The Shifting Sands of Time
Recently I visited the Univ. of Wisconsin Madison campus where I did graduate work. Visits to scenes of the past are always surreal to me. I recognize faded and altered scenes but the essence of the times are gone with the wind. The memories have dimmed, the actors are not on the stage, the times are different, and you are left with eerie feelings of times distant past. Then I wonder, as I always wonder, what does all of this mean? It seems only the present ever has vivid meaning, then too often, too much immediateness to mean anything. I would guess 90% of what we fuss, fret, and fume about is of little importance to anyone or anything except to our own peculiar mental state at the time. "Don't worry about it" is one of the most inane bits of advice. How do you not worry about something? You have cancer? Don't worry about it. You just lost your job? Don't worry about it. And so it goes, most of what happens in our lives we are not to worry about. Of course, those who worry the least probably go the least furtherest in life. They are bereft of titles, power, money, and control---maybe all some have is contentment. Pitiful.
"Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday". Maybe that sort of sums it up. Still, I find reflection on the past interesting. Each phase of our life is different and each day of each phase is different. Nothing is ever static. Nothing. It makes us dizzy, and sometimes, enveloped in frustration, disappointment, or anger, we want to yell, "Stop the world, I want to get off"---unless of course we are in danger of doing this by dying, then it is a horse of a different color. What do we really feel about our formative years, our productive years, our terminational years? Does any of it have any real meaning?I have a hard time deciding what I feel about my formative years. Lot of confusion, uncertainty, bewilderment, emotional extremes, rashness, impulsiveness, amazement, crushing disappointments, exhilarations, sudden understandings,social awkwardness, exciting adventures, exciting misadventures, laughter, frustration, pent up energy, self centeredness, feelings of confinement, powerlessness, restriction, and endless wonderment. Change during this period happens at an accelerated rate. We are inundated with rapidly changing thoughts about friends, love/sex, career, music, sports, social status, academic achievement, interests, etc. This is the age when we knew everything and nothing all at once. Our parents, in varying degrees, became retards and irrelevant to many aspects of our lives. We imagined being 'free at last'. It was, in short, the best and worst of all possible worlds. Freedom often meant nothing left to lose.
Then came the years of productivity. Is the cost of productivity worth the cost? I still don't know. I no longer can even define success. I know I would not like to change places with too many people. Only I am me. To be somebody else would be essentially the death of yourself. We are all selfish, and camouflage it in a zillion different ways, all tailored to project the image we want to project. Maybe that is why I like Terrell Owens---he is upfront about selfishness. It is ok to be selfish as long as you are fair. If you are not selfish you can't usually go too far. In our productive years there is a lot of manipulation, pushing, dodging bullets, scheming, politics, outsmarting, negotiating. A member of my family insisted the "way to get ahead in life is to make sure, in every interaction with another person, that the other person always get the short end of the stick". Aside from the ethics involved in this philosophy, it creates in the effector a disrespect for others, and the more success you have with such a philosophy the more distance others will maintain from you---and you perish from isolation.
