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Slowness in Old Age – Perhaps a Gentle Blessing?

I have always been interested in the concept of time, at once fascinated with it and threatened by it.  Back in graduate school, I wrote essays about the depiction of time in literature from different time periods.  For example, in The Canterbury Tales we find multiple ways of telling time.  The new technology (mechanical clocks) was so recent that it had not had time, as yet, to eradicate prior knowledge (unlike our current era, when many children growing up in the digital age cannot tell time on an analogue clock).  In one short passage, Chaucer refers to the time in at least four different ways: as a portion of the “artificial day”, by the length of the shadows, by the degrees of inclination of the sun, and by the hour of the “clokke.”  The clock in this case was probably read by ear, by the chimes, and emanated often from the local monastery, reminding all that all time was God’s time.  It is of note that early Christians did not believe in usury because, among other reasons, it involved making money through time and time belonged to God.

By Jonathan Swift’s era, however, usury was accepted, and time was dominated by mechanical devices.  Not only did clocks have faces and more exact calibration, but they were even carried in one’s pocket, something which puzzled the Lilliputians when they encountered Gulliver:

He [Gulliver] put this engine [pocket watch] into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did anything without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life.

I was always a creature of the clock.  When I was a working mother with two children, I had no choice.  Every moment was scheduled.  I was good at it, and it became a habit.  What I am apparently not so good at is slowing down.  There is a quote that is making the rounds these days from the Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: “The times are urgent; let us slow down.”  He also said that “The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions.”  Akomolafe is talking about global humanitarian issues like climate change and refugee displacement, but slowness is also, it seems to me, necessary to navigate old age.  First of all, we are no longer built for speed.  Almost every fall that my mother took in the latter part of her life happened when she was rushing to answer a phone, tending to a barking dog, or some such non-emergency.  Secondly, haste makes waste.  We don’t have the energy or money to cope with larger mistakes.  Lastly, we are approaching the end.  It is time to put on the brakes and look around us before we become stardust again.

All of this makes sense, but – nevertheless – old habits and values don’t change easily.  For a simple example, I find myself frustrated with fast pieces on the piano.  I can play them, but not at accepted tempo, not fast enough.  I am just playing for myself (and my husband who, locked in his study, is an involuntary audience).  Would I rather play the piece well but very slowly or fast with mistakes and frustrations? Slow practice has always been recommended. “If you practice something slowly, you forget it slowly. If you practice something fast, you forget it fast,” advised Itzhak Perlman.  And then there is this from Saint-Saens: “One must practice slowly, then more slowly, and finally slowly.”  Since all the piano playing I do could be labeled as “practice,” slow is fine with me and enables me to play pieces that would ordinarily be beyond me.  It is a trick, however, to go slowly and keep an even tempo; this is true both on the piano and in life, I think.

The same is true for reading and writing.  There is this from an interview with one of my favorite writers, Lewis Mumford, which took place when he was in his eighties and still producing books:

The really annoying part of the aging process is not what happens externally—one has plenty of time to get prepared for that—but what happens internally,” he says. “One knows one isn’t quite as good. One’s energies are lower. When I was writing my major books, I would do between 3,000 and 4,000 words in the morning, between 8 and 11:30. Now I’m very happy to do 1,500 or 2,000 words.

“Now I’m very happy to ….”  There is an acceptance of reality in Mumford that is graceful and wise.  And the thought that goes into that smaller word count may make for better prose than the facile writing of our youth.  Early readers (before the 17th century) spoke words aloud as they read.  Until recently writers used pen and paper to write and revised with cross-outs and clipped-on inserts.  These practices were slower, but surely made for better understanding.

Slowness is in the air.  We are now being told that slow learning is better than fast; slow thought is a necessary balance to fast intuitive thinking.  And, of course, slow food is better than fast food. One of my children recently told me that he couldn’t imagine spending the time we spend on food shopping, planning, preparation and clean-up.  I could have argued that, once you have a personal catalogue of recipes and experience in preparing them, it does not take that much more time than driving to a restaurant, waiting for your server, etc.  But the real answer is that preparing food is a worthwhile activity in itself – and what would you be doing if you weren’t slicing vegetables for tonight’s stew?  I could go on and on, but talking to younger people almost never convinces them, and I have better things to do.

