Category Archives: Aging

Aging, Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Original Relation, Third Phase

Wasted Years?

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Spring                                                Mountain Spring Moon

Wondering about retirement, about the third phase, not from an abstract notion of this journey now, but from within it, on the path. I notice things like this. A weather blog I follow talks about the decadal oscillations (Atlantic and Pacific) that have a determining effect on drought patterns in the U.S. When the author says these may not change their influence until 2035, I quickly calculate. 92. That means I may live in the forest fire red zone knowing only drought conditions.

Work. I commented here about work, about Latin and writing, gardening and beekeeping as work. And it’s true that I experience them that way. When I call them work though, I sometimes find myself confused. Am I retired or am I working? Yes seems to be the answer. Perhaps I need a new paradigm.

What came to me as I wrote that last sentence was the Hindu notion I mentioned a while back, action without attachment to results. From within that idea it doesn’t matter, working or retired. Both. The doing, the acting carries the meaning, not the end. Related I think to the idea of the journey as the destination.

Yet, I admit that the culture comes up inside me, makes me wonder about the wasted years, all that time since leaving the church, now 25 years. What have I done? Which really means, of course, besides being alive how have you contributed to the world? I was taught, in that it’s obvious, it’s the way it is manner that culture defines for us, that work means results. A man is his attachment to results and the results make the man.

Results mean new law, building affordable housing, organizing citizen based power to balance philanthropic concentrations of wealth and to alleviate the pains of vast unemployment in Minnesota. Those were results a man could claim and in claiming lay down evidence as to his worth.

But. What if the novel doesn’t sell? What if the effort to market work is so weak that it never really has a chance? Does that invalidate the writing, the patience, the persistence necessary to conceive, execute, revise? Then, if the action does not have the expected result, does it come crashing down on the man, rendering him less a man?

Some days it feels like the answer is yes. If there is no book on the shelf with my name on the cover, then I am less of a man. If in writing, I have taken energy away from the political work which gave me tangible results, then I have contributed less than I could have. Have I allowed fear to dominate my marketing work over the last 25 years? Fear that I would be rejected time and again. Possibly. Does that erase the novels and short stories I have written? Or, to put it in the most blunt way possible, has it called into question all the “work” I’ve done in the past two decades and a half?

Some days it feels like the obvious answer is no. What is the result of loving a woman? What is the outcome of raising a child? Where is the success in a flower bed or a dog? All these most important actions rely not on the actions of the man, or at least not solely. Loving a woman does not make her a better woman, does not create an achievement. Raising a child, though important, does not make the child. Children make themselves, influenced no doubt by the parent, but still, the responsibility is theirs. The same with grandchildren. Flowers and vegetables grow, too, again perhaps aided by the gardener, but it is their task to produce a bloom or a fruit or vegetable. Dogs live their lives in the orbit of the humans who love them, but their life is the result and who can claim ownership of life itself?

Another angle. The taking in of knowledge, developing understanding, all the reading and attending to cultural artifacts like art, theater, chamber music, movies, what does that amount to? What is the result, the thing that matters? Is there any point to it all?

Not to mention that I have made almost no money for the last 25 years. Not none, but not enough to count.

As I write this, see it laid out on the page, though, I’m inclined toward compassion, toward acceptance of the man who has done what he has done with as much energy and passion as he has, a man who has stayed faithful to his wife, his son, his stepson and his family, dogs, gardens, bees, who has remained constant in following his inner path regardless of the outcomes.

Bill Schmidt’s find of this poem says what I feel better than I express it myself:

Love after Love

 

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

 

and say, sit here.  Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

 

all your life…

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

And Then Is Heard No More

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Imbolc                               Black Mountain Moon

Let’s paint the same message as below, but with a different brush and color. Gray fading to black dominated the last post. Let’s use blue fading to dark, dark blue here.

Life is the time between the first rays of dawn and the last, bruised hours of twilight. At its brightening life comes with expansiveness, light revealing first this and then that, all new. These are the hours of Heidegger’s being thrown into the world. We see first a soon-to-be familiar face, then faces. Realize at some point a home, then the home in a particular place. That place is in a larger frame which sometimes takes a while to come into focus. At some point we know that the 1950’s, this time of childhood is neither, say, the the 1930’s of our parent’s time nor is it the middle ages with knights and castles and it is not, either, the future. Not 2000. Not 1984.

