New Year' reflective insights from a well-lived aged chap.
Note: ( Above Musing follows this note)
Author Notes about this Blog
This blog was set up originally simply as a file deposit for musings which I sent out to friends. Somehow a lot of people managed to find the URL, and that is ok. Since the blogs were not originally meant for general distribution most have not been carefully edited. I may go back now and do the proper editing. I have recently published a book titled: The Meaning of Life. Anyone interested can find it listed in Amazon.com under the author name Reid S. James. There is a description of the content along with the listing. It was published in late October 2013. Any income from the book will be donated to various 501 category charities. Given the nature of the book, to do otherwise would be hypocritical. Given the original intent of this URL I have never provided an opportunity for any response to these musings. I think I will leave it that way as I don't have the time for a lot of responding to comments by others. These musings are written as food for thought, and do not purport to be anything other than what the blog implies: personal musings. Were I to personally know many of you who visit this URL I sense we would have a lot of engaging conversations. There are too many now for that to be practical.
New Year Reflective Insights From A Well-Lived Aged Chap
In earlier years New Year's day would be a day for generating insights about where I was at with my life, where I wanted to be, and how to get there. At 73 the reflective insights are quite different. However far I have gotten, or how much achieved in life, those efforts are over. Certainly any achievements are hardly anything of historic note, but I have survived quite well, and let that be the sum of it. As long as good health prevails I can sit and think about just how fortunate I have been, and all those who helped me along the way. Sometimes I just sits.
I am a big advocate of enough is enough, and for me that enough has been plenty enough. It is very satisfying not to feel any further need to seek more of anything modernity has to offer. I don't have to chase the dollar, and that is a good feeling. I could care less about adding any titles, power, social stature, exciting adventures, or any extensive social circuit. I simply cannot relate to any of this as something important to my dwindling future. If we can secure for ourselves a little healthy rest during our terminational years---well, let that also be the sum of it.
Thus, on New Years day, these days, I can focus more on the big picture of life and not fail to see the forest for the sake of the trees. Feeling no threat to my own welfare in the trek of life, I ponder more the difficult circumstances so many others, younger in life, who struggle for a meager existence. I rarely, or ever cry, but I see a lot of sadness in the lives of so many, and thus, often now, feel like crying when I read or see some real tragedies. And what makes me happiest is to see others really happy over some break in life. It doesn't much matter what group is happy, it just makes me happy these days to see almost any group happy. There should be more happiness and less sorrow, and while humans, collectively, could make there be so much more happiness for so many more people, we still don't---and I guess further advancement for that kind of justice is for the future. If it is the simple things in life that fuel the most happiness, then that sums up life for me in my terminational years.
For every dollar I spend on myself past the simple basics of modern living, I try to spend a dollar on the less fortunate. I do this as one insight I perceived in this process called life, is that others count as much as myself. That is an insight hard to actually accept. But the reward in terms of contentment is huge. This can be done in two ways----direct assistance to those in need, and grants of money to those organizations which work to make the playing fields of life more level for everyone. No one is going to find me trying to justify why any group of people should not have the same rights or circumstances that I have or had when I was younger. Every time someone starts squawking that they are not going to let their taxes be spent to help educate the children of the poor, I feel a real urge to make them relive their life as part of one of these poorest of families. If freedom from Government meddling is a good thing, then strange it is that is not a good thing for everyone. It was the same argument used to justify slavery. Of course is slavery is not a good thing for everyone so just why is it a good thing for some and not others? The answer back then would inevitably be that slavery is just the way God made things. What a logically and brilliant way to defend wrong. God, not us, made wrong the right.
I thought when I set up my own FANAFI (Find a Need and Fill It) Fund that it would be a difficult sacrifice to adhere to that notion of a dollar for me, a dollar for the less fortunate. Yet, precisely because of valuable insights from earlier years in my life, this dollar for me, dollar for others less fortunate, was a breeze---and a breeze to the extent I no longer have to keep close tabs, as I find myself now giving far more monetary grants from this Fund than I remotely spend on myself above my basic needs. I don't have a single expensive hobby. I don't feel any great need to travel the world and gawk at people and things. I don't feel any need to live in ornate glittering upperclass palaces of any sort and yet, inside my own condo, things are plenty palatial enough for me. Others are very kind to me with precious few exceptions.