“Quickening” is the term we use for the very first detectible movement of a fetus in its mother’s womb.  It is a big moment for pregnant mothers and marks the first independent action of a new life.  If the beginning of life is “quickening,” maybe we need an equivalent “slowening” for the last part of life. And perhaps, by accepting our slowness, by appreciating it, we are accepting one of the greatest gifts of old age.

If you are interested in the development of timekeeping, Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization is highly recommended, although I believe it is out of print.  Anything by Mumford is highly recommended.  I have also posted here my old essay on the depiction of time in The Canterbury Tales.

And lastly, I just read this morning’s New York Times Magazine, where there is an article on the peace and joy of slow driving.  I am already a right lane person.

A Great Old Age Simile from Bertrand Russell – and Some Advice

Bertrand Russell lived to be very old, and – in his rational and philosophical way – was much interested in the best way to grow old. (I could have told him it was slowly!)  Russell starts by admitting that the best advice is to “choose your ancestors carefully” – his own parents died young, but his grandparents led long and productive lives.  (His paternal grandfather was prime minister of England well into his 70s and an active opposition leader long after that.)  Russell cautions us against expecting too much from our children and gives the realistic advice that they won’t abide much from their elders in the way of advice or society – but they will welcome any funds that might be forthcoming.  All true enough.

In fact, in his essay, “How to Grow Old,” Russell says there are two major mistakes that oldsters make.  The first is to cling to the younger generation, or even worse, to try to imitate them.  The other error is to cling to the past:

It does not do to live in memories, in regrets for the good old days, or in sadness about friends who are dead.  One’s thoughts must be directed to the future, and to things about which there is something to be done.  This is not always easy; one’s own past is a gradually increasing weight.

So, what does Mr. Russell suggest that we do? His great mind has pondered this, and his conclusion is much like that of his contemporary, Simone de Beauvoir (see here), both of whom think that we need “projects” in old age:

I think that a successful old age is easiest for those who have strong impersonal interests involving appropriate activities.  It is in this sphere that experience is really fruitful, and it is in this sphere that the wisdom born of experience can be exercised without being oppressive.

In his 80s and 90s, Russell took on things like nuclear disarmament, opposition to the Vietnam War, and overpopulation.  I hope he would have also approved of less noble pursuits and projects – like playing the piano or cultivating a garden.  Russell himself was purported to dabble in birdwatching.

Russell acknowledges that fear of death is often an issue with the old, but he finds this somewhat “ignoble.”  It is in talking about the best way to overcome our mortal fear that he waxes the most poetic, as we can see in this passage:

The best way to overcome it—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

I love water metaphors for life.  Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity – all spiritual thought comes back to the symbol, the example, of water.  We are made of water, we need water, and – at our best – we are like water.  The Tao reminds us that, like the Tao, “water doesn’t strive or compete. It simply flows, finding its own path. [reaching its own level,] and adapting to the environment. This teaches the importance of letting go of ego and resistance, allowing things to unfold naturally.”

And, this brings me to Spinoza.  (I always come back to Spinoza.)  Many great geniuses – Russell and Einstein to name just two – were Spinozans.  Russell tells us that Spinoza was the “best example” of being able to view the world in this impersonal way as the end approached:

Spinoza, who was perhaps the best example of the way of feeling of which I am speaking remained completely calm at all times, and in the last days of his life preserved the same friendly interest in others as he had shown in his days of health.  To a man whose hopes and wishes extend widely beyond his personal life, there is not the same occasion for fear that there is for a man of more limited desires.

But, assuming we can transcend the personal, where does that leave us?  These are tough days. In my greener years, I protested the Vietnam War, signed petitions, marched for peace.  I was young, but things did not seem so overwhelming as they are today.  I was stronger and more resilient. I bellowed, but I did not despair.  Now I am tired, and I often despair.  I would urge the younger folks to get more involved, but we did not listen to our elders who told us to get less involved.  The tides rise and fall.  Tranquility in old age does not mean giving in; it means giving up neither our serenity nor our standards. And we must keep in mind that we are about to “merged in the sea.”  Russell is also famous for telling us, “The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”  These days the world is often horrible, and yet we must maintain our equanimity and “friendly interest.”  Not easy.

It is always interesting to look at how smart people have approached and lived their own old ages.  For more about the conjunction of old age and genius, you might look back on my blog, “Does Life Have Two Trajectories?”

“Here Be Dragons!” – AI and Old Folks

I have been trying (and failing) to stop thinking about Artificial Intelligence (AI).  It is everywhere.  And it occurred to me that the replacement of our brain by silicon networks has ramifications that old people know something about.