I suspect a lot of just how much anyone learns to appreciate diversity is impacted by their career and circle of friends.. You learn during your productive years, or should learn, that 'there but for the grace of God goes I'. For me, this got modified to 'but for the God created laws of evolution goes I'. What are the productive years, really, but taking your inherited cards, mixing them with your inherited environment, the circumstances of your given time in evolutionary history, and attempting to find a niche in life which will generate for you the most contentment. Unfortunately, contentment is an effervescent state. Like everything else in the evolutionary process the core element is CHANGE. If you get to the top of one hill, there will be another one. For every objective achieved you end up disappointed: "This is it?". Life, it seems, is always incomplete---for the most part---with too few precious moments of satisfied contentment. There are always so many swirling events impacting on our own world that each of us, in varying degrees, circle the wagons against real and imagined threats. Part of me views the productive years as a wild circus---chaotic, relentless, unpredictable---some sort of evolutionary carnival in which all of us get tossed up in the air over and over again to see who can land on their feet most of the time. Much like seeing a cup as half empty or half full, I tended to see more of injustices to others than the good fortune of others. I am sure a lot of people are that way, for whatever reasons, but teaching is unique in that you have the protection (tenure) to act on behalf of injustices without fear of losing your job. With this protection I always felt obligated to side with those least prepared to survive an injustice. You can win many a battle for those needlessly oppressed by the heavy hand of injustice so long as the battle generates no personal benefit for yourself (like a title, or more money, or more power, etc). At some point I decided in life that rules---even the best of rules established for the best of purposes, were not going to be used to destroy those for whom the rule serves no purpose. People come before rules. Aside from the Golden Rule there are few other rules which should be etched in stone. Justice and fairness should always prevail. To the extent rules promote justice and fairness they have an extremely important place in the total scheme of things. Most people seem to fear the price to be paid personally for putting justice and fairness before rules, tired ass culture, inherited religious beliefs, pointless tradition, crass majority rule, etc. If you are a teacher and tenured, the price---to me---seemed minimal. Authorities can block a promotion, block a title, keep you off certain committees, etc. But when you get to the point in your life where your basket is full enough, then enough is enough, and you just stand for principles which impact on those around you who are in need. One of the more humorous aspects of this kind of situation as a Professor is the inaneness of the whole process. Administrators can reward those faculty who cause them the least 'trouble' with exceptional teaching bonuses every year. Often the worst teachers got the most such awards. I only got non monetary student elected Teacher of the Year awards. But then, periodically, a study would be done to analyze salaries, and there would be adjustments made to ensure Professors at each level of title and years of service were getting comparable salaries. So my salary would then get adjusted. Smile.
Teaching is a weird profession in that you engineer your own promotion. You apply for a promotion, submit an inflated resume, a faculty committee votes, then the Chairperson, then the Dean, then the Provost, then the President. A guy like me would never get past the Dean. I remember the Provost telling me in his office one day that "sooner or later your name is going to come across my desk for promotion of some sort". Really? It never did since I never applied for promotion. Actually, there was only one promotion left because the Chairperson of my Departmet, my second year on board, called me aside and said she was putting me up for promotion (this was before the committee process) in a year when you were only eligible for promotion IF it were an up or out situation (for economic reasons). I told her this seemed exceptionally risky. She told me: "It is more risky to wait. You are invaluable to the students around here but you cause waves which upset certain people. It is best to get you promoted and tenured right now before you get too controversial." If one stands for justice and fairness against those authorities, who feel otherwise, for varying reasons, in particular cases, there will always be a selected few in positions of authority who will protect you the best they can. These people are essential. If you want to help those most in need then you make the effort to get in a position where you can do so from a position of being self protected. What you cannot do is use others as a shield to protect yourself. For then, if authorities can't get you they will get those who protected you. If this happens once you never forget it. Finally, whatever or whomever it is you are protecting, it has to be valid. You have to be able to judge accurately the character of those for whom you go to battle. Err here more than rarely and the past will be used to block your next effort on behalf of someone new. Some sort of x strikes and you are out.
Teachers and students are like ships passing in the night---brief, if often meaningful encounters---encounters which can be vital but still effervescent. Regardless of any impact, one on the other, these ships pass and recede into the night, never to meet again. Teaching, performed right, is an exhausting, unrelenting exercise. If you do more than lecture, but listen and defend/help those lost and directionless, your days get long from those waiting to see you, endless challenges with new twists are ever present, and if you are to withstand it, you have to teach students to help each other and themselves---to do unpleasant grunt work, and to amass students in sufficient numbers sometimes to effectuate a good result. This process is necessary for students to acquire sufficient motivation, to grow more confident, to see good in others, to understand the relationship between planning, courage, patience, perseverance, and boldness. Each student has a story, a unique story, and one they want to tell. If a student comes from a poor neighborhood or dysfunctional family they have, in many cases, no one they can talk to about matters personal. In many cases they are there before you because no one else will listen. Sadly, the help you may be able to give may get them through a current crisis BUT, in most cases, an indifferent society wins the battle down the road and they give up. Evolution may be an amazing and wonderful process but it is also a cruel process. Strangely, and maybe this is a copout on my part, those with sufficient potential who are kept from achieving it and are forced to settle for less seem to be no more frustrated than those at the top whose life is often stressful and unfulfilling.