Over the next few years we learn that our unique self will have its hour upon the stage over a certain span of time, not any we wish, but this one and this one alone. Who we are to become, what we are to do must fit into these years, years that have their own shape, their own special challenges, their own significant opportunities. We choose this path, that person, those places. They fit or they don’t. If they don’t, we choose again.

As the years accumulate and our hour ticks down, the choices become fewer, narrower. Our own history now shapes our future. This is a time of reaping, of being the person you have chosen to be, the unique mixture of your Self and the times into which you have been thrown. When the reaping is finished, our hour is up.

Aging, Colorado, Family, Feelings, Health

Yikes

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Winter                                                                            Settling Moon

Both Kate and I feel like we’re ahead of what we’d expected in terms of getting stuff liberated, sorted and placed. We’re maybe 60% unpacked in the house, somewhere between 40 and 50% in the loft and very little in the garage, which will probably wait until spring.

Had a bit of a scare last night when the dogs rushed inside ahead of us after we returned from the science fair. The dogs’ feet carried in snow which quickly melted and Kate slipped right at the door and fell. Scared me for her, with two metal hips. Fortunately, she has strong bones, no osteoporosis, and walked away with a skinned shin. Yikes.

This morning I got up and put a new indoor/outdoor rug down in the front of the door. We’ll do that at the other two entrances as well. All tile makes sense with the snowy weather here, part of the charm, but it also makes slipperiness an issue. Part of getting used to a new space, a new climate.

A light snow last night covered the driveway and our small deck. With the temps forecast into the high 40’s or low 50’s tomorrow and the next day, I’m going to see whether it will melt without shoveling. An experiment. Getting used to a new place.

Aging, Quotes, Retirement, Third Phase

the u-shaped graph

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Samain                                                                                Moving Moon

Been thinking about the U shaped graph I’ve seen in recent articles about happiness. The graph follows feelings of happiness over a lifetime. During early childhood happiness is high according to the graph. Then somewhere around adolescence and continuing through  an individual’s working life happiness declines reaching a nadir in mid-career. After that the curve ticks up, implying of course that we’re happiest again when we die. Hmm. Probably not.

(graphic for an Economist article on this topic.)

My life experience so far seems to underwrite the broad concept. Specifically I’ve been wondering about that uptick in happiness (well-being, satisfaction)-I prefer the Greek,  eudaimonia, human-flourishing. Why does it happen?

Here are a few random ideas, not proven as far as I know.  We flourish when our life has recognizable limits. We’re always being told we can do anything we set our minds to, we can be anything we want to be. Maybe so, I don’t know.  I do know that the burden of  having to choose among competing futures can make the present seem fraught and burdened. One limit in the third phase is that of diminished prospects. We no longer have the career world and its vast horizons spread before us, nor do we have the energy, the ambition we had in that time of our life. Seems good to me. Narrowing down the future and its possibilities means a less fraught daily existence.

A second limit we encounter (most of us) in the third phase is financial. We know how much money we have and what we have to do to live within its possibilities and constraints. Again, I think, good. We’re not reaching, hoping for another raise, a windfall, a lucky break. No, we can settle into the life we can afford.

A third limit is length of life. We know now that life does not stretch on well beyond the horizon. Our friends and family have begun to get serious illnesses and die. Our own body has begun to signal its intention, too. Like the other two, narrowed prospects and financial constraints, at first this seems like a horror, an anathema to the American dream of excelsior. But I think good here, too. I want my obit to start out: Ate right, exercised, died anyway.

Acceptance of all three limits encourages us to focus on those matters dearest to us, most important in our lives. Does this mean that we have no hope for a productive life? No. It simply means that we’re likely much clearer about where to spend our energy and gifts. Does this mean we give up on managing our financial affairs? Again, no. It just means that they’re easier to manage and probably take up less energy. Does it mean we abandon caring for our health? Of course not. It means that we no longer do so with the illusion of eternal physical life as our reward for it.

Just random ideas. Not proven as far as I know.

Aging, Memories, Minnesota, Third Phase

Not Expected

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Samain                                                                  Closing Moon

10″ for sure. Maybe 12-14. A lot for a first snow. Ushering in a week of cold weather. Minnesota. Ah.

