Age and Status

Age and Status

The Terminational years come with many advantages—if health is ok.  It is, for many, including myself, an opportunity to stop and ‘’smell the roses’. The formative years can be exciting but mostly frustrating as we fumble around trying to figure so many things out, including our own limitations. The productive years are stressful, but youth gives us the endurance, focus, ingenuity, competitiveness, and manipulative skills to further our search for material wealth, power, recognition, and control.  We are, to varying degrees, in charge. Then comes retirement, sooner or later, and a whole new experience—the terminational years begin, and the ‘rat race’ is over. 

Those who try to bring into their terminational years the acquired addiction to material wealth, power, recognition, and control over others will find their terminational years endless frustration and feelings of loss. None of these things lead to contentment. Enough often becomes never enough. The nature of addiction is such that contentment will always be elusive. Addictions and compulsive behaviors are dead end streets.

To stay healthy in our terminational years requires a reduction of the acquired stress from our productive years. To get in the middle of just about anything generates stress. Suddenly, in our terminational years, we don’t need the stress at all, and only fools fail to back off. The little cycle of productive life we have just completed, a source of satisfaction in itself, is not even a blip in evolutionary history. Accepting ourselves as having so little relevance to the vaster scheme of things is a tough hurdle to get over. Still, what we have had, is the luck to have been able to be a part of this evolutionary process for a short period of time. One can, I suppose, insist that God himself maneuvered our parents to have sexual intercourse and then guided a particular sperm, out of millions, to a particular egg so that we became his personal creation. There is no evidence that God is micromanaging the evolutionary process at all, and if he were, then he is equally responsible for Hitler. The process is clearly governed by laws;  whoever established the laws which govern the process must be God. 

The best mood to govern our terminational years is gratitude for the luck we have obtained via genetics, our environment, and help from others. Depending on our own luck, we have obligations to repay this gratitude by helping the least fortunate. When we really manage to see the least fortunate as important as ourselves, then contentment can be achieved. When we can accept that it is the next generation which needs to run the show, we no longer will feel the pressure to win contests of any sort. When we are fortunate enough to be financially secure, however modest our financial state, then we do not need to control our environment—to try and shape it to our own liking, but are free to go to where things are to our liking. There simply is no best way to live, no best way to teach, no best way to learn, no best way to coach, no best way to parent, no best way to love, no best way to make love, no best kind of music, no best kind of art, no best kind of food,—no best kind of most anything, since  the nature of this created universe is defined by diversity, chance, genes, environment, and, for the human species, how much help the fortunate give to the unfortunate. To the extent we can take the hand dealt us in life, and begin to utilize all the knowledge gained by those before us, to appreciate the vastness of it all, and the relative irrelevance of our own peculiar short existence, only then can we generate the kind of gratitude for our own existence, and the requisite obligation we have to the less fortunate, as a means to generate some contentment in our little gleam of time between two eternities. 

To be healthy and in the terminational phase of life is to be free from leading anyone or anything, free from winning arguments, free from tap dancing to anyone else’s tune, free from out maneuvering others for meaningless rewards, free from any need to control others, free from any need to keep others down or in their place, free from feeling false superiority over other humans or even other species, free from any need to create an image of God, including how God thinks, which is totally self serving to our own needs, and at last free to simplify ethics down to the one universal reasoned out ethical principle: the Golden Rule. The goal in our terminational years is to live as long as we should, not as long as we can. If the dying process is not personal, then nothing is personal. Only ourselves can really decide when enough is enough, or appoint someone else to determine this if we no longer are mentally capable. Perhaps I need move up my acute attention to this matter. 

In some strange eclectic way, we spend a lot of time in life to be somebody. The degree of success here brings rewards of various nature, but the chance of becoming addicted to all sorts of things en route runs the risk of never arriving at a decent level of contentment. Like who would want to really reach the mental state of a Donald Trump or a Rush Limbaugh? What contentment comes from being angry at just about everyone and everything different from ourselves? What possible good is material wealth past a certain level, or power, or titles, or popularity past a certain level? Too much of anything, if it doesn’t kill us, can lead us simply to higher and higher levels of frustration as we try to rearrange everything around us to our liking.  That rarely works since others, uniquely different from us, don’t exactly accept the changes we work so hard and adamantly to implement. Everything about the evolutionary process is competition: Not ‘good’ vs ‘evil’ but adequate vs inadequate. Diversity, change, genetics, environment, and help from others drive the evolutionary process. Time is the only constant. We go, Time stays. 

Once we retire the long race is over. We finished the race where we did, mostly through luck and help from others. Some—actually many, perished along the way.  For evolutionary progress to occur, on evolutionary Time, not human Time, which is so minuscule——for this evolutionary progress to occur, there are more personal tragedies than personal successes. That is sad, but it is what it is. Humans have evolved to the point where we have the mental power to ensure maximum contentment for the most people, but this trait has a long way to go for any real success. When the rat race is over, we either detach ourselves, as we really ought to do, or we will find out often enough, that we are not really a player anymore, and no one has to, or will, jump through any hoops on our demands. For the first time in life we are free to amuse ourselves on our own terms, do what we like when we like, as long as we like, as often as we like. That is the reward for surviving the rat race. But too many terminational phase people try to run the show, depend on others to amuse them, to make endless demands on others. To go this route is to become embittered and frustrated. Few, if anyone, is really going to listen, nor should they. It is their show now, as it should be, and we are free to move to greener pastures. Of course there is no perfect pasture, but as we age, we constantly need consider what kind of pasture is best for us at a particular age, and go there, not try to change a current situation. 

