NATURE WILL HAVE THE LAST WORD

Choices I have made as life moves into its last phases

This is a reflection on aging. My stage of life makes reflection seem appropriate, but it is further spurred by the successive death of friends, some close and others acquaintances. One by one they disappear in increasingly rapid succession. The reality is inexorable, and I can't help but respond with somber emotions.

I have a very good friend, a bit older than I am, who has made a practice of cultivating friendships with people younger than himself. He is making plans to assure that he is not the last man standing, bereft of friends and loved ones. I try to do likewise.

I am 74 years old. For a long time, I joked that I was in the twilight of my youth, but that joke has long grown stale. There is a place, I believe, for denial, but, inescapably, only up to a point. I cannot deny my age, though in many ways I continue to struggle against it. I have had six orthopedic surgeries, and though I am far better off than I would be had I not been able to avail myself of the deliverances of modern medicine, the remediations have not been perfect. My joints ache, and commonplace tasks such as bending down to pick up a dropped item (items slipping from my hands comes with greater frequency these days), I now do with deliberation and discomfort.

I used to say that after 40 one's bodily condition is a patch-up job. So much more so after 70. The tide is rushing at me, pushing me back, and I need to swim harder to stay in place and not succumb to its drift. Admittedly, I move more slowly, and frequently the aches and pains bring to mind thoughts of my mortality.

The realization that I am reaching toward the end of my life often intrudes, and thinking about the end of life is unsettling. As Freud once said, “the truth cannot be tolerant,” and the truth of death is the most intolerant and unwavering of all. It takes mental maneuvers to steer my thoughts in other directions and toward life-affirming activities that will evoke positive emotions.

It used to be said that with age comes wisdom. Yet, I suspect with the rapid pace of technological change and know-how, younger generations are increasingly valorized and the elderly respectively marginalized. I think we care less about the purported wisdom of the old and its incumbent respect. Now there, I wonder if such wisdom is nothing more than its reduction to cliches: “Life is short.” “You are as young as you feel.” “Age isn't a number. It's an attitude.” Though we are taught to eschew cliches, I assume that they become such because they are conveyors of truth. As we age, that truth is fleshed out and validated by the substance of experience. Among the most useful, I find, is “we need to strive to make the most of each day.”

It has long been said that religion compels belief because it relieves human beings of their greatest insecurities and fears. Many religions answer death with eternal life. For some, this life is merely a prelude to another and better one. I do not believe that. There is no evidence for a life beyond this one other than the wish that it be so, and as such it speaks to a surfeit of ego.

We are all compelled to respond to our mortality. Knowing only life, we cannot know death. But unlike other animals, we know that we are going to die and the knowledge of our looming annihilation generates apprehension and anxiety. And protracted anxiety is intolerable. We push aside that knowledge. We repress it. We strive to ignore it. For Sigmund Freud, the roots of civilization emerge from our instinctive drives, especially aggression and sex. For the psychologist, Ernest Becker, civilization is built on the denial of death. Perhaps he was right.

Like others, I look for ways to divert my thoughts and quell the anxieties. As a so-called “non-believer,” I find solace in seeking to make the most of life now. While it brings only fragmentary comfort, I can readily conclude that if we experienced eternal life, our existence would be flattened out and made tedious, devoid of interest, and ultimately meaningless. While modern medicine can tweak our health and has succeeded in extending the average life span from 40 to over 70 years in just 120 years, (and I remain personally very grateful for that), from a cosmic standpoint it is but an insignificant nanosecond.

Our lives are subject to the constraints of Nature, and Nature will have the last word. It is within the kingdom of Nature that our lives and existence are played out, and this ineluctable reality cajoles us to make peace with our mortality.

In Buddhism, time is illusory, and clinging to it can only evoke negative emotions – sadness that comes with loss, nostalgia, aspirations that exceed their realization, and, yes, fear in contemplation of the extinguishing of our consciousness and the disappearance of all that we have loved.

The only refuge is to cultivate an appreciation and experience of the eternal “now,” the instantaneous, timeless moment that hovers between an evanescent past and an illusory and insecure future.

Such endeavor has its Western analogs. I recall years ago reading a compelling book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by the late Czech psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The author's premise, born out by empirical research, is that a state of happiness can be achieved when the person is focused on a challenging task whose performance is neither too simple nor overbearingly difficult. Such an experience results in a sense that the task is effortless, and time “flows” as if the experience is taking place out of time in a timeless present. When one is focused on a task for its own sake and not to meet an extrinsic goal, happiness is possible.

Clearly, such focus pushes aside intruding and disturbing thoughts, and engagement in the present alone brings with it feelings of happiness. It is this phenomenon that has guided and inspired the experiences I have chosen to prioritize at this stage of my life. I take seriously those things I want to do, and those I choose to avoid, and I am very thankful that I am sufficiently free to make choices, realizing that in life there are always choices to be made.

So I have opted to not become overly engaged in the electronic media. Rather, I seek to spend as much time with friends and loved ones as possible, not as pixels on a screen but in real-time, face to face. I cherish such moments with friends, times when we can communicate common interests, express our caring, and share our interiorities. These can be magic moments that penetrate deeply into the humanity of others, precious moments that come as close as possible to transcendence in the human domain.

The isolation occasioned by the pandemic has enriched my love of nature. I have an enveloping, tree-covered backyard where I spend many hours. I have cultivated an ability to marvel at the shafts of sunlight that shine through the forest and shift their positions each day. I am startled at the passing of the deer that visit me on misty evenings, and I delight in the hundreds of flowers that I care for and surround my deck and home. And there are sublime feelings when I contemplate the trees themselves, sensing that both they and I are organic components of Nature and we share the commonality of being living things.

These are experiences in the private sphere, and there are life-enhancing engagements in my public life as well. But these I leave for another time.

Then there is writing, of which these essays are prime examples. My semi-retirement has given me the freedom to engage in this chosen activity. It perhaps comes closer to the aforementioned “flow” experience than any other. I have long found the written word to be sacred, and I love to write. And if truth be told, the more I write the easier it becomes. Except for the occasions when I confront “writer's block,” and those occasions have grown less frequent, writing itself has become a unique source of pleasure and joy.

There is more to convey. There is peace to be found in the aesthetic moment, in the immanent beauty inherent in art, literature, and music. But for now, this will suffice.

 I cannot fool myself. The reality of my death still looms and I feel sadness in the reality that nothing endures. I will perhaps be remembered for a generation or two, but like the ripples in the pond caused by a stone that has been cast into it, the reality of my existence will fade from human memory and I will recede into the dark, nameless, recesses of eternity.

But I find that the starkness of that reality has been mitigated by the choice I have made to focus on the moment and I find beauty and tranquility in how I have chosen to spend the last phase of my life.