Yesterday when I visited the eye doc a couple a bit older than myself came in. They both had on black sports jackets, the same, with MSRA on the front. I didn’t think much about it until they went to the receptionist to check in and I saw MSRA on the back with the acronym spelled out: Minnesota Street Rod Association. Not what I expected.

Which brings up a regular occurrence. Trying to imagine what an older person was like during the 60’s. I know from looking at myself in the mirror that you can’t tell from a persons post medicare card appearance where they  stood in those days. Even the gray pony-tail crowd is as likely to be composed of veterans as ex-hippies and draft protesters.

Not many of us wear our enthusiasms so clearly as the hot-rodders gathered with me for our glaucoma check.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Worthy

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Fall                                                                                  Falling Leaves Moon

 

Finished the article on Why I Hope to Die at 75. The more I read, the more I felt it revealed an uneasiness about worthiness. We are worthy only if we are productive. If we can be remembered as vital and incisive. If we remove ourselves from our children’s lives, quit being their shadow. If we don’t use resources better focused on the young or the demented. If we are not ill. If we are not disabled. If we are not operating at peak power.

This is what Christian theologians call works righteousness. You can only be saved if you do good works and abstain from bad ones. It was Luther who said, no, we are saved by grace alone. We cannot earn worthiness through good works.

Translated to this secular argument, I would say that we are not worthy because of our potential, our health status, our role as parents-no, we are worthy as a result of our humanness, because of our unique and precious life. Worthiness, in other words, is the wrong category to bring to the table. We live and have worth because of our existential situation. No one else, ever, will be the human that you are. No one. In this case I stand by analogy with Luther, we are worthy by the gracious act of our creation and remain so up to and even after our death.

 

None of this is to say that Ezekiel Emanuel can’t decide to refuse therapeutic medicine after 75. Of course, he can. Might be the right thing to do for him. I don’t know. I only know that his worth will not be any less because he’s no longer in the office at U Penn. His worth will not be less to his children and family because he may have a faulty heart. His worth will not be decided by others, nor, in fact, by himself. It was decided at the hour of his birth.

 

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Speaking Against

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Fall                                                                                          Falling Leaves Moon

Psalm 90:10 (RSV)

10 The years of our life are threescore and ten,
    or even by reason of strength fourscore;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
    they are soon gone, and we fly away.

In the middle of reading this long article by Ezekiel J. Emanuel in the Atlantic, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” The argument so far has a rationale based on increasing life being linked statistically with a longer period of disability and illness. Why suffer yourself and why suffer the costs to your family and society? Why not just die at 75? The Jews believe 3 score and ten is a full life and anything beyond that is bonus time, so from that perspective 75 is within one metrics range.

How you respond to this article is of interest to me, and I’ll reserve my final opinion until I’ve finished, but here is my first response.

Emanuel has a lot of information about these issues as Professor of Health Care Management and Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. I’ll stipulate his data. And, I’ll stipulate that all of us will have opinions on this issue whether well-informed or informed by anecdote alone or, more likely, some combination of the two.

What’s unusual, of course, is Emanuel’s bald claim that he has a limit in mind for his lifespan. The exercising, right-dieting, medically attuned crowd (put me squarely here) are what he calls The American Immortals. That is, a group of folks who want to believe in life everlasting, or at least life lasting as long as possible. This clever phrase says a lot about Emanuel, but is not so illuminating for its target group.

Here’s what I think is wrong with Emanuel’s position. He seems to have an instrumental view of human life, spending considerable time showing how creativity, cognition and overall productivity decline after peaking anywhere along a broad bell curve with its flattened top extending between 30 and 60. After 60, unless you are an outlier, (and he says American Immortals believe they are all, or will be, outliers) it’s a long slump toward vagueness and discomfort.

In other words, as I read him, Emanuel doesn’t want to go into the process of decline. He’d rather phase out before that all gets too far underway. He wants to be remembered as vital, productive, keen. So say we all. But. Life is about more than productivity, creativity, thinking.

It is also about loving, about following the journey where it leads, about mystery. The Great Wheel speaks in analogy about this exact matter, the journey from birth to maid to mother to crone, then across the veil. Or, from birth to youth to adulthood and the third phase. I suppose you could say Emanuel is a latter day Stoic. I can see him in his chair, slumped with his toga around, arms dangling, veins open. As for me, I’m following this ancientrail as far as it goes, not for immortality, not for more productivity, but for life itself.

