Age and Tide

There are multiple ways to turn any natural observation into a metaphor for our lives. Having lived near the sea for most of my life, I am well aware of tides. Age often leaves us casting about for glimmers of cosmic understanding wherever they may occur.

The most famous metaphor is of course King Canute, ordering the tide to cease. A symbol of the uselessness of trying to prevent the inevitable. More deeply, a warning of how stupid it looks to attempt what common sense knows is impossible .

But there is also the idea of ebb and flow, high and low, translated to good times and bad. There will be in any life joy and pain, both of which usually pass one to another in a complex but inevitable rhythm .

For an older person, however, there is yet another lesson, which relates to deceptive normality. The high water mark is indicated with only minor variations day to day and season to season. But suddenly that can change in storm or tsunami, and rage well beyond what we thought we understood as limits. Leaving behind destruction and _ of course _ death .

So here we are, metaphor in hand. Is this next problem merely a usual tide or something worse?

It’s easy to become anxious when the predictable breaks the rules .

Optimism

I try to be an optimistic person. I generally believe that things will work out for the best. It makes my life happier .

Yet there is a world of ambiguity in any concept such as “optimism”. To begin with, nobody can know anything about the future. Beyond that, exactly what “things” am I selecting for prediction? And what I mean by “best” may in no way relate to what you consider good. No need to belabor the issue. Like “beautiful,” it is a concept that seems to mean something to everyone, but can hardly be pinned down. Nevertheless, I remain an optimistic person .

I try to pick things that have some actual relevance to my personal well-being. I can be optimistic, for example, that I will enjoy dinner tonight. And by a magic mind trick, I could even be optimistic if I think the dinner will be awful – because it will soon be over !

There are infinite outcomes to choose from, and many ways to wonder what might be “best”. Instantly we bog down into dreamy lists and semantics .

At my age the key is really careful selection of discreetly small things, in a pretty short time frame. And a concept of “best” that reduces to how much worse it could be .

I’m an optimist, but hopefully not a complete fool.

Best of my Possible

Surrounded by babel about infinite multiverses, I have my own fantasy that my soul manages to navigate, pick and choose among them. A thread aware of the past and future, trying for an optimum path in what we call time, freezing yet another life in some new groove, or maybe just replaying it .

It’s all philosophic twaddle of course. I don’t really buy into the multiverse. No idea what time really is, but pretty sure that mostly what we experience is some form of underlying reality. Nobody knows. Nobody can know. I don’t care except in idle daydreams .

It’s been a very fortunate life, so I have the luxury of imagining I live in the best of all possible worlds – for me. My very own best possible life, unconcerned with all the other possibilities.

Oh, of course, much of that outlook is constructed by skillful editing, shaping nostalgia to focus on silver linings, “accentuating the positive”. No apologies. It’s a nice way to view the world, at least as one grows ever more elderly .

Each day now I can look back with fondness, enjoy some happy memories, and not worry at all about what I must do nor regret opportunities lost. I suppose all that is simply symptomatic of truly losing my mind .

Coda

July 4th was a family gathering, senior generations, young adults, grandchildren. As the younger folks spoke of ambitions, hassles, fears and the future, the elders reminisced about what had been and how magically much of life had happened .

Then the party ended and we elders went back to whatever normal lives we each inhabit. And I realized that in this culture – at least for the more fortunate – old age is a kind of coda on reality .

Finally we are free of admonitions about what to do, what we must do, especially what we are supposed to do. Mostly the young – even as they love us dearly – want us to stay out of the way as they race along their narrow paths .

Earlier, that was somewhat frustrating, as we were used to racing ourselves. But sometime in our late ’70s, life truly slows into rocking chair time at least for stretches of our days, however much we may regret it .

And what we learned at the party was to pull out the old memories and nostalgia and personal tales, since it is as raconteurs that the young treasure us most .

Shrinking

Roman and Greek morality looked back at an imagined golden age in the past and sought to emulate its heroes. A massive outlook change in Western culture (maybe science, industrialization, Christianity, or phase of the moon) had us looking at imagined futures instead.

There is now little respect for those who do not plan future growth. Yet I’ve been shrinking physically for some time now, shorter by at least an inch. My mental agility is declining. As I passed through my ’70s energy waned, senses were less sharp, memories became more important. I accepted that as natural, but society does not .

Young “whippersnappers” tell elders how active they should be, how they must engage in hobbies, how they must struggle to be better. Apocryphal tales speak of “old” people suddenly starting companies and becoming wealthy (although the definition of old seems to be creeping downward into the ’40s …)

In my newly engaged art pastime., I’ve decided to do away with future marvels. I simply want to use my reduced situation – senses and skills – as valid restrictions to construct unique artifacts. If my sight is blurred, let my drawings also be so. If my hand shakes, utilize that in my lines .

Not to get better in the future. Just to enjoy being a shrinking being as much as I possibly can .