But let’s start with an earlier usurpation by technology – that of replacing people power (physical work and transportation) with machines.  I am always amazed when reading Emerson or Thoreau to find that they thought nothing of a twenty-mile round trip walk to see a friend.  These guys were in great shape!  As was almost everyone in those days (except the filthy rich and they were fat).  Now we are all out of shape and spend hours doing Pilates or walking on the treadmill trying to regain some of the fitness that Thoreau had as a matter of the life he lived.  This only gets worse in old age, as we continue to try to persuade our bodies not to freeze up or flab up.  I, of course, am grateful for technology that allows us to replace or medicate arthritic joints and such, but we must also realize that as we delegated many physical activities to machines (machines that polluted the planet), we also handed over a natural way to stay fit. We have even convinced ourselves that going up and down stairs is bad for us, so we should live on one level or (better yet for the economy) invest in a stair lift.  While there is a time of life when stairs are not possible, study after study has shown that climbing stairs is good for old people.  I read once that when Paris put elevators in some senior residence buildings, the life expectancy actually declined!

Now we are accelerating a parallel process that had already been underway – that of replacing our minds.  If we don’t think our minds will decay from reduced use, we are deluding ourselves.  Anyone who has retired from a mentally challenging job knows that “use it or lose it” is true.  Old folks try to compensate by doing word and number puzzles – any group of elders often drifts to that day’s Wordle or the Jumble in the morning paper.  We take French classes, join book groups, tackle the myriads of math problems that show up on Facebook.  We are trying to maintain what is now not adequately used.

And, incidentally, there is AI designed just for old folks, including a monitor with the cute name of ElliQ which will help you take your pills, do your exercises, plan your meals – as well as giving you someone to talk to at any time!  If your younger relatives give you ElliQ for Christmas, you can be assured that they don’t want you looking to them for help!  And if we do not have to exercise our minds at all, what does that mean?  For the old and for the young?

Spinoza equated intelligence with virtue; Aristotle said that it was our ability to reason that makes us human.  Could farming out our intelligence rob us of both our virtue and our humanity?  I fear it might.  There is also something authoritarian about AI – it has the one true answer, the ability to tell us what we ought to do.  And if you think it doesn’t have its own biases, remember two things: it was created for profit, and it has no ethics. Already AI is biased toward capitalism and away from “wokeness.”  As its usefulness seduces us, we will be easy prey for collateral damage.

Earlier times were more skeptical about technology.  They warned us.  In the 19th century, as technology spread in the form of trains, gas light, and electrical power, there were many thoughtful discussions about whether it was good or bad.  Two major utopias of that period were set in worlds where the decision had been made to discard most technology.  One thinks of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) or William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1890).  These are “post-technology” narratives, where humans have taken life back into their own hands.  Here is Samuel Butler:

True, from a low materialistic point of view, it would seem that those thrive best who use machinery whenever its use is possible with profit; but this is the art of machines – they serve that they may rule.  (from Erewhon)

To avoid this despotism of technology, Erewhon destroyed all the machines created in the past three hundred years.

Similarly, William Morris created a world that has severely limited the invention and use of technology.   Both utopias were in stark contrast to Bellamy’s Looking Backwards (1890), which more or less predicted that science and technology would solve all our problems by the year 2000 – albeit it had also replaced capitalism with socialism, so it wasn’t a profit-based technical utopia.  Hard to imagine.

But, again, as I said at the start, old folks know what happens to our mental and bodily functions if we don’t use them enough.  We also have a long view of the kind of change that technology engenders; we have watched the dumbing down of culture, the plague of obesity, the destruction of our attention span.  Elders are cautious folk, and we are worried.  In the Middle Ages and earlier, when cartographers had gotten to the end of their knowledge of geography, they labeled the unknown areas with warnings:  Hic Sunt Leones (Here Be Lions) or Hic Sunt Dragones (Here Be Dragons).  All warnings about AI and related technology seems to have disappeared – it is now blessed by the President, the media, higher education, and the venture capitalists.  But I, for one, will be looking for lions and dragons.