It is, I think, too easy to make shibboleths of work, of peak performance, especially in American culture. What of the supper table around which sit mechanics and waitresses, toll-booth operators and farm hands? What of the holiday meal with its small table for the young ones, their parents and their parents eating together? What about the grandchild who still wants to hold grandpop’s hand, even though he’s infirm? Life is about more than work, more than vitality, even. Life is not individual only; life is also embeddedness in the lives of others.

 

 

Aging, Friends, Health, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

How Can We Live Until We Die?

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Lughnasa                                                                    College Moon

After taking a rug into American Rug Laundry in Minneapolis, I drove back through the campus of the University of Minnesota. It was move in day. Trucks with back doors thrown open, mattresses being handled through door-ways.  Clutches of stunned looking freshmen, on campus and on their own, gathered at street lights. Now what?

It felt good to see that moment, relive my own and feel renewed as a cultural ritual continues, looking much the same as when I did it myself back in 1965.

That was the morning. In the late afternoon I drove over to Maple Grove, to Biaggi’s and met Tom Crane, Bill Schmidt and Warren Wolfe for our Woolly first Monday restaurant meal.

Warren closed on the sale of his second house in Minnesota last Friday and was in a celebratory mood. Bill had come from playing cards with friends, happy to be. Tom had an off work weekend beard and spoke of cleaning the garage floor in anticipation of guests soon to arrive.

The ease of our conversation, the common reference points, so many now, was in its fluidity, healing. (not, I should say, from recent pain or anguish, but from the deeper burden of life lived fundamentally alone) Seeing and being seen is the essence of human interaction yet it is so often blurred by wanting something from the other, or anticipating something else. This evening, as so often with the Woollys (though not always), we were with each other, there, at that table.

One profound question arose, how can we live until we die? This dips into the existential reality of bodies going infirm-Warren and I have glaucoma, Tom’s thumb, Frank’s heart and back, Ode’s knee. It also, and I think more profoundly, raises the question of self-hood, of what makes us who we are. What is necessary? Is walking necessary? Sight? The lack of serious, even terminal illness? What is indispensable?

Perhaps a clue came to us in the person of Cheryl, our waitress. When she drove north from Santa Rosa to San Francisco to see her father, she would drive through Gilroy, the garlic capital of the U.S. She wound crank her windows down and enjoy the aroma. Some of her friends thought her eccentric. No, she was Cheryl, taking in what she could as she had the opportunity.

That is, I would guess, a secret to living until we die.

 

Aging, Family, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Nocturne

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Lughnasa                                                            New (College) Moon

Rain so hard it sounded like hail has scoured the air, washing the dust out and dropping the temperature. The tornado watch expires in half an hour though we’ll have more thunderstorms later tonight. Weather is local; climate is global. Climate change in this case has given us days with more moisture in the air, driving up the chance of stronger storms and more concentrated rain fall.

(Curry The Line Storm)

Robert Jay Lifton, a grand old man of American letters, known for his psychological and psychiatric work on war and nuclear weapons, has written an interesting article in the NYT, The Climate Swerve. He’s careful, doesn’t overstate the evidence, but he makes a point similar to one I made here a month or so ago. Something’s happening to public opinion about climate change. Something pressing the public toward concern, possibly creating the political climate necessary for making difficult choices. Read the article for his thoughts about “stranded assets.” It’s a concept you will hear about more often in the future.

Had lunch with Jon today at the Craftsman on Lake Street. He was in town, briefly, for the wedding of a long time friend, flew in yesterday and out today. Dressed in a new blue striped dress shirt, dress slacks, neat beard and his curly hair, he hardly looks 45, almost 46. More like mid-30’s.

The bond of this family has begun to gel, why now I’m not sure, though it must have 500Jon Gabe Mesomething to do with Ruth and Gabe getting older. There’s a realization about our own aging, our fragility that comes as kids advance in years, but in this case it’s a sweet realization, a realization that the future, as the song says, is not ours to see. But that that’s ok since we know well some who will inhabit it, shape it, lead it.

The future they inhabit will have its own set of agonies and joys. When Ruth and Gabe confront a world altered by climate change, by the polarization of political parties in our time, by the struggles to drag some of the Middle East back to a seventh century golden age(that was never golden), by the rise of China and India and Brazil and Indonesia, they will be in that world as we are in ours: a bit confused, somewhat hopeful, mostly living their lives from day-to-day just as we do.