NOTES FROM THE 8TH DECADE #5

THE TIMER IS RUNNING

December 2009

As one would imagine, I have been pondering the significance of being seventy years old since my 69th birthday last year.  Turning seventy has some emotional significance that was not there during the decade of the sixties.  Seventy sounds so much older than sixty-nine and conjures images in my mind of men with white hair and thick white mustaches, walking slightly bent forward, wearing a button down sweater and lace-less shoes. Shamelessly I have found comfort in hearing from friends and family that I do not look seventy, or in their surprise when I tell them my age...”I never would have guessed”, or “are you kidding me?”

I imagine that all who have had the good fortune to reach this milestone shares these thoughts.  Observations on turning seventy are as varied as the folks who offer them, from embracing their age and rejoicing in its advantages, to rebelling against it and bemoaning lost youth. I see and understand both points of view. There is indeed a sense of freedom that accompanies age, as well as a feeling of relief from having navigated all the years with reasonable success. For me, that offsets the loss of physical capacity as well as the enthusiasm and nativity of youth. 

But more than anything else, positive or negative, what resonates the most is the threat to the “some days” that have been so much a part of my life. Those some days were my fall back, my promises to myself; they were there to keep my dreams alive. They are not completely gone, but their expanse, their range, has been severely narrowed by knowing that most of my years are now behind me and that the once unlimited future has become both limited and vulnerable. Mentally I have been processing all of this for several years, but that magical number, seventy, seems to have crystallized these notions into a simple, concrete concept, the timer has been set. It is on and running, and I don’t know where it has been set to turn off, 6 months, 6 years, or 20 plus years. Of course the same can be said for all of us, regardless of age, but few of us pay any attention to it until we reach a certain age, which for me appears to be seventy.

NOTES FROM THE 8TH DECADE #4

THE PAST IS ALWAYS WITH US, AND THE FUTURE IS NOT FAR BEHIND

 8-09

Good grief! Who knew that turning 70 would provide so many issues to deal with (and write about). I will be lucky if I can get all the emotional and psychological stuff cleared away before I reach 80.

Maybe when I’m 80, 70-year old women will be more appealing.

I have 9 months left in which to milk this 70th birthday. No one gives a shit about 71!

I’m 70 years old and rarely does a day go by that I don’t think about my mother and father. Oh how I would love to go back into time and reclaim those years that I took for granted. With the wisdom of the retrospectoscope I realize how precious and special they were. But of course that is what the years bring to us, the wisdom to appreciate that which is has past: family, friends, community, and perhaps greatest of all, freedom from responsibility. My childhood was wonderful and glorious because my parents carried the burden of responsibilities for me, for themselves, my grandfather, and the farm. I realize now, that for them, those years were tough and trying, and that they protected me from their struggles.             

I cannot help but feel some f guilt for not realizing this sooner, but mostly I feel gratitude, gratitude to them for being the parents that they were and giving to me all that they did.  I imagine they knew that my turn to shoulder responsibility would come soon enough.

NOTES FROM THE 8TH DECADE #3 The Heaviness of Years

April 2009

Last night listening to folk music from the early 60’s I was immediately transported back to my college years (1957-1961) and how time has transformed my psyche. The phrase, the heaviness of years, came immediately to mind and has been with me ever since. And, as I am inclined to do, I began exploring this idea in my journal. I thought about how age tends to diminish ambitions, aspirations, and willingness to take risks, and encourages distrust and suspicion of anything new. And if that’s not enough, it promotes a growing reliance on daily routine, confusion over an evolving youth culture, and uncertainty over the extent of our personal future. How depressing!

But even as I was writing this bleak scenario of aging, which carries a modicum of truth, I realized it was only one side of the coin; there is an equally compelling argument to make for the benefit of age. The weight of the years is well balanced.

The uncertainty of the future - I have difficulty dealing with the loss of the “some days” of my youth. As a younger man I could cling to the notion that someday my dreams would come true, and my goals achieved. The future was limitless. At some point in my mid 60s that began to change, the future was narrowing and the “some days” began to diminish. Disastrous? Perhaps, but there is another way to look at this. With a diminishing and uncertain future, one is forced to focus on the present. For someone who tends to spend too much time thinking about the tomorrows, this is a positive step. With each birthday I move one year closer to learning to live in and appreciate my “todays". In the end, it is the journey, and not the destination that matters.