“Like Foreigners in Their Own Country”

I have been thinking a bit about language these days for at least four reasons.  First, I have been taking a French class at the local senior center.  I passed a French translation test for a graduate degree, but that was decades ago, and I never learned to speak it very well.  Second, I have been rereading my old journals, and realizing how much my memories diverge from the words that I wrote down at the time.   Third, I have been dealing with communicating with my grandchildren (ranging in age from five to sixteen) and recognizing that we are seldom speaking exactly the same language.  And, lastly, having embarked on my “rereading” project, I have realized how language changes in the context of its historical period and in the context of the age of the reader.

Learning a new language in old age is supposed to be good brain exercise.  OK – I hope that’s true.  More importantly, spending time with another language’s constructs and idioms makes you realize that all language is more arbitrary than we realize.  It is not only the words that are different, but the structure is also different.  In French, for example, the pronoun “ils” (meaning “they”) applies to groups of men or groups of men and women – even if women are in the majority.  Groups of women (only) are “elles.”  Even one male in the group changes the pronoun.  It makes me pause and consider more seriously the messages encoded in all language.

Reading old diary entries has reminded me of how slippery language and memory are.  It is not unlike the old game we used to call “Telephone” or “Gossip,” where a message whispered in ear after ear in a big circle comes out differently at the other end.   Words that were written down at the time and survive are intact, and I must believe they represent what I experienced at the time.  However, some memories have apparently morphed to become perhaps more interesting or easier to bear.  I have been amazed.

Language changes over time are nothing new.  My maternal grandmother, who never learned to drive, called their car “the machine.”  Movies were “the pictures,” and the radio was “the wireless.”  When her granddaughter took to wearing blue jeans in college, she insisted on calling them “dungarees” and elongated the word so it was clear what she thought about dungarees as female attire.  With my own grandchildren, I am struggling with my pronouns, my technological ignorance, and a lack of words to describe the kind of relationships teenagers have these days.  Some of their truisms drive me to distraction – like “it is what it is” or “whatever.”  And when did wait and sales staff begin to answer any question with “of course”?

Reading old books is a challenge; can we really understand the context – not just of the vocabulary – but of the situation? Of course, one can more properly understand Shakespeare or Chaucer with notes to explain what certain words meant at the time they were written. But can we realize what it might have felt like to be pregnant and unwed at the time of Tess or imprisoned in the England of Moll Flanders?  Also, the age at which we read a book matters.  As I re-read books that I first opened in my youth, I find that they are totally different – because I am totally different?

This is nothing new.  Montaigne (whose essays I have been rereading as part of my “nothing new” project) said that he realized his words were not eternal:

I write my book for few men and for few years.  If it had been durable matter, it would have had to be committed to a more stable language. In view of the continual variation that has prevailed in ours up to now, who can hope that its present form will be in use fifty years from now? It slips out of our hands every day, and has halfway changed since I have been alive.  We say that at this moment it is perfected.  Every century says as much of its own… (Essays, Book III)

In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift has his hero visit the eternal Struldbruggs, who – like poor mythical Tithonus – get old but never die.  After a number of years, however, they cannot communicate with those around them:

The Language of this Country being always upon the Flux, the Struldbruggs of one Age do not understand those of another . . . and thus they lye under the Disadvantage of living like Foreigners in their own Country.

One of the Buddhist daily reminders is that my body will age and decay.  So will my language.  AI wants to bring me up to date; it will gladly edit my work so it doesn’t seem so … old-fashioned.   Incidentally, it would also like to bring Montaigne up to date.  Cosmetic surgery for the written word.  Spare me.  What is all around me might be a “foreign” language, but, again, all the research shows me that struggling to understand a foreign language is good for old people.  And it doesn’t mean I have to give up my native tongue.

For one of my stories that thinks about language, you might try, “Why My Aunt Josie Has a Limited Vocabulary.”  If you want to surprise yourself, look at a diary entry or letter you might have sent about an event that happened a decade or more ago.  Does your memory fit the facts?  And what does that mean?  Should we school ourselves to accept reality or take refuge in our edited memories?

Charlotte Brontë, Luddites, and AI

After Charlotte Brontë wowed her world with Jane Eyre in 1847, she disappointed her reading audience by stepping away from Gothic romance to write Shirley, at least in part about the Luddites of the early 19th century.  (Both books were published under the masculine pseudonym Currer Bell.) The Luddites, you might remember, were a group of craftsmen who were protesting the installation of semi-automated weaving machines, making skilled weavers redundant.  Shirley, as it turns out, is more about gender, class and economic roles and less about the Luddites per se, and yet is a truly wonderful book with notable and quotable insights on all facets of life.  But, in the end, it shows us a world that is capitulating to technology with the same inevitability that our own world is.

