When You're Old Enough to Really Live You're Old Enough to Die:
I think about this title of an old song sometimes. But there is really more to it than that. In your formative years you seldom know which end is up or possess much real wisdom but are sustained by turbulent exhilaration, endless trepidation, and effervescent ebullition. No matter what your mood, it is usually in high gear---there is so much so new, so confusing, so conflicting. With some luck, a good support base, and a decent environment you manage to reach your productive years with a decent shot at reasonable success AT SOMETHING. Inevitably most of us will be destined to carry serious deficiencies or unshakable handicaps beyond our ability to eradicate, and these hurdles make most of us foppish competitors in the game of life. Yet in so many ways, in so many personally diverse struts across the stage of life, many shine during these productive years. Others, less fortunate, probably more numerous, live lives of quiet desperation---how much of it their own making beyond our capability to properly judge. God's evolutionary process is not a process without a lot of tragedy and suffering---an observation which hardly destroys the brilliance of the evolutionary process taken from a broader view.
For those of us lucky enough to escape much of the suffering, achieve modest goals in our productive years, and fortunate enough to enter our terminational years with good health, good friends, and fortunate breaks, this good fortune then demands an obligation to be thankful, thoughtful about our life story, and to then ride gently down the stream to oblivion. Yes, when you're old enough to really live you really are old enough to die. But, once relegated to the sidelines or the grandstand, what you really lose, no matter how good your intentions, or how full of wisdom your thoughts, is the means to effectuate the kind of changes to impact favorably upon the lives of others. It may not be totally lost, but the means at hand become increasingly restricted. I suppose one can try to deny this and make a fool or pest of oneself, but what is, is. The Obama crowd maybe can, and could, if given the chance, but there are a huge number of terminational citizens who see so many things through the eyes of the past, and have lived long enough now to form a huge electorate which tends to vote along the lines of outdated notions and perceptions. Thus, millions of people, who no longer can adapt to changing times, or accept any mindset needed to effectuate solutions to modern problems, vote their hostilities to a world now beyond their grasp. It is like if they vote NO to change, things will go back to a past with which they are more familiar. The truth: you can never go home again.
Democracy is failing now, and failing for many different, but contributing, reasons. The rich and powerful have brought down every advanced civilization in history through unrestrained greed, insensitivity to the needs of the less fortunate, an addiction to power---and with the power came unrestrained arrogance---and with all of the aforementioned came the creation of a foreign 'empire' of one nature or another----and with this widespread entanglement in the affairs of maintaining or expanding such an empire came a prohibitive cost which was unsustainable. An unsustainable empire coupled with massive inequality of wealth distribution at home, leads to internal collapse. The affluent can only live off the backs of the non affluent for so long before everything disintegrates, and the more complex the civilization the faster the collapse. Things unravel pretty fast when so much depends on so much else to thrive.
What is totally unique about self destructing empires these days is the unavailability of any escape routes. In the earlier days of this country there was the frontier. You packed up and moved West. In the earlier days of history people moved from Africa to Asia and Europe then to Australia, etc, until finally all the continents became populated. Now, as things become more and more dicey, dangerous, and unstable, where the hell would anyone or any group run to? We have more now than just a global economy. Most all the problems are global, all humanity is increasingly ending up in the same boat, a boat tangled up with all kinds of ethnic, religious, cultural, and political strife wrapped around ever shrinking natural resources, all mired in human overpopulation, global warming, air pollution, rapidly shrinking water levels, and rising levels of violence---every mob employing violence against each other---with all the mobs approaching some sort of weird level playing field in which the ability of every discordant group across the globe, via modern communication methods, is gaining the ability to organize and terrorize others, all essentially in a fight for a bigger piece of what is left of an ever shrinking pie of assorted goodies. This American election may well be the last hurrah for those seeking a new direction. The disintegration of any society rarely takes place in a straight steady line---a certain point is reached, as it did in the World Trade Centers, when it all just comes tumbling down with all kinds of people at every level of society becoming the victims. The history of evolution is filled with all sorts of major global catastrophes. Of course no one, certainly least of all me, has the foresight to accurately predict how close, or the real nature of the next global catastrophe. But I certainly feel very uncomfortable with the present priorities and mentalities of the Bush-Cheney-evangelical-corporate-military/industrial complex-oil industry-and blind patriotism wrapped in surging violence as the solution to conflict ---- these banded together hateful and short-sighted cabals are currently in full control of our destiny.
