Ich log. Ich log. I am not old.

There is a poem by Hermann Hesse that begins with a confession and a denial at the same time.

Ich log. Ich log. Ich bin nicht alt.
I lied. I lied. I am not old.

There is a man in those lines who knows perfectly well he has lived many years, who feels the weight of them in his bones, yet refuses to let time declare the final verdict. The lie is not deceit. The lie is rebellion.

Hesse goes on to insist he is not tired of life. Beautiful women still cause his pulse to kick and his thoughts to wander with the same electricity of youth. There is something both funny and painfully true about that. The body ages at a schedule nature dictates. The heart often refuses the memo.

He dreams still of women, of lust both noble and ridiculous. He dreams of waltzes with wild tempo. He dreams of nights where love feels like a secret only two people on earth share. Some of us grow older and lose appetite. Others grow older and simply understand hunger more deeply.

But then Hesse twists the knife. Beneath all the heated desire, there is still hope for a silent, pure love. The kind you only meet once if you are lucky. The holy first love that ruins every love that comes after it. And he says he can still weep for it.

That is the line that delivers the truth.

A man does not dream of passion because he is young. He dreams because he is alive. And he does not cry over love because he is weak. He cries because the heart is not disposable.

I read this poem as someone who has lived enough years to understand disappointment, enough loss to mistrust promises, and enough change to know that youth was never the whole story anyway. Yet I still feel the jolt of beauty. I still believe some loves are worth tears. I still fight to stay awake to the possibility of more.

Hesse’s poem is not about refusing age. It is about refusing surrender.

You can accumulate decades like stacked luggage and still be dead inside. Or you can arrive at fifty-eight or seventy-five with desire stubbornly alive, memory still capable of both adoration and grief, and hope not fully tamed.

Ich log. Ich bin nicht alt.
He says it with a grin. He says it with a prayer.

The lie becomes the truth the moment you refuse to stop living.

Now I will ask you the question the poem demands.
Are you trying to prove you are not old to the world
or to yourself?

I write

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