At some point, which will vary from one person to another, you enter your terminational years. If one has sufficient economic independence and good health these can be the best years. The foolish try to pretend they are still important, still in charge, still relevant. The smart accept the end of their productive years and use the time remaining to better understand themselves, use their minds to put the many pieces of life together---pieces which they have picked up along the way in their productive years. If you can't enjoy the simple things in life during your terminational years you will be a bitter curmudgeon---mumbling and angry most of the time. If you can't be independent in your terminational years you will, in most cases, be an unhappy camper. The more ways you can find to amuse yourself the more content you will be. The more content you are the more others who are younger around you will find time for sufficient pleasantries with you----because you are no threat to their own time.
Certain aspects of the terminational years require genuine acceptance. Your parents are likely to be gone. This is often an irreplaceable loss. Many of your long time or newer friends will either die or the friendship whither away for any number of legitimate reasons. What is, IS. In both cases there is no one to blame, time changes everything. No one escapes Father Time. With good health you can enjoy every day doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, for as long as you want to do it. This is the first time in your life when this is true. The trouble arises when a person in their termination years insists he/she must drag someone else into everything they want to do. This spells disaster for two reasons: people resent being forced to accommodate your needs on a seemingly incessant basis, and if you depend on others for participation in your activities, as they die off you will be left more and more alone never having learned to amuse yourself. That spells misery BIG TIME. I remember my Grandmother woefully telling me how she seldom saw her grown children enough. To force some sort of togetherness she would take them out to dinner individually and pay for the meal. I remember once asking at a restaurant why Grandma always paid for the meal. There was this agonizing silence until Grandma dutifully told me: "I enjoy taking all of you out to dinner, I insist on it." My parents used to do the same thing---pay for meals eaten out for their grown children. Well, not me. The most I would accept was a 50/50 taking turns paying for meals eaten out. I mean really, your parents paid for all your meals during your formative years; it doesn't make sense, in most cases, for them to pay for their kids meals during their kids productive years. The relationship between those in their terminational years and their grown kids seems to be either excellent or a disaster, with it evenly split. The best rule of thumb in one's terminational years, from my perspective, is to use your independence to pursue your interests on your own. If you are kind to others they will come to you, in one way or another, often enough to satisfy your social needs. A lot of people keep their distance from the elderly for fear of being trapped into endless obligations.
When I was younger I used to get on older people for not traveling more, going places, doing more social things, just use the time available to live an exciting life. Now that I am older I realize I am not looking for challenges, adventure, a busy social calendar, excitement----what you seek is peace and quiet, good health, time to think about life, no financial worries, and to find a daily routine which meets your own peculiar needs. Once you have done that, it is hard to find any motivation to do the kind of adventurous things you would do at an earlier age. I call this going gently down the stream. Most all the things which motivated you in your productive years become irrelevant---entertaining, winning battles, achieving titles, outsmarting others, amassing more wealth, possessing every new gadget on the market, etc. Nah, it just doesn't have the same importance anymore. I love being in the grandstands rather than on the playing field at this age. The calm and peace of Mother Nature is a tonic to my soul. Wandering around hither and thither, on foot, observing nature, people, buildings----it all brings to me some sort of settled satisfaction---like maybe in some sort of vague way I am closest to the evolutionary process, a part of it, in tune with the process, not fighting it---and like I mentioned before you get contentment from going gently down the stream instead of fussing and fighting to go back upstream to times past. I have escaped many bullets of various kinds in life---that in itself constitutes every reason to be thankful. My Waterloo will come soon enough, as it has come to all before me.