Thus, aside from the usual challenges of the terminational years, one needs to adapt to existing in a truly unique and dangerous time in history. I live in the richest county in Illinois and am surrounded by those who see the current economic tanking as just another cyclical and temporary downturn and soon the days of even greater prosperity for the already prosperous will return again to robust amassment of more and more wealth, with wonderful amenities available off the backs of slave labor across the globe. We are now putting a stop to these mindless mortgages with little or no money down and no payments for years at mortgage payments which any idiot knows people with non livable wages could not possibly pay. And thus, once again a robust housing market and good times will return. Oh sure, and these ever increasing masses of people making non livable wages will find housing where? Many already worked two jobs and couldn't afford a house so the solution is what----three jobs? We'll close the borders and eliminate our own slave labor force (we won't really close the borders) and then the cost of many things still made or produced in this country will go even higher. If someone had a magic wand and could create a living wage for all workers across the globe there would not be enough natural resources available for all the people on the globe to live the kind of life many of us now live. That is the clear reality. Overpopulation is real. People can take all of the human contrived religious dogmas which justify total opposition to responsible reproductive behavior, and pray to a God who looks like them, thinks at their level, and waits for their instructions via prayer to bless their lives and their country and their lifestyle---but where in the long history of humans has there ever been such a God so biased, so controlled, and so protective of selected human groups? We are part of an evolutionary process in which fish have the ability to swim, birds have the ability to fly, and humans have the ability to think. When thinking is used to create faith based justifications for unethical, selfish, and greedy human behaviors this is where the evil lurks. The God created evolutionary process has give humans the ability to understand ethics on a level other species cannot. It is not complicated: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "fair is fair". That is it. The rest is mumbo jumbo.
In the last analysis those of us in our terminational years need to accept this newest nuance of the aging years. What one cannot control in these years are health problems, even with the best of health habits---loss of friends, family, spouses---any of the situations in the above paragraph, or the point in time our health begins to fail. Now is the only time we own and we need to fill the days with thankfulness for a good life, for the many good fortunes, and think often of those people who contributed to our own success and personage. People build people and none of us are an exception. Now is the time to become more independent, not depend more and more on others to bring contentment. Others our own age will disappear with increasingly regularity, and those in their productive years have a busy life to live and that is as it should be. The terminational years have gotten longer and longer with more and more medical means to prolong our lives. To be a burden on friends or family for decades is simply unreasonable. They will provide whatever support they feel they can or have the time to, and that is the way it ought to be. For me, I seek out and pursue what interests me at my age---and these interests will be unique to me, to my own nature----and to the extent I follow these interests on my own, my level of contentment will be highest. Forget chasing after others for attention and satisfactions, to the extent one can stop doing that, there will be those who will be kind and friendly, and interactive---in large part because they don't fear being trapped. If one is healthy there is no need to be a pest to others, to manipulate them to be a part of your interests, or force them to reluctantly visit, call, drag them here or there, impinge on their own activities, or get in their way period. If one doesn't have interests one can pursue on his/her own, then create them, go do or see things you know nothing about. There is no other time in life except the healthy terminational years when one can do this. The healthy terminational years should be ones in which you really are 'free at last'. If you die tomorrow it is no tragedy. When those in their productive or formative years die, that is tragedy.
Every one, regardless of what some religious groups claim, has the right to control their own dying process. Those who believe God insists they suffer on when they have had enough of life should do just that and let others control their own dying process as these religious faith based fanatics so demand to do via their own beliefs. If dying is not a personal matter I can't imagine what is. If religious beliefs should be respected at any time, the dying process is certainly such a time. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to dictate via laws how anyone else should handle their own dying process. When a person can feel confident they control their own dying process, whatever their beliefs may be, then the fear of death is greatly reduced.