Fantastic Tales

I enjoyed Bible stories as a youth. Then those of the “golden age” of science fiction. Even now some space opera and fantasy. All had little twists and turns, many preached a certain view of society. Fortunately, I never confused them with science or history. Sociology – well that hung out somewhere in the middle .

I know the attraction of all those (mostly) male superheroes or charmed individuals who thrive against all odds. But, again, I rarely confused their exploits with what happened in my real life .

What bothers me now is that many people are overwhelmed with a glut of knowledge that still seems unable to predict their individual future usefully. So they cling to militaristic utopias like Heinlein’s StarshipTroopers. Or unfettered economic systems _ some controlled, some free. Or libertarian or dystopian or … And worse, these become not merely touchstones for their own consciousness, which may be a genuinely useful function, but also a blueprint for how society should really be, or actually is, or how they should act .

Ayn Rand is my personal hate. But any fiction is – really – fiction. Each person is more complex than described in a novel. Each society more chaotically unpredictable. Each solution encrusted with its own problems . And each individual life unique.

But not in these tales. “If only” has replaced “once upon a time” in our current fairy tales .

Lost Words

Young people tend to have nightmares or fantasies about old people (to be fair, old people reciprocate.) It is usually annoying to read “youngsters” giving us irrelevant advice, writing ridiculous entertainment scripts about elders, or solemnly discussing our plight.

It is true we have slowed down and become more careful. (But hardly so slow as the memory medicine ads would proclaim.) It is usually true that we gradually lose our taste for grand adventures – adventures occur all around us all the time, sometimes as simple as going to the store. We remain fully human, but (in spite of protestation) not as we were at 30 .

I feel a gradual degradation, which I accept (as I must, since – in spite of those ads for expensive medication – it is inevitable). Perhaps the most annoying are the constant little gaps in mind and memory. Particularly nasty are the constant stream of “lost words.” I know exactly what I want to say, know there is a word for it, know I know there is a word for it – but nothing but blank .

That clues me into other patterns I may not be quite aware of. Reflexes, adjustment to light changes, peripheral vision, and on and on .

In fact, what most amazes me in the whole process is how much I used to have, how much I can lose, and how I nevertheless remain me.

Father William

“You are old, Father William…” (look up the Lewis Carroll poem if you don’t know it.) It pretty well captures my outlook and that of many of my more sane friends .

Young people think a variety of things about their elders. It’s natural, we did the same thing years ago. In some ways they revere what we have done, they think we have accumulated wisdom and gained perspective. In other ways they know we are irrelevant, stubborn, and often irritating, not to mention completely out of touch. All true .

But the key – as in the poem – is silliness. Elders can hardly take the future seriously (those of us who do so are the worst enemies of civilization.) Old people should be irrelevant to everyone but their immediate family. Our knowledge is vast and hard won, but hardly applicable to various modern crises. We enjoy our personal shell and bubble, but are well aware of how fragile it is. It won’t last very long …

So Father William jokes a lot and seems out of touch and a little sly. And yet – my days are joyful and my worries more immediate than they used to be. I think that attitude is appropriate for my age. But, of course, I would think so.

Conventional

I consider myself fortunate to have led a fairly conventional life. By that, meaning to have fit in, done well enough, a little ecstasy, not too much heartbreak. Accepting of most of the rules and tradition of society .

Conventional connotates the core of a civilization, even in its various groups. What the conventional peasants do, what the conventional rulers might direct. The basic conservative principle that keeps tribes from falling apart, and which helps individuals support each other to face the world .

Lately, conventional has also come to mean fashionably correct within a given cult. Conventional leftists, apparently, are all snowflakes who think the world should be cotton candy sweet. Conventional right, on the other hand, believe bitter harshness is the only survival skill in a hostile universe .

The center that I thought I inhabited has apparently melted away. It’s too boring for the young and restless, too naive for the old and cynical. Nobody wants to just try to improve things little by little – time to tear it all up and start over .

Perhaps the fringe fanatics are right. I think not, but none of them (nor anybody else) cares what I think. So I sit in my conventional backyard and, as Voltaire would say, concentrate on growing my equivalent of vegetables .

Ghosts

As I stroll through this cold, wet spring, I notice wild garlic sprouting, roadside daffodils in bloom, lawns greening, and trees laden with buds. But amidst all this rebirth, I am surrounded by ghosts .

Oh, not so much people, although there are a few of those, some dead, some merely gone away, others changed. I here speak of the ghosts of things and situations passed – dead trees removed, houses decayed or rebuilt, shorelines mutated, and on and on. I remember also who I was those other times, a person with sharper attributes and stronger drives, inhabiting a truly different world. Those ancient images overlay all that I actually experience now, and they sometimes haunt me .

Enchantment remains, the moments are wonderful. The memories are simply depth. This spring is a lovely time, the universe is infinitely, fractally magnificent. And yet …

The actual recollections are quite vivid, and on occasion it feels like that world was better, once upon a time, not so long ago. It even occasionally feels wrong to replace the old visions with fresh overlays .

Then I snap out of it, enjoy the sunshine breeze, and glory in simply and happily existing well. Ghosts and all .