I reread Shirley because I was thinking about Artificial Intelligence.  AI is everywhere.  AI is trying to help me (go away!) write this blog.  The very existence of AI makes me doubt the pictures I see and facts I read.  In the past, mechanization and automation have threatened manual workers and artisans the most (think about type setters), but AI threatens the white-collar worker, the computer programmer, the teacher, the content provider.  The Luddites in Brontë’s novel flail against “progress” to almost no avail.   Similarly, it is beginning to look like the creeping hegemony of AI is inevitable.

But back to Shirley.  When the Luddites initially destroy a loom in transit, this message is sent to the mill owner: “Take this as a warning from men who were starving, and have starving wives and children to go home to when they have done this deed.”  And not all the children are at home, as the mills take root and hire the cheapest unskilled labor:

The mill windows were alight [because it was still dark out], the bell still rung loud, and now the little children can running in,  in too great a hurry, let us hope, to feel very much nipped by the inclement air; and indeed, by contrast, perhaps the morning appeared rather favourable to them than otherwise, for they had often come to their work that winter through snowstorms, through heavy rain, through hard frost….

[Later] It was eight o’clock; the mill lights were all extinguished; the signal was given for breakfast; the children, released for half an hour from toil, betook themselves to the little tin cans which held their coffee, and to the small baskets which contained their allowance of bread.  Let us hope they have enough to eat; it would be a pity otherwise.  (from Chapter V)

Our anonymous but omniscient narrator clearly has his tongue in his cheek.  These children never have enough to eat.  And yet the mills expand, the new equipment is finally delivered, and we move from the plight of hungry children to the romantic interests of the local gentry, including the mill owner.

In fact, Shirley ends in a double-wedding and a brilliant future for the local textile mill.  Brontë’s narrator wraps up by looking into the future and telling us about his visit to the area long after the weddings and the new machinery:

The other day I passed the Hollow, which tradition says was once green, and lone, and wild; and there I saw the manufacturer’s daydreams embodied in substantial stone and brick and ashes – the cinder-black highway, the cottages, and the cottage gardens; there I saw a mighty mill, and a chimney ambitious as the tower of Babel…. (from Chapter XXXVII)

Yes, there are worker’s cottages with gardens, but there is also the chimney and the ash in this once green corner of England.

For many years, optimistic thinkers envisioned labor-saving technology as helping to create a kind of utopia, as giving everyone a chance to use their minds instead of their bodies. Manual workers would unbend their backs and pick up a book or a musical instrument.   Eric Hoffer envisioned university-like campuses for adults, freed from the workplace, who wanted to study in any area they were interested in.  Edward Bellamy imagined a world full of music, books, study, and communal dining.  But instead of having technology free us up to use our minds, it appears that we will have no need of our minds – AI will take care of it.   It might also be noted that Samuel Butler and William Morris wrote utopias where technology is strictly controlled for the benefit of humankind.

Just as the pastoral town in Brontë’s book ultimately and inevitably succumbs to the mill, I have recently watched one area of life after another capitulate to AI.  You might look at the front-page article in today’s NYTimes: “AI on Campus Casting Chatbot as Study Buddy.” The most disappointing defeat has been the way AI has been accepted by educators.  “The students are going to use it anyway,” they often plead, “so we might as well encourage them to use it well.”  That might be true, but I’m suspicious that it would be AI doing the “using” and not the student.  If things are made too easy for us, we get soft – in mind and body.  And if we don’t resist AI now, it is unlikely we will have the mental resources to do it years from now.  The Luddites lost and they lost badly.  But, at least, they realized what they were losing.  And they tried to do something about it.

For a story about how artificial intelligence is not always the answer, you might try my “Two New Apps,” or read almost anything by Ray Bradbury.

Monadnock, Emerson, and the Need for a Still Point

I love Mount Monadnock.  I lived near it for about a decade and climbed it more than once. We could not see the mountain from our house, but its bald peak would surprise me as I drove over hills or around corners; it was a presence in my life. I also love Walden Pond, where I often went to walk and read when I lived closer.  What I did not know until recently was that Emerson bought his forty acres on the shores of Walden Pond in order to build a house with a view of Monadnock.  This, of course, was the “woodlot” on which Henry David Thoreau later built his cabin.  During my walks around Walden Pond, I have never glimpsed Mount Monadnock, but perhaps, when the trees had been mostly cleared, it was possible.  Maybe.