Each morning and late at night I like to ponder all sorts of aspects about life, reminisce about the past, and use all that I have learned to appreciate my good fortune and decide what interests me for the next day, or at most the next week. Most everyday I venture out into nature and spend hours ever in wonderment about the beauty and complexity of the evolutionary process. At the other extreme I spend a lot of time in the city, observing people, buildings, visiting museums, and it is seldom that I don't find some sort of unique restaurant or other attractions to satisfy my innate curiosity about most everything. The goal each day is to learn more about myself, others, and this whole thing called life. I don't depend a lot on others to amuse me, and why should they have to? I keep my own musings off on this unknown blog so others don't feel imposed upon. By the time you get to your terminational years there is nothing to sell, no need to make things go your way, no need either to be used by others, or cater to their whims, or engage in endless chit chat with people you will never or seldom see again. Pets are good during your terminational years, pleasant companions with seldom a discouraging effect on your mood. Pets don't blow hot and cold, or try to tell you what to do, when---except at feeding time. In your terminational years you try to assess what aspects of life bring you contentment and which aspects of your life bring you aggravation. You don't battle to please others, and you then be fair by not imposing on them---let others be, they don't exist to amuse you, to have you tell them what to do when, how, or lay guilt trips to get them to do things with you that you want to do. I just do it and don't bother others.
When a person retires I think most people, in one way or another, question just what all they have been through in their productive years was about. It is like, "You mean, this is it?" For some it is like "life is a bitch and then you die". The terminational years are really the opportunity to evaluate and come to personal terms with all that you have been through, to make sense of the chaos called our productive years. Some use blind religious faith as a crutch and excuse not to use their innate reasoning for understanding. Their mind set is more one of "I will suffer through whatever God lays upon me. It is all up to God." I have never understood why so many people see God as some kind of tormentor, seeking to tempt humans into sin and then punishing them. Such a mind set creates a vast army of heathens, all of whom become enemies to hate and persecute and, if necessary, to kill in large numbers to the sound of trumpets, cheering, and flag waving. Nothing I have ever discarded has brought me more contentment than a blind allegiance to inherited religious beliefs. You feel ever after like you have been going through life with braces on your brain, a chip on your shoulder, and an attitude of intolerance to diversity. Since rejecting this blind faith sort of attitude I have learned that we have, within out own self, the capacity for a huge inherent multifaceted intelligence that enables us to come to peace with the God created evolutionary process. We are not puppets on a string but part of a God created process which is governed by the laws of evolution. People often ask why I spend so much time alone in nature. Thoreau gave a good answer when he said: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover I had not lived."
All matters of living pertaining to the Terminational years are personal. There is no one way, despite all of the above, to achieve contentedness in your terminational years. Like with everything else in life, the Terminational years demand change. If you cannot change, you cannot be contented in your terminational years. Change drives the upward evolutionary process. Even the evolution of your own mind, over times necessitates change. Those with braces on their brains, with their arms wrapped tightly around tradition or faith based religious beliefs, and fearful of diversity, will age poorly, mired in anger, hostility, and perverse notions of life. It is only at the end, as the charade collapses that such people sadly ask "God, why has Thou forsaken me?" God doesn't forsake anyone. God created a process which has been responsible for an amazing history. What kind of history am I talking about? It is a history which, at this point in time, of which we are all a part. "God bless America" or "God bless" anything is a misguided fool's notion. After creating the evolutionary process God is not blessing anything. The system---our world, and our own being is the blessing from God's process. It is not "I" centered, it is not about any of us as individuals, it is about a process to evolve life into new forms which function well in a changed environment. As humans can now appreciate, in limited ways, with this evolutionary process, we can, with effort, find ways to be content within the process, to find fulfillment in efforts to better understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. The answers, my friend, "are blowin' in the wind". It is up to us to take time to "smell the flowers".
