Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?

[poliphilo]

I've got a birthday coming up. It's not a round figure one, so I'm not making a deal of fuss. Actually, even if it was a round figure one I'd want to keep things low-key. Once you're past 50 the only birthday that's worth jumping up and down about is your 100th.

I used to take my body for granted. Now I'm acutely aware of its frailty.

And its unreality.

So what is it? A column of water stiffened with carbon and calcium and other elements. Or, as Webster put it, "a little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste."

It ain't me.

(Babe)

It's this thing I'm using while I work my passage through this heavy dimension. It's like a space suit or a diving suit. If I'm lucky it has another 20 or 30 years wear in it.

We'll see. But every birthday brings it closer to systems failure and the awfully big adventure.

Detachment, that's the thing to be working at when you get past 50. I like it here, but I'm hoping they won't have to pry my fingers loose at the end.

I had a flying dream last night. I said, "look, this is how it's done," spread my arms like dicky-bird wings and took off for the ceiling.

Can't do it now, but one day maybe.

Something to look forward to.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But will they also find a cure for the hardening of the mind that comes with old age? To have a population of fabulously aged people, all reminiscing about the good old days and deploring the youth of today (mere striplings of 100 and 150)is a nightmarish prospect.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

I would hope they do, otherwise it will be an annoying or at least boring prospect. But I think my generation, and to a lesser extend your generation, are at an advantage that our elders are not: we existed in periods of rapid social and technological change. Your father's father and your father probably were very similar in terms of their workplace environment. The technologies may have changed rapidly with World War II but, in America at least, the social environment would go largely unchanged until the 1960s.

For me, when I was ten, gay people were not to be socialized with. In a couple of years, I was aware that most of the adults around me would have "gay friends." When I could vote, gay marriage or civil unions were unconscionable. Today it's largely that the idea that they are unconscionable is unconscionable. That's a remarkably short span of time and I can point to many others in areas like abortion or the environment. There has been a quickening of social conscience.

I tend to think that its possible that this quicker pace in society and technology would help to prevent the hardening of the mind as surely as the latest drug does the arteries. Many of the elderly now have been left behind, unable to be a vital part of society at all because they held views for 30 years and for 30 years they were acceptable, indeed admirable. I have come to expect to have my views challenged in a significant way daily. I can't help but think that would impart a long term advantage in coping with change.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So perhaps human nature is in the process of evolving. I would like to think so. We surely need to evolve mentally to keep up with our scientific and technological advances.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

It's funny that we've created weapons that have been described as "the Hand of God" without yet developing the benevolence we like to think such an entity ought to have.

My good old fashioned religious upbrining holds that you are lifted up with the right hand and smited with the left. I fear America right now may be run by south paws.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

And by the by, I never got around to saying anything about internet names and this made me think of it for some reason.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I don't think that hardening of the mind is inevitable.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No, it's not inevitable. But I believe you have to work hard to resist it.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I do think that it's very hard to resist when your body starts breaking down, though.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've been looking again at Yeats' poems about the onset of old age. I used to admire them; now I begin to understand them.

"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."