One of my favorite podcasts is Lexicon Valley. This Slate-sponsored show is all about grammar and often focuses on verb tenses, a riveting subject I personally cannot get enough of. The other day, while I was hiking on Mt Tam and listening to this podcast, they started talking about rare verb tenses. Now, I’m a writer by trade and at heart, but still, I must admit that I’m a little shaky on my names for verb tenses. So when they started talking about the “pluperfect” tense, I had to Google it, and it turns out it has two meanings:
- Perfect with respect to a point of reference in past time.
- More than perfect.
The second is hyperbole at its finest, which suits me just fine. The first, I had to think about, but right off the bat, I thought, that sounds like some sort of a metaphor for the disappointment of aging. And, just as I suspected, when I googled it, this was the first example that came up:
“A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely.” (From Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, which, by the way, I wrote about a while back after rereading it last year.)
Of course, Frankl was talking about people who endured concentration camps during World War II, while I am simply talking about turning 40. However, Frankl’s point in Man’s Search for Meaning still applies: we create our own suffering. Am I right, other women who have turned 40? I know there are a few of you out there who still insist that turning 40 was “the best thing that ever happened to you” and that 40 is your “best decade yet.” For the rest of us, there’s the pluperfect: the perfect way we used to be. Back when we didn’t realize just how perfect (and young, and skinny, and beautiful, and loved) we were.
But wait. If I didn’t realize I was perfect then, but now I look back and realize, oh, I was… is it possible the same thing will happen again? Will I look back at 40 and think, with mercy, “I was so perfect then and I didn’t even realize it.” Is that possible? Hmm.
Meanwhile, none of this really has anything to do with the pluperfect tense, which is quite simple, actually:
As in, I had thought when I turned 40 that I would have it all figured out, but,somehow, I don’t.
Having passed through 40, successfully? I suppose, and now through 50, I can confirm that it is true. The prior decade’s beginning is so much more appealing than the new one. That said, I still go with pluperfect because I miss the young, skinny, pretty, etc. girl that was me 3 decades ago. Sigh…I guess the good news is that in a few years I’ll be wishing I was what I am now……
That’s depressing!
I really enjoy your blog.
It is all a matter of perspective. As I approach 50, I can look back at this past decade in my 40s as one of ongoing challenges that I never would have thought possible 10 years ago when I turned 40. And a lot of it has not been pretty! I look forward to moving forward because I can honestly say I would not want to go back. It was traumatic enough the first time. But the learning that took place has been incredible.