A Desultory Diary, Episode 6, The Speech I Never Delivered

1.

Many years ago, when I was a twenty-something, my mentor in poetry, José Garcia Villa, gave me a copy of one of his verse collections. The dedication was amusing: "A Poetry Collection Without an Introduction--Thank Heaven!"

Tonight a bunch of friends, Nirmala and me will gather to celebrate those of us who have had an October birthday. On October 9, I began my seventy-fifth year. I imagined myself giving a speech, but decided against it. Instead, I decided to write an essay for you, dear readers; at least you have the opportunity to click me--temporarily, I hope--into oblivion.

Well, I thought, maybe I will say--that is, write--a few words about growing old, which, I admit, is not all that good, but not all that bad either. Perhaps I have a few words of wisdom to impart? You be the judges. My target audience is not only the chorus of the elderly, but also to younger soloists who have not yet found their voice.

Nearly a century ago, the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, wrote the following sublime lines about old age:

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

for every tatter in its mortal dress.

                                                         (from Sailing to Byzantium)

Immortal, profoundly wise lines.  Yeats very accurately depicts the muscle wasting--what we physicians call sarcopenia--that begins around forty and increases rapidly after the age of sixty-five. A tattered coat upon a stick--it's as if there is no there there anymore. One becomes a scarecrow, a puppet lying on a shelf, easily ignored. A paltry thing because society treats an aged man as wrinkled packaging that once contained something  worth looking into.

How should an old person react to being ignored, while enduring the difficulties and pangs associated with general diminution? Some of us become cranky, crotchety, sometimes very angry. Here is an excerpt of another great poem, this time by Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

Certainly an option, but not, I think, a particular sage one. Buddha, for instance, the quintessential sage, thought anger to be a very negative emotion; associated with a keen (and, eventually, keening) sense of self, it is to be avoided, always. (There is no righteous anger in Buddhism). Raging in old age is unseemly. (If Lear had been a wise old man at the beginning of the play, he wouldn't have raged at the end).

One of the cardinal virtues of old age is acceptance. This includes acceptance of the self, acceptance of the world as it is, etc. (This doesn't mean that one should not work to make the world better--but to do this without rage, is better yet).

Acceptance is only one of the cardinal virtues of age, however. For the most important one, we return to Yeats: "Soul must clap its hands and sing and louder sing/For every tatter in its mortal dress." Wisdom has its violins that can sing over sorrow until the very end. What does this mean?

2.

I have completed seventy-four years, albeit with some chronic diseases rather easily managed, so far; nothing very serious yet. In other words, I've been lucky. Exercising regularly, eating properly, keeping the mind active, etc. undoubtedly have something to do with it; nevertheless, luck has had something to do with it as well. 

One of the difficulties I've had is poor eyesight. I decided it was finally time to start reading large-print books. I went to the local library and was directed to the large-print section, which, indeed, was not very extensive. I took the first one off the shelf, a book about the old old: "Happiness is a Choice You Make, lessons from a year among he oldest old," by John Leland.

The book is not the pollyannic pap one might expect from the title. The oldest old in the book have serious problems, losses in a full array of forms, but they all had decided to make the best of it. An adage from Marcus Aurelius comes to mind: One is chained to the chariot of fate. The choice is whether to stand up and run with the horses or lie down and be dragged. 

Making the best of it means that the elderly souls described in the book had decided to clap and sing, with varying degrees of success, keeping rhythm, despite vicissitudes, to the melodies of life, including one of the darkest ones: "Where are you now, my sweet friend/Everyone I know goes away in the end." Not one of the oldest old chooses any longer to "criticize the turtle for not being something else"--they accept themselves, and others, shells and all. Some clap louder and better than others; all souls of the group, however, sing.

Leland recounts that gerontologists have come up with a new classification: the oldest old, those eight-five and older. I ran with this concept and extrapolated it to include those over sixty-five but less than eighty-five: Sixty-five to seventy became for me old-age childhood; those seventy to seventy-five became old-age youths; the period from seventy-five to eighty-five became old middle age.

A geezer like me, therefore, hasn't even reached old middle-age yet!Therefore, as my soul keeps singing to me: I'm still a kid. A new and beautiful way to look at old age. One is as old as one claps.

This is not a universal view. Younger people, who are the majority, sometimes look down on minorities, especially those who use a cane. A good example is the case of a psychologist--who later sadly and unwisely committed suicide--who devised a system to determine how many "good years" one has left, by subtracting one's current age from sixty-five. Life, for him, ended at sixty-five. By doing this calculation, I, over sixty-five at the time I wrote the poem that will follow, had become "a negative toddler." The rage of a "negative toddler" is the subject of a poem I wrote a few years ago. Life ends at sixty-five--indeed!

What Did That Self-Help Guru Say?

“Simply subtract your age from 65

and that’s how many good years you have left.”

That makes mine fewer than minus three!

Once vim is reduced to a negative toddler,

is it O.K. to sit and forget half your French?

It is not.  Instead, before I’m minus four,

I shall sing and descant upon love

in a language I as yet don’t understand.

Perhaps I’ll send him a postcard from Kandahar;

perhaps I’ll send him an elephant tusk

made out of marzipan

by a lovely, crazy German living in Irkutsk;

he apparently thinks old age is the time

to stare like a cow while a fly

navigates a bulbous nose.  Should I rage?

No, rages are unseemly after minus three;

having outgrown my terrible minus twos

I’m ready for a raucous minus youth,

and if I find a tarantula in La Descubierta,

I promise I won’t send him a fanged memento mori

in a silver candy box, crawling on blue cheese.

3.

Well, here's the section during which I give advice and reveal what is most important in life, at least in my opinion.

Research has shown that what is most important are relationships. (You are invited to listen to the appropriate TED talk on YouTube). Many younger people think that fame and money are the essentials. Money is certainly important, but if it is pursued as the primary purpose of life, one inevitably fails.

In the iconic statue of Nataraja, a famous mudra, a symbolic hand gesture, is depicted: the abayam mudra, do not fear:

That's what the older among us have to offer the younger: struggle for your place in the world, but realize that there is another more important place, the place where wisdom and love reign, and not Mr. Get-a-little-more and you'll be-a-little more. This might take time, but one need to start making place for these noble guests, beginning in youth.

I think this "no fear" or, at least "reduced fear" mantra constitutes one of the chief evolutionary purpose of old age. Many species, especially insects and fish, die after mating. Human beings are different. They need elders to show younger humans how to live. This is indeed consistent with survival of the species.

There is nothing sadder than a young person without a strong ego; there is nothing sadder than an old man who has been unable to transcend it. (A tragic example, not only for him, but for us and the rest of the world, is our needy, catastrophic current president).

What is wise behavior? Acting from the realization that everything, including everyone, is connected. This way of life is a great way to overcome egotistical, petty thoughts. An even better one is putting 'love your neighbor as yourself' into action. These two ways are actually a single path.

We are creatures of Earth and must obey her laws. How do we do that? The following metaphor contains, I think, the secret of life:

Each one of us is a satellite revolving, whether we like it or not, around a brilliant sun. We must revolve, but it is our decision whether or not to rotate, to revolve around our own axis. If you choose not to; if you choose to spend your life always facing the void like the dark side of the moon, that is your choice. If you choose to keep moving, however, you will certainly become well acquainted with the night, but will also know that day follows night: you will also spend a good portion of your life basking in the sun while choosing life. Choose life.