Following the dream and taking risks - I know something about this. At age 39 I decided to leave my medical practice and work part time in an emergency room so I could pursue a career in art (I had no formal training). At age 53 I opened a medical practice in a converted barn on our farm, and at age 62 moved 950 miles away from family and friends to Paducah Kentucky to sign up for their artist relocation program. I made each of these decisions, and many others, without fear or trepidation because I was confident that they were the steps intended for me. I knew that as much as one can know something.

But now, six years later, when I think about these moves I wonder, could I do that today? Does our spirit respond to age the way our bones and joints do? Does it tend to get a little slow and more inclined to remain comfortable and secure rather than jump ahead into the unknown? Those decisions were made with the security of the “some days” to fall back on if needed, “some days” that become more elusive with the passing years.

Although taking risks to pursue dreams become more difficult and perhaps more stressful, the years provide us with a new resource…experience. And if we pay attention it’s possible to convert that to wisdom. Together they can help guide us through the transitions and changes faced in these later years. We are better equipped to assess risks and have a more realistic notion of the consequences of our actions. Perhaps my spirit and my personal aspirations have been buffered a bit by the years, but they remain intact, and I pursue them a bit slower, with deliberation and determination that these same years have provided.

NOTE FROM THE 8TH DECADE #2

APPROACHING SEVENTY  

 December 2008

Castelnuovo della Daunia   watercolor

I left Italy thinking the Italians knew how to live. Not just because they enjoy their food and wine and their outgoing attitude to friends and family, but because they seem to be less uptight about life and less concerned with pretentious displays of wealth or position. However they are concerned with fashion and style, and they dress with fastidious care.

I returned home from my first trip to Italy 2 months ago, and have been addicted to a fantasy of returning to Italy to spend a year writing and painting in the tiny village of my grandfather, Castelnuovo della Daunia, located in the northern part of Puglia. I find myself clinging to this fantasy because it gives me hope that my life is not at a dead end, a disturbing thought that has been creeping into my consciousness lately.

The truth is, I don’t know what to think anymore. I will soon be 70 years old, an age that looms large and carries with it a lot of heavy emotional stuff. Mostly stuff like I am too old to be thinking about my “somedays”, or scheming about how I can spend a month let alone a year in Italy. And I’m too old to think I can become any more than I am in the world of art.

On the other hand I remind myself that it is not the numbers that count, it is how you feel.  It is what is in your heart and your head that determines how old you are. If I think that I am too old for all of the above, then I might as well just roll over and die, and I am not ready to do that.

I don’t know if I really want to spend a year in Italy. Maybe what I really want is something to look forward to, something to add excitement to a life that I fear is growing increasingly dull and mundane. This may be a good time to remind myself of important lessons from the past: if you don’t think something can happen, then it probably won’t. But if you nurture your ideas and give them time and space, those that were meant to be will grow with a chance to bloom, those that weren’t, will die.

Perhaps the years ahead won’t be so dull after all. Who knows, I may even make it back to Italy some day.

NOTES FROM THE 8TH DECADE #1

The first installment of essays on the mixed blessing of ageing.

Introduction

Change has always been relatively easy for me, which is very fortunate, since I have made more than my share of major changes over the years. In fact change may have been the most consistent element in my life. With one exception, all of them have been of my own volition, and have given me little reason for regrets. But I am now facing a change that may prove to be the most challenging of them all…ageing.

I first began paying attention to this inevitable process as I was approaching my 70^th birthday. Somehow being 70 was so very different from being sixty-anything. As an avid journal writer I began the dutiful task of recording the results of my ruminations, which I have gathered together in this folio I’m calling Notes from the Eighth Decade. Each is presented as an independent narrative in the chronological order in which they were written, so there is occasional repetition.  As might be expected, the deeper I got into the 8^th decade, the more I felt the need to write about it.