The greatest 'friend' for me, as it has been for many others before me, has been Mother Nature. Mother Nature was there in my youth, my productive years, now my terminational years, and no 'friend' experience brings more contentment and mellowness than to be alone in nature living in a miniscule "period of Time between two eternities". We may not be very significant in the total evolutionary process, but we have been blessed to be a part of an amazing created process that has been able, even through dimly understood perceptions, to give real meaning to our existence. To really appreciate life, to feel any connectedness to God's evolutionary process, one needs connect with Mother Nature, to see past the more trivial much-ado-about-nothing sophistry of human affairs. For the most part the sophistry is all theatre, mostly maneuvering for better position to chase elusive and sham states of contentment. I mostly disappear for hours every day, on my own, observing and absorbing the many facets of this current evolutionary environment and the diversity of life and people scrambling hither and thither like ants, each having a unique and mysterious tale to tell in a world of possibilities so vast and beyond comprehension. Yet there it all is, a large screen three dimensional real reality show. I sometimes wonder, a million years from now, what the world will look like, will humans be replaced or added to by a whole new species? Maybe humans will become extinct and replaced. Or maybe they will just evolve into creatures with capacities so advanced compared to our current human capacities. What will religion eventually evolve to become? But it is no use, I cannot know. We hardly know what we are part of now or how best to fit in how. It is just feels good to be a part of this created process for the present, to do the best one can with the limited talents inherited or developed by association with those who helped build our own nature, and be an observer, finally apart from the pushing and shoving, the competition, the chasing of monetary gains, or power, or titles, or social standing, and oh just all of the evaporative inane nonsense part of earlier years. It all had a meaningful place then but leads to discontentment in the terminational years.
Earlier in life a good case can be made for not accepting the way things are. Change may or may not be possible but the efforts to do so sustain us and bring varying degrees of satisfaction for short or longer periods of time. But the reality is that a good number of people do not have the cards dealt to them to win many battles. These are the pictures from life's other side, those living lives, or dying, of quiet desperation. Most of these nothingburgers go quietly, little noticed, into oblivion and no truly sensitive person can be unaffected by their fate. I suspect most of us learn not to see it, not to feel it---to gate ourselves off, one way or another, from these realities and pretend all is well is this best of all possible worlds. I can understand this, but really resent those who manufacture this term called 'family values' as justification for centering their whole life around their own myopic immediate family needs, or their own religious group, their own ethnic group, their own economic group, etc. You can't turn the inability to practice tolerance and 'fair is fair' into a virtue through the manipulation of smart-ass phrases.
But the terminational years start a whole new ball game. The future then belongs to the next generation. I think old people should only have half a vote, especially given their numbers in our country. The young should not be deprived of a chance to control their own destiny by a massive mob of geriatric terminationists who think by resisting change they can restore the 'good ole days'. The noblest contribution those in their terminational years can make to the next generation is to let go, get the hell out of the way. Whether Obama is on target with his mission of change is immaterial, he'll only lose if the old people can amass enough votes to stop it. For me, whoever the younger generation want, I think they should get. Period. To reach contentment in the terminational years one needs to let go---let go of a lot of things----I mean really let go---and develop the ability to accept, not fight matters that would properly be contested in younger years. Much of what once was central to the life of those in their terminational years is already gone---gone with the wind---and will never come back. It is not that the learning curve has stopped, but now the object is to learn to 'accept the things one cannot change' and these things increase in number the closer one gets to the finish line. Little is less pathetic then those elderly who can't let go, place endless demands on others to placate their needs, blame others for their own inability to sustain a friendship, and essentially just resist seeking out a meaningful life of their own while demanding others provide such a meaningful life for them. Observing life, exploring your own interpretations of everything going on around you, and in the rest of the world, is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and as the pieces fall in place (you may have to bend a few) it puts the mind at ease, it brings contentment, it puts things in perspective, it generates an appreciation of life and the God created evolutionary process---including your own life and the melancholic sadness of those less fortunate---and it is healthy and necessary to incorporate this sadness into your own reality----one cannot reach any real contentment using smoke