't shy away from want, it's what keeps old Atlas from shrugging! Why walk down the street and feel sadness? Let's go shopping!

Let sadness come.
Let sadness pass.
Breathe.

I have built a fortress of red earth, myself made of clay, and I stand inside it and it inside me and I am the fortress, but what do I do? Do I hole myself up inside, shaking--no! I play and smile on the ramparts! I scream and laugh for all to see, and the great oaken doors to my fortress are open!