Coffee Dharma

At what point do we reach an age where we have to completely conform?  Is the day your children are born the day you need to give up the revolution and take up golf?  Upon your retirement are we required to stop enjoying our youth and settle quietly into our rocking chairs?  I ask these questions not for some universal truth or monumental reasoning.  I just want to know if it’s ok that I still enjoy my tattoos and piercings.

I has my septum pierced twelve years ago in an old-school process that helped it remain forever healed open.  I found my septum ring today and found that it does indeed still easily fit into the hole.  I stopped wearing my septum ring shortly after meeting my wife.  She wasn’t terribly fond of it and I reasoned that I was probably getting too old for it anyway.  The problem with giving up something so simple is that I still enjoy it, am proud of it and still feel it reflects something personal to me.  I’m thirty now and reaching the age when many of my peers have moved away from their trends to settle into something more resembling a Martha Stewart episode.  It’s not that I drag my heels completely against conforming to my age, it’s the fact that my ideas and passions still have a touch of the youthful within them.  I enjoy my ink and rings.  Again I have to ask, at what age do we have to conform?  I hope to instill an excitement in my children for all things different and unique.  I hope to spark in them a passion for the creative.  I hope to inspire them to crave all things musical and artful.  How do I do that living a life of conformity?  Maybe it’s a selfish pursuit but I hope to keep a little bit of my unique past within me for my children to share.