We do best, when successfully reaching the terminational years, to simply drop out of the 'rat' race. Whatever might be the need for a rat race in our productive years, we certainly don't need any such thing to be a part of our terminational years. I thought, at first, that it would be a good idea to go out and personally help some of the less fortunate. That was a complete bust. Short of adopting them and paying to fix their teeth, help with rent, fight any number of battles for them, etc. just what is there most of us can do to help them personally? Furthermore, it is depressing, really depressing, to actually become part of their struggles. So, I changed directions and now I give grants to those organizations that help to do things like Save the giant Redwood Trees, or to organize lawyers to fight in court to protect our natural resources or organizations that help fight legal battles for all individuals to get the same rights others already have, or to help refugees across the world get some medical help, or food, or water, or housing etc.
Whenever we focus on helping the less fortunate our politics change a lot. The notion some people have about liberty and freedom from government is really little more than a selfish maneuver to be sure the less fortunate are left to stew in their own unfortunate situation and kept in their place---and their place being the source for the ever increasing accumulation of society's wealth by those who already have more than enough. For all the limitations of governments, which are inefficient by nature--all types---they are about the only way we can collectively help level the playing fields for everyone. Just in my life-time huge progress has been made on a wide array of issues----women have more rights, blacks don't have to sit in the back of the bus, the handicapped have more accommodations made for them, the right to vote has been protected for more and more people, social security and medicare has been instituted, gays are acquiring rights others have long since had, children have more work protections and the list goes on and on. We still, however, have a long list of injustices to correct. We peg social security to the cost of living but leave the minimum wage to fall further and further behind the cost of living. I guess the old are valuable and the young expendable. We still leave endless tax breaks, loop holes, exemptions, shelters, and so on to ensure those with substantial wealth are greased a way for the acquisition of even more wealth. The list of all these greased ways established for the already wealthy is a musing unto itself.
This trend of giving other groups rights or assistance they never had would make the future look bright except for one caveat: The human species is not exempt from the same consequences as every other species from over population. In the absence of any serious, and global, enforcement of responsible reproduction, every aspect of quality human existence is subject to imploding. It is already underway, and if the world population is really allowed to double again, as it has in my lifetime, then just about everything in life we value will implode, and we will have a global 'Haitian Empire', with every single tragic situation currently existing in Haiti a global reality everywhere.
New Years Day is no longer about me and my future. It is certainly not a sad or morose state of mind. What, really, do I have, considering the larger picture, to complain about? Wouldn't it be a bit insane to think that I, of all the individual organisms which have existed during millions and billions of years of life on this planet, am somehow entitled to everlasting Heaven---and even more insane to suggest I earned it? I think that is one illusion to discard. It really comes down to whether enough is ever enough. By chance a particular sperm combined with a particular egg and I was born into a particular place at a particular time to particular parents with particular genes. If I didn't, by chance, get the best genes or the best environment I certainly did quite well. Since I was given all this at birth I certainly did not earn any of it. Except for Time, the Evolutionary Process, and the Creator of this process, everything else has a beginning and an end. There is nothing unfair here. We go through changes in every aspect of our lives over our lifetime. Would life be better if there were no changes? Of course not. That is a good portion of the brilliance of this whole life experience.
In the last analysis there is too much tragedy in human life: We, unlike other species, have strong feelings coupled with advanced reasoning. This also means we comprehend the inevitability of death, that we understand the consequences of many things that happen to us, and physical/emotional suffering is greater because of our elevated ability to understand consequences. The goal of human society is always to generate the greatest contentment for the greatest number of people. We collectively fail at this because of individual greed. Here is one example of just how badly we collectively fail. It costs $38.75 for a total vaccine package to ensure a young child does not die from numerous preventable diseases. 22 million children each year do not get the vaccines they need. There are 4 billion adults in the world. Let's assume at least half have some degree of wealth. I don't have a calculator which can handle dividing $38.75 by 2 billion, but the truth is clear enough. The cost to pay for these vaccines, if borne by half the adult population in the world would be an infinitesimal fraction of one penny. How pitiful is this? What do we do instead? Hell, we prefer to pray and instruct God to help these kids. And so it goes, right down the line. If we calculated the cost to give every child a good education, good health care, good food, sufficient housing, and a safe environment---the cost per adult in this world would not be an infinitesimal fraction of a penny but it would be an eminently reasonable amount per person. Of course to be most fair the figure would be derived on a progressive scale depending on the actual wealth of every adult. But that is not the real world at all. In reality the wealthy give a smaller percentage of their wealth to the less fortunate than do the non wealthy. And the vast number of parents, on death, actually give all or most all of their acquired wealth to their offspring regardless of whether their offspring are well enough off regarding the basics needed in life.