and mirrors or self denial of the inequalities pervasive in our own society. If you can't be honest at the end of life, about a whole host of matters, then there is no way to go gently down the stream and fade into oblivion. The end should be a very personal celebration of the blessings, good fortune, and opportunity for having existed in an evolutionary process that could very well, except for the chance combination of a particular sperm and egg, have never been. Yes, you could well have never been, or been in such way as to be one of those pictures from life's other side. Having lived long enough to see the whole picture one should never, ever, support policies which contribute to the misery of those living lives of quiet desperation. If, in the terminational years of life, one still cannot shake loose from myopic self serving interests of self or your own family, religion, ethnic group, or country, then becoming a bitter curmudgeon is one's fate. At the same time one does not have to go through a second baby period, let other's manipulate you for their own purposes, stifle your own interests, opinions, or lifestyle. We all know those elderly, mostly kept unseen and out of the way, treated like puppets and imbeciles, trained to speak only when spoken to, and ridiculed for any attempted opinions about anything. Just above them are those terminationists whose primary function becomes to serve as props and cheerleaders for other friends or family. To the extent this is the only way they can feel any meaning to their life so be it, but it seems logically pathetic. The terminational years provide an opportunity to assemble all the loose pieces to one's own life, to find missing pieces, to expand the boundaries of your own understanding of matters before limited by lack of time to understand. TIME is what you finally now have, if only for an undetermined time, and there are so many ways to spend YOUR OWN time and pursue YOUR OWN INTERESTS, and meet YOUR OWN NEEDS and better understand the NEEDS OF THE LESS FORTUNATE, and let your OWN MIND wander where it may. It is, after all, the mind which brings contentment, satisfaction, appreciation, understanding, and you can finally arrange your own thoughts to fit your own persona without any obligation to march to the tune of others. To the extent some others are dancing to the same tune,FINE. To the extent some others are not dancing to the same tune, FINE. To the extent others feel you march with or think like them OR ELSE, extend to them the same courtesy you would like for yourself and let them dance to their own tune. Let them be. One of the silliest and most pathetic scenes is old people fussing at each other, playing blame games, teaching each other lessons, trying to cut each other down to size, conjuring up resentments, and all for what? Times change and friends often go different directions and this includes family members, and that is life, and what can never be erased are the valuable contributions, each made to the other, at a different period in time. These past contributions, from so many, in earlier times, made all of us what we became and are. To put them down, because times change and often personas become stale or irrelevant to the time changes, is to put yourself down. These people contributed to what you are and you can't disown or disrespect or turn against part of your own being---that is illogical. People build people and those who built us are forever treasured, if not forever engaged in our lives. Just one more thing to be thankful for in the terminational years.
When you have learned enough to really live you are old enough to die. That of course is true, but deceptive. If one means really live as one lived in the productive years, the statement stands as it reads. There are of course, things we would do different if we could relive the productive years. But when you are old enough to die you are in your terminational years and it is a whole new phase of life. You can't compare apples and oranges. You can like an apple and you can like an orange. I genuinely like each day getting up and deciding what I feel like doing that day, what I feel like thinking about that day, eating exactly what I feel like that day, etc. There are always enough friendly people around, both young and old, to provide any needed socialization---which in my case is probably reasonably minimal. I like people, all kinds of people, and diversity is intriguing to me not an irritant to me. True, most people I like at a certain distance, not right in my face too much, which means nothing except a description of me. I think most people, if healthy in their terminational years, can achieve contentment if they let themselves, at last, be themselves and pursue interests which do not depend on bothering others to cater to these same interests. So many terminationists feel they can't do this or that, or go here or there, unless others can be manipulated to participate. This is a big mistake. Not only do you then become a bothersome knat-like pest, but you will then be obligated to return the favor and do things with them you don't want to do. There will be enough times when others and yourself want to do the same thing, and that will not only suffice, but generate truly pleasant outings. Of course, in the long run we are all dead. Correction: for terminationists it will be the short run. Every race has a finish line. In this case most would opt to turn and run the other direction. But alas, the finish line comes to us and we die. So be it---let inevitability play itself out, go peaceably into an unknown unknoweable night.
