I’m 87 and it’s 2022. Will I see 2023? 2024? Whatever, will I have made good use of what’s left? Good for me, that is. Old age tends to be self-centred.
With so many years already consumed, there’s a depressing tendency to look backwards not forwards. Surprises aren’t expected, other than the last – terminal – one. I may never again ski parallel but I’m still a thinking, talking and writing entity and those are abilities that matter. That’s where the surprises may lie.
Amazingly, old age can help. Used imaginatively old age may work as a makeshift Time Machine. One tours the past not as a passive spectator but as an active participant in the What If? game. Just suppose, you say to yourself, I’d gone left rather than right in 1951. What then?
In fact 1951 was a big year. Hated school was behind me and I was gainfully employed. It’s unlikely, I admit, but I could have joined my Father in his property business. My late youngest brother did just that and became wealthy. As a journalist I only became “comfortably off” on retirement. What sort of person would I have been rolling in the spondulicks? Dead now from an excess of fine wine?
In some respects the decision to try the USA (for six years) delayed my journalistic progression to an editor’s chair. Staying in the UK I might have ended up on a more influential magazine? Become a talking head on telly?
As it happened I ended up exactly where I wanted. Other decisions could well have been disastrous. But the Time Machine only flirts with disaster. If things turn painful, make another (imaginary) decision.
Exercising one’s imagination helps sustain life. Hey, look what I’ve just done. Is 2025 a possibility?
I think, when young, we pass through time. ~When old, time passes through us - and very quickly. You still do what you have enjoyed all your life - writing. If you keep your wits about you that will continue until......
ReplyDeleteI can no longer run courses, give presentations, enjoy the group interactions with my audiences.
But one can adapt. The type of motor cycling I have enjoyed all my life (500 mile days on a fast and responsive machine) have perforce given way to occasional 80 miloe rides on a 250cc tiddler.
My 100 mile club cycling days are now reduced to leisurely perambulations of Romney Marsh on an e-bike. I suppose in a short time both those will end. What then? An invalid buggy?
I don't look forward. I only see reductions there. Reductions in health. Reductions in activities. Reductions in companionships as relatives and friends fall out of the race. I live in the present, but enjoy my memories. The future can be conjectured, but is unknown.
Avus: You miss the point. You dwell only on the physical activities which - given the passage of time - must inevitably shrink. What's more you've written off the future, seen it only as a cliché born out of a previously active life. You say you (will - I suppose) enjoy your memories but they are unchanging, are in danger of becoming repetitive, even boring. You are, almost willingly, embracing disappointment.
DeleteYet you are still capable of thinking and thinking is more than the mere unspooling of the past. I had an equally active youth and middle age during which I also sought change. Living in different places and countries, learning and applying different and sometime late-in-life skills, changing jobs. Thinking allows you to speculate, to test your life and find out whether you made the best use of it. Thinking allows you to trawl the audio/video fragments of, say, YouTube, and see whether previously unconsidered matters appeal to you. Quite recently and, ironically, well after I finished Out of Arizona (a novel about flying), I have become interested in dialogues between pilots and ATC which abound in YouTube. The latest in political satire. International events seen not just from a British viewpoint but from the other side of the fence.
I emphasise; these are just fragments, an amuse bouche as prelude to the main meal. Minor experiences to see whether you are capable of changing. Not being able to change means shuffling along the dull road of predictability; worse, renunciation of the adult pleasure of being surprised.
Interesting exercise. I am often overcome by unbidden memories. I have had a good enough life, but for some reason thinking about the past fills me with dread. I had to live it, why should I also be forced to relive it? But to consider it in terms of the road not taken? Maybe someday. I would have to be a bit more peaceful and calm to do this successfully.
ReplyDeleteColette: Does recalling a memory necessarily mean reliving it? Anyway, I accept the fact that the past disturbs you and sympathise; I can foresee a whole lot of complications to this. Obviously doing what I suggest in the post does require a degree of tranquillity, and concentration. It might even be impossible for some people to do it mentally; the alternative would be to write out the variation (to what happened) but I suspect this might be even more difficult.
DeleteAnd there's an interesting conclusion to what you've told me. Do you then consider yourself to be a prisoner of your memories? I suppose we all are. Re-arranging memories (either mentally or in writing) doesn't alter anything; the events still happened. Which brings us round full circle. The only form of "controlling" memories is to avoid letting them percolate into our present-moment consciousness. Which is more or less what you do.
I wish there was a way of discussing this more flexibly; there is, of course - it's called conversation but I for one have renounced long-distance air flights. It would therefore be up to you to call in here when you finally make your long-delayed visit to Stonehenge. Or Bucks Palace. Or Stratford-on-Avon. I can promise you and your retinue moderately expensive wine and an attentive ear. In return, you could share your collection of alligator photos with me.