Nothing leaves me more aghast than the ethical priorities of most people. And most of these most people are good persons with a huge ethical lapse in their priorities. It is a massive army of people for whom enough is never enough for them or their offspring. To look into the eyes of some refugee child (or adult) dying from hunger or a curable disease, or a cherished pet dying on a veterinarian table is for me, the ultimate sadness in life. To see life recede from the eyes or the inner hopelessness of an expiring life is the ultimate reality check about life. Every time we return from putting a pet down we are devastated by the realization that it is really over. Every time we come from a funeral of a loved one we are devastated by the realization that it is really over. We can try to pretend otherwise but, short of a faith based illusion, we know it is over. We will have dealt with this so many times in our lives that when we think about our own life in our terminational years, we know---we really do know, that the game will be over for us too. Only if we have learned to appreciate the forest in spite of the trees can we keep it all in perspective. If the only way we can enjoy life is to be individually the center of attention, protected by God from His own laws that run evolution---if this is what we need to enjoy life---well, the enjoyment will never come. Illusions and addictions never lead to contentment. Never.
Ethics comes easy for us if we have developed our ethical human trait properly. I could, for example, take a trip to some distant place for let's say $8000 or I could pay to get 260 destitute children all the vaccines they need. The trip will be, in a short time, mostly forgotten, but the good feelings for doing the right thing for children will generate an inner contentment that lasts far longer. Losing the addictions for the self serving aspects of modernity in any historical age is the first step on the road to achieving contentment. To properly understand where we fit in the total scheme of God's created evolutionary process is a prerequisite for achieving contentment. Doing the best we can for ourselves, our family, our culture, our country, and so on is all great and proper as long as this list of priorities is topped by always doing the best we can also for the less fortunate.
At any rate, New Year's Day is a much different kind of insightful pondering these days compared to the days in my productive years. The race itself was a challenge and a great experience, but when the race has been run and the finish line crossed, there is much to be said for the feelings associated with having run a race well and reached the finish line. Nothing but death is ever going to take away from us all the insights we learned in life, or the gratitude for all those who helped us along the way, or the valuable memories from friendships along the way, or the satisfactions gained from helping others along the way. In fact, the satisfactions from duties done, are the cornerstone of contentment. Contentment comes from within, no one can give it to us.
When older and still healthy, the New Year is seen through different lenses. We don't need exciting adventures. We don't need mountains to climb. We don't need more money and things piled higher and higher. We don't need titles, fame, responsibility, or to be the center of social circles. If we can't shed all these remnants of the rat race, the terminational years are going to be a bumpy ride. Rather we need to tie some loose ends about our lives, appreciate any good luck, and all those who made some contentment in our lives possible. We need time to catch our breath from the race of life we just ran, we need time to reflect and put so many pieces of the puzzle together to finish our final chapter of life. We need to assess our gains and work out plans to distribute these gains to those most in need. The terminational years need not be years of uselessness, but rather an excellent time to BE USEFUL to the less fortunate. At the end of next year I don't want to be in the position of having only some materialistic silly-ass 'better things' lying around. Rather than some fancy and expensive car to soothe our minds we need be able to envision all the joys we were able to bring to those with little joy in their lives through our charitable activities. It is only then that we can tilt back in our recliners, and feel good about our lives. If so many others, especially the younger, are too busy with their lives to spend much time amusing us----that is a good thing, a natural thing, an expected thing---and this gives us an opportunity for the first time in our lives to amuse ourselves at our own pace, at a time of our own choosing, by doing exactly the kind of things we want to do, or see, or eat, or watch, or read, or simply ponder. Life is an experience worthy of a contemplative well-earned conclusion. We need go gently down the stream feeling secure in having done our duty to have given to the least fortunate every bit as much, tit for tat, that we gave to ourselves. It is our mind set which is the reward for ethical living. And that inner reward is there for all those humans who dare to confront the nature of themselves, and the world in which they live. Every era of the evolutionary process generates the next era of progress, and we need remember, when feeling like time seems to fly, that no---Time stays, We Go.