I like to tease others by complaining what a rough life I have. Of course I really don’t at all. I do what I want when I want, keep things simple, try not to overreach or overdo anything. When we stop to smell the roses we find it is the simple things in life which lead to contentment. If our productive years gave us ample good memories, these memories are as good as money in the bank. We should never, in our terminational years, lose sight of the forest for the sake of the trees.

The formative years in life were stressful because we were not in charge, we had to find a way to fit in, to learn the hard way how get through the mine fields around us, all of which with a hand dealt us that can be anywhere from stacked with good cards or bereft of anything worth much. The terminational years are just the reverse. The game is over, we played our cards, depended on some help from others, and somehow survived the productive years one way or another. After trying so hard to be important and relevant to so many situations and others, we find ourselves essentially alone, in the grandstands now, watching others play the game. We either accept this, and relish the opportunity to be free from stress, to be self-centered during this final stage of life, and jump on the opportunity to entertain ourselves, not depend on others to entertain us and learn not to live  vicariously within the lives of others. I reckon doing little of the aforementioned can work to various degrees sometimes, at least for a while, depending on a whole host of factors and environment. 

But this terminational stage of life also is a chance to eliminate many stressful interactions/situations, and really face head on why we would even want to be in charge of another damn thing, or be responsible for solving problems not directly related to us, or be a burden to others, or expect others to pay us endless attention, or entertain us, or drag us along to endless social events where our presence is little more than a charitable and perfunctory kindness to the elderly. It is easy enough, for us, as elders, to live in ways which daily remind us we are now life clutter, irrelevant, burdensome, outdated, and nothing but a shell of our former self. On the other hand, no one knows ourself better than ourselves, and what we have in abundance, is time and the freedom to amuse ourselves in pleasant ways on our own. The first mistake we can make at this stage in life is to assume we can’t go anywhere unless someone invites us or takes us, or we can badger others to join us or make them feel they need drag us along somewhere. We are better to take any titles we once had and trash them for the present and future (albeit cherish their memories), along with any efforts to chase material wealth past enough is enough, and really accept we no longer have any power to influence most anything. That is, by pure definition, the definition of retirement. 

Sometimes, actually often times, lying in bed before or after sleep, or when walking in some nature setting, I think about the endless people of the past who played such an important role in my life back in the formative and productive stages. Most of them are now dead, but the memories are vivid and a tonic to my mood and soul. These good and kind people, more than anything else, enriched my life, gave meaning to my life, and perpetually serve as roses in the December of my life. I miss all of them, and all of them constitute a part of my consciousness which perpetually sustains me with a degree of contentment in these later years, which I would otherwise lack. Strange, but when the memories of all who knew them are gone, I guess then they are really gone. Time has gone by so quickly. Except, that is not true. TIME STAYS, WE GO. As Terrell Owens would say: “Fair is fair”. Let others strut upon the stage and do their thing. Whatever our act is—like any other act—it grows stale eventually. 

It is now nap time. I have amused myself long enough. Periodically, some younger resident of my building will, for the kindest of reasons, remark “Reid, we need go out to dinner some time”. It would be quite a sacrifice of their precious time (not meant sarcastically) for them to carry out that kind thought. If they bring it up again I invariably and firmly state: “If you don’t have something better to do with your time at this stage of your life, you better get a life. There is no need for you to feel any responsibility to amuse me. I amuse myself everyday, all day, a sort of romance with someone I love. That usually does the trick to get them off the hook.  And I feel good because I know I just let them off the hook. It is not nice to take advantage of another's kindness. 

“The wise man looks at death with honesty, dignity and calm, recognizing that the tragedy it brings is inherent in the great gift of life.” Corless Lamont (American philosopher)

“A man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong--acting the part of a good man or a bad....for the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, but a pretense of knowing the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.” Socrates (Greek general, philosopher) 

“Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not every- one lives.” A. Sachs (Israel Scholar) 

“I wouldn’t live forever,
I wouldn’t if I could;
But I needn’t fret about it.
For I couldn’t if I would.” Unknown 

“Man’s life’s a vapor,
And full of woes;
He cuts a caper,
And down he goes.” Unknown 

“Let us give thanks, not only for what we have but for what we have escaped.” Unknown 

“Once I wasn’t
Then I was
Now I ain’t again” Unknown 

“What is an individual man? An atom, almost invisible without a magnifying glass---a mere speck upon the surface of the immense universe; not a second in time, compared to immeasurable, never-beginning, and never ending eternity; a drop of water in the great deep, which evaporates and is borne off by the winds; a grain of sand, which is soon gathered to the dust from which it sprung.” Henry Clay (American lawyer, politician, orator)