A monadnock is a particular geologic formation; it is an isolated area of harder rock that perseveres as the plain around it gets eroded and washed away.  Mount Monadnock is a monadnock, as is Stone Mountain in Georgia.  As I was thinking about monadnocks, I saw an analogy between a monadnock and an old person – perhaps we are what is left after the more ephemeral parts of life wash away.  Craggy.

But, back to Emerson and his desire to live with a view of the mountain.  Emerson actually wrote an ode to Monadnock, in which he says that the very presence of the stable mountain “Recallest us/ And makes us sane.”  Yes – that stabilizing influence we all need.  “Stand like a mountain,” say the meditation instructors.  T. S. Eliot exhorted us to look for the “still point of the turning world.”

Shelley and Robert Frost had a similar sentiment, albeit about stars.  “Bright star, would I were stedfast [sic] as thou art—” laments Shelley.  Frost describes the function of that steadfastness in “Choose Something Like a Star:”

It asks of us a certain height,

So when at times the mob is swayed

To carry praise or blame too far,

We may choose something like a star

To stay our minds on and be staid.

The idea is that we human beings need a center to keep us from going… nuts.  And it would appear that nuts is where we have been going lately.  Yeats, in “Second Coming,” says “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; /Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”   The last few months have surely seemed uncentered.  Without a “center”… anything goes.  Anything goes.  What sounded like a terrific motto for life when I was a young hippie seems, in old age, to pale in the face of reality.  (Our other motto was not to trust anyone over thirty, and now we find ourselves at the wrong end of that imperative!)

What is the solution?  Is our loss of moorings as a society owing to the decline in religious belief?  Some posit that this is so.  I recently read a piece by Arthur Brooke, the “happiness guy,” that said that after Brooke spent time a lot of time looking into what makes people happy, he decided to practice religion – in his case, Catholicism.  I will say that, for many people, this does not work.  Either they have a tough time working up enough faith to go through the motions or they become so fanatical that they create their own kind of anarchy.  But one must remember (and I am not trying to be flippant) that Dumbo’s feather enabled him to fly, even though he learned later that there was no magic in it at all.

If all standards are relative and all ethics situational – if lenience is the utmost good and rigidity always condemned, how could we not end up in this terrible place in our national life?  Flexibility is highly prized and yet it leaves us unanchored.  When new technologies like AI come along, we are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But this leniency leaves us vulnerable in ways both obvious and insidious.

My husband and I recently re-read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and then watched the BBC version.  Julius Caesar is surely a story of humans manipulating each other, but it is also a story of self-justification on all sides. Everyone saw the situation from the viewpoint of themselves.  Perhaps [a bad word here!], we need a non-negotiable standard.  I don’t have an answer, but I know an important question when I see it.

On the subject of Walden Pond, you might try my story, “Again and Again and Again.” For a story inspired by Mount Monadnock, you could try “Going Down Is the Most Dangerous Part.” For further discussion of Frost’s “Choose Something Like a Star,” you can look at an old post, “Old Age, Space Age.”

Anxiety in Old Age and the Eleventh and Twelfth Commandments of Second Mate Stubbs

I suffer from anxiety (ask anyone around me), but so do most old people.  And, of course, these are troubling times in every way.  I had always hoped that old age – assuming sufficient income and reasonable health – would be a time when I could finally relax; it is disappointing to find myself so anxious. I feel I should be old enough to know better, and surely old enough to realize that worry and anxiety (and one might throw in remorse) are useless states of mind.

There are things to worry about – I can give you lists of my concerns on the personal, national, and cosmic levels.  Of course we must try, as Niebuhr says, to “change the things that we can.” But worry and anxiety, in themselves, are ineffective against everything from tariff chaos to aging disorders. After we have done “what we can,” it is a matter of acceptance and control.  Some people find this through religion (Julian of Norwich assures us that “all things shall be well”), but that doesn’t work always or for everyone.  I tend to turn to Spinoza, who cautions us to rely on our rational capacities to keep ourselves on a calm and optimistic path (more on that here.)  Recently I found echoes of Spinoza in a self-help book by Judson Brewer: Unwinding Anxiety.  Brewer asserts that anxiety is a habit (I agree), and as old people we have had a long time to make sure that our habits are firmly entrenched.  How much of our day is unsettled by worry?  How much of our life?  My days are dwindling down to “those precious few.”  I don’t want “She Worried” sandblasted on my tombstone or on the memories of those I leave behind.

