With good health, a modest income, some good luck and a few reliable friends, old age can be tolerated. I used to worry the money would run out before payday came. I used to fret over unnecessary meetings and redundant paper work. Of course our work gives us purpose but its weight goes well beyond purpose. I have time now in jog-gear that I never had in sprint mode. It lets me relish things that once passed under the radar. Waking up from peaceful sleep, it should not be taken for granted; thank you! Likewise, hot water on demand may be the most underrated blessing the gods ever shared with mortal man. Still, with 25 teenagers scrambling through my door at 7:22 a.m., wanting nothing more than to beat the tardy bell, it never crossed my mind. With enough age it crosses my mind and any deliverance that befalls me, it beats tolerable, it is acceptable, even embraceable.
Tolerance may be a good starting point but I want more. Tolerate means just to put up with, to endure. Long life should yield more than endurance. I was schooled early not to take the present for granted: don’t wish your life away. That was difficult when all I wanted was to be 16 so I could drive but what do you tell a 14 year-old. Still, things change after all. No rush now to be another year older. Every breath a bridge to the next, something else not to be taken for granted, thank you!
I have several pet rocks from the bottom of The Grand Canyon, billions of years old and I nurture them as if they need it. Fact is, they wear their age very well without my help. I am the needy one in that arrangement, just a lump of flesh with a minuscule lifespan. The stones I collect, millions of earth years may pass between their breathing in and breathing out but then neither do they fear for the next breath.
A friend told me, “There are lessons to be learned. If we fall short, the lesson is reframed to fit another circumstance and we get it again, and again, for as many times as it takes.” I still do that, fall short and repeat a previous lesson but the years have set me up to see it coming, to better be ready. Kris Kristofferson’s song The Pilgrim sums up my condition: “. . . never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse, or if the going up is worth the coming down.” I can’t say with confidence but if I get to choose, the coming down isn’t all bad; depends on what you do with it.
I could have written about a troubled world, about people who don't care what they do as long as they win, beat the tardy bell. Sometimes I do write about them. They are alright one on one but get them together and they start counting their money and keeping score. As ambitious as the human animal is, if we could do better we would. Civilized problems are compounded by greed, so deeply rooted in the psyche we (humankind) think it a virtue.
So my closer is this: The lesson that may take a lifetime to appreciate teaches us, “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” What we believe has been fashioned from someone else’s recipe and the kettle we were cooked in. It gives us a reason to make noise and push back but who questions what we’ve been groomed to believe, that might change the recipe. When my dust goes back to its mother I will be forgotten but the lesson will still be there to learn. Life is short, be nice, love who you love. Tell them so but talk is cheap. Love requires action or it is just an abstract idea and who needs more of that!
I have several pet rocks from the bottom of The Grand Canyon, billions of years old and I nurture them as if they need it. Fact is, they wear their age very well without my help. I am the needy one in that arrangement, just a lump of flesh with a minuscule lifespan. The stones I collect, millions of earth years may pass between their breathing in and breathing out but then neither do they fear for the next breath.
A friend told me, “There are lessons to be learned. If we fall short, the lesson is reframed to fit another circumstance and we get it again, and again, for as many times as it takes.” I still do that, fall short and repeat a previous lesson but the years have set me up to see it coming, to better be ready. Kris Kristofferson’s song The Pilgrim sums up my condition: “. . . never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse, or if the going up is worth the coming down.” I can’t say with confidence but if I get to choose, the coming down isn’t all bad; depends on what you do with it.
I could have written about a troubled world, about people who don't care what they do as long as they win, beat the tardy bell. Sometimes I do write about them. They are alright one on one but get them together and they start counting their money and keeping score. As ambitious as the human animal is, if we could do better we would. Civilized problems are compounded by greed, so deeply rooted in the psyche we (humankind) think it a virtue.
So my closer is this: The lesson that may take a lifetime to appreciate teaches us, “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” What we believe has been fashioned from someone else’s recipe and the kettle we were cooked in. It gives us a reason to make noise and push back but who questions what we’ve been groomed to believe, that might change the recipe. When my dust goes back to its mother I will be forgotten but the lesson will still be there to learn. Life is short, be nice, love who you love. Tell them so but talk is cheap. Love requires action or it is just an abstract idea and who needs more of that!
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