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.

Fear

Fear or its equivalent is instinctually hardwired into most animals. A deer may not experience “fear” as we know it, but certain perceptions of sight, sound, or smell will provoke a flight response. Humans seem to inherit the whole range of abilities to be afraid of various things and provide actions to avoid or deal with issues .

A problem is that our overactive brains can invent many things to fear. Some are real – will that approaching car hit us? Some are imaginary – does that creaking tree contain a malignant ghost? It is useless to talk about rationality, because all fear is only probability, and my mind can manipulate anything to appear rational (at least to me) .

“Paralyzed by fear” is a real thing, often transmuted to “enervated by fear”. Today there are such fears everywhere, focused by attention-grabbing media or sales provocateurs. If we listened to them all, we’d never leave the house. We’d be deeply worried all the time anyway .

I think the greater danger is that all the minor trivial fears desensitize us to real problems. We have to learn to ignore so much that we cannot recognize something we really should do something about .

Like that deer caught in the headlights, we never react to the sound of the rifle being cocked. Our entire civilization is now paralyzed by the onslaught of the internet .

High T

Ponce de Leon is alive and well! The fountain of youth (for men) has finally been discovered! More testosterone will make them young, vigorous, sculpted, sexy and – of course – much happier than they are .

It’s natural! (So is arsenic.) Pay no attention to those doctors behind the screen muttering about side effects. It’s your life! Make it better !

This culture lives on advertising. Usually I enjoy the commercials and realize that most people have been immunized enough by constant exposure to retain a degree of skepticism. Even when I grew up long ago, comic books had full page ads on how Charles Atlas could help you fight off bullies kicking sand in your face .

Ah, but bodybuilding requires work. Curing “low t” is just a matter of taking a pill or enduring injection. Just like drinking from the fountain of youth. Hey, this smiling face promises, and he looks pretty honest .

We have become a culture looking for easy solutions, maybe because we have little time or energy for complex ones. Slogans to fix social problems. Pills for physical issues .

Hope, if not exactly a fountain, springs eternal.

Don’t Worry

In 1971 I lived in a Berkeley commune. Posted on our refrigerator door was a newspaper picture of a smiling guru with the caption “Don’t worry, be happy”. We later learned he had committed suicide .

The possibly apocryphal story was savored by those who laughed at “hippy stupidity”. All of us found it ironic. As the years go by I think on it periodically (and may even have written about it more than once – my memory isn’t the best lately.) Each time it seems to have a somewhat different moral.

For example, to begin with, it’s not actually a bad philosophy. Most of us do worry too much about things that will never happen or over which we have no control nor influence. Then, there is a realization that any guidance may be appropriate at one time, but useless or toxic in different circumstances. And finally the question of how one reacts when core ideals are broken.

But I always cycle back to how I feel. And there I realize that the old news clipping is simply another odd fragment of my infinite consciousness, to be used or discarded or ignored as I see fit. Sometimes surfacing for no reason at all. Usually provoking thoughtfulness .

For right now, I try to immerse in “Don’t worry”. I nurture the grand enchantment of being happy. Certainly not a guru, but good enough for today .

Medium Well

“All things in moderation. Even moderation.” A wise saying. Living as an uncaring Buddhist saint, ignoring the world, has always struck me as early death. A few extremes add spice to existence .

There are complaints that today is different. We are buffeted by uncontrollable forces. Internet adds to higher highs, lower lows, rabbit holes, and destructive fantasies. It is impossible to be “moderate” in such an environment .

However, that is usually expressed by some of the most pampered people who ever lived. Warm, dry, well fed, with electricity and other comforts not imagined by those living a few centuries ago. The whining of such spoiled brats is very annoying .

Our ancestors faced genuine extremes every day, every year, almost all of them potentially fatal. There was never a better logical reason to “live well today for tomorrow we die.” Disease, disaster, hopeless fate. And yet – they kept an even keel. Mostly .

I’ve adopted a schizophrenic approach. For local matters over which I have control (eg eating, exercise) I continue the advice of “moderation”. For all that “media” hoopla I’m more like the monk, observing but fully dissociated.

As I think of it, medium well done.

Tranquility

In our fortunate era, one can do many things, play many roles, in fact be different persons over time. We recognize standard stages of life – childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle-aged, senior, elder – and the various career changes one can make. But our very being can also transmute .

Tranquility is not a revered goal of our culture. It’s more important to be upset, to strive, to be unsatisfied with what is and work to change things for the better. For most of those stages of life, being tranquil is dangerously close to being a lazy good for nothing .

But elders _ well, little is expected at this declining energies and thoughts. Attempts by old folks to do great things is at best comical and at worst annoying and tragic. Tranquility fits those who otherwise get in the way of progress .

I confess to buying into this somewhat. Ever since I read Innocents Abroad as a boy, I realized that younger people who accept life however awful it may be are more to be pitied than envied. I hardly ever sought tranquility, preferring even painful activity to doing nothing .

But now? I’m afraid I am still not quite tranquil, although I have slowed, appreciate the moments, and try not to regret all the many things I can no longer do. Such acceptance, I suppose, is close to tranquility. Or laziness, of course.

Ultra Hyped

A current bugaboo is worry about “ultra processed” foods. On examination, this label turns out to mean to have about as much meaning as anything with “turbo” in the description. “Ultra” used to be defined pretty synonymously with “extreme” or even a little more extreme than regular old extreme. But this connotation has apparently eroded just as much as the other older term, simply slapped on headlines and attention seeking studies to grab interest by shouting about new worries .

” Ultra processed food” is a perfect case in point. On a normal dial indicating, for example, speed, the indicator would range from stop through slow, moderate, fast, to insanely fast or ultra. But the equivalent food dial would label everything under 10 or 15 mph as okay and anything above as “horribly fast.” A fairly useless guide .

So now “ultra” is being slapped on everything bad in the same way “new, improved” used to be attached to anything good. I’m aware that word meanings and especially connotations mutate frequently, so there is little to really get annoyed at. It’s the ridiculously set binary division that is truly crazy .

I will continue to use my own food dial which runs approximately from raw, prepared, lightly processed, heavily processed and – yes – ultra processed. And not to be too worried about occasionally enjoying the “worst” which are – after all _ sometimes very delicious and many of which whole populations have been eating for decades .