SEVEN -O

August, 200ß

It took awhile, but I finally figured it out. This mental funk of the past few months can be trace back to my 69th birthday in May.

There have been several significant birthdays in my life; my 17th which allowed me to apply for a drivers license, a milestone for any teenage boy, and of course my 21st, making it legal for me to drink and make a fool of myself. It would be 44 years until the next milestone arrived, my 65th birthday, accompanied by a Medicare card! My parents had Medicare cards for heaven's sake, and now I was looking at one with MY name on it. This might have caused problems for a lesser man than me, but possessed of a strong heart and mind - well, at least a strong heart - I dealt with it and got on with my life, knowing it would be 5 years before I would be facing another significant milestone. Sixty plus is one thing, but SEVENTY, that’s clearly something else.

Imagine my surprise and dismay when 4 years later, after my 69th birthday, I find myself struggling to deal with the idea that I am less than a year away from being 70 years old. It doesn’t matter that I’m only 69. Sixty-nine doesn’t really exist. It is only there to tell me that in a very short time I WILL BE SEVENTY! At this point I should explain that I am what the psychologist Carl Jung would call an intuitive, meaning I tend to always focus on the future, living ahead of myself; sometimes I feel like I’ve already lived 2 lifetimes. I realize it may be premature to deal with all of this now, but maybe by doing so my 70th birthday will be a breeze. 

I know, getting old is relative and it is mental, not physical. When I look in the mirror, do I see someone who is SEVENTY years old? Of course not. Just because I can’t get up from kneeling without holding on to something doesn’t mean anything. And so I make a little noise when I get up from a chair, it’s just a little ooomph, and that doesn’t count. There are of course a few other problems, which are too delicate to discuss here, but they too are basically all mental, aren’t they?

So, what is my problem with 70? I guess it is the realization that all of the “some days that I have always counted on may no longer be there, and for a Jungian intuitive that can be rather threatening. But that is another story. 

 

CARE ABOUT OTHERS

CARE ABOUT OTHERS     From my book - Have I Told You Today That I Love You?

Your relationship with others will be as varied as the people you encounter and will be determined by many factors, not the least of which will be your own personality and psychological style.  But regardless of who and what you are, there are certain basic tenets that I would urge you to follow.

Be respectful of others, regardless of their position in our socio-economic conscious society.  Be your real self with both the room maid and the hotel manager.

Be tolerant of ideas, beliefs, and behavior that differ from yours; no one has a monopoly on the truth.

With grace forgive the weaknesses of others and do not judge what you may perceive to be their shortcomings.

Forgive first offenses.  Overlook minor slights.

Enable and nurture; be one who helps other achieve their own selfhood.  Act in such a way that others will feel better for knowing you.

Be honest toward others.  Do not present yourself to be other than who you are.  And do not deceive or use others to achieve your own way or goals.

Be gracious and humble about your own accomplishments and success and be mindful of those blessings you have been given.  You did nothing to be born into a loving and supportive family and to have the economic advantages so many others lack.  Do not be so quick to take credit for what you perceive are you own accomplishments, more often than not there were many forces not of your own doing, that helped shape them.

Do not take credit for God’s grace.

THE HUMAN SPIRIT

The human spirit, that numinous and mysterious force that exists within us, so pervasive in determining the entire range of human behavior and thought, and yet too elusive to be measured or quantified by any scientific method or exercise.

It cannot be seen, touched, or heard, only experienced. 

It is this spirit that enables us to find the resolve, the strength, and the will, to overcome horrific events or experiences, and to navigate this journey called life.

It enables us to be moved emotionally by great art and music, to love and to care for one another, to share deeply in the happiness and grief of others, to nurture dreams and aspirations for ourselves and for others, to imagine our own souls, and to imagine God.

The human spirit is God’s foundation; He is imagined and experienced out of this spirit.  He is in the human spirit.  He is the human spirit.  Without us, He cannot be, and without the human spirit, we cannot be what we are and what we hope to be.

My search for understanding has taken me on a maze-like path, moving in one direction and another, retreating at a dead end, and choosing still another path.  Remarkably, in spite of the tortuous route, I am always left feeling one step closer to my goal.