Brewer suggests breaking down anxiety into steps – Trigger, Behavior, Result.  In my case, the trigger is often a random thought, something that has just drifted through my poor brain to worry about.  My memory may be going, but my imagination has never been more ferocious.  So, one might say that most of my anxiety is self-inflicted.  No surprises there.  Of course, the trigger can be external: the stock market, an unexpected expense, or a change in health.  Whatever the trigger, the behavior is incessant worrying and generalized anxiety.  And the result is rumination, sleeplessness, inattentiveness, a mad search for distraction, and a generally bad day.  Brewer’s contention is that just by realizing what is going on, by stopping to identify each step in the process, we can be smart and inventive enough to change it.

It all sounds good, but it necessitates changing some pretty well-entrenched habits, habits written on our minds like wrinkles written on our faces.  Habits might have started in childhood as coping mechanisms and never got discarded.  But I am trying.  I have the time and the will, and I certainly have the triggers.

As you all know by now, I have been wallowing a bit in Moby-Dick lately.  I am reminded of the easy-going Stubbs, second mate of the Pequod, stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a dangerously fanatical captain (sound familiar?).  How does Stubbs keep smiling?  For one thing, he greatly enjoys the little pleasures of life, like eating the first steak cut from a killed whale:

Stubb was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of the whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.

“A steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut me one from his small!”

But one might wonder how Stubbs keeps his appetite for such pleasures amid the challenges around him.  Melville knew we would wonder and, after an unfortunate encounter with Ahab, Stubbs gives us his rules of life:

“Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of ’em. But that’s against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth — ”

Of course, we should think.  I read Stubbs’ 11th commandment as “worry not.”  And I am firmly in favor of his twelfth; although, as I age, I find going to sleep much easier than staying asleep, for if worry and anxiety are not useful, are not good for you, they are even deadlier in the wee hours.

Brewer and Spinoza both exhort us to use our rational powers to counter anxiety.  Again, I try.  I guess the most effective rational argument for me is this reflection:  How many of the things that I worried about have come to pass?  Almost none.  The tree never fell on the house, the stock market rebounded, I was never fired.  Did worrying help prevent any of these things?  It did not.  Most of the calamities that have affected my life could not have been anticipated.  I am old and I know all this.  Now I just have to convince my habit-chained brain to recognize the truth and listen to Stubbs.

I recently saw an old video clip of Huston Smith interviewing Mark Van Doren (here).  I recommend it.  In the course of the interview, Van Doren asserts that we have a duty to be happy.  (Again, I am reminded of Spinoza and his exhortation to be cheerful.)  Van Doren insists that we realize and accept the nature of the world around us.  In fact, he says that this is the function of literature: simply to lay out the world as it is, so that we have no illusions.  Literature should not be didactic, he says; but it should be true.  I will never accept everything, but I also know that I am often tilting at windmills, at things that cannot be changed.  And I suffer for it.  Stubbs and Spinoza help.

Meanwhile, we all deal with anxiety in our own way.  You might try my story, “A Spoonful of Sugar,” to see one way that some of us cope (or distract ourselves).

The Good Life in Old Age

Unlike the obscure and nitpicking scholastics of our time, classical philosophers spent more of their efforts in trying to define what makes a good life. Eudaimonia is a Greek word, meaning well-being, or, perhaps, something akin to personal happiness.  These earlier philosophers were interested in discovering and sharing the best ways to live, and how to hold those standards up against the reality of our own existence.  What could be more important?  And they were not just talking to other academics; they knew everyone was facing this challenge.  I have been thinking about these guys (and unfortunately, they are all guys) lately in regard to old age.  What makes a good old age?

The modern answer would seem to be: enough money to live and travel, enough energy to party and play pickleball, and children who are self-sufficient but ready to take care of us when we need them.  Our independence is of the greatest importance – we don’t want to be alone but we don’t want anyone else telling us what to do. There is nothing wrong with any of these things, but having experienced the personal trauma of moving this year and the collective trauma of what is going on with the economy and the government, I am grasping for something a little less material, a little more stable than finances, climate or personal health.

And there is some agreement among the philosophers about the good life.  Aristotle says that the exercise of our rationality and virtue will lead us to a good life.  So does Spinoza.  What would this look like in old age?  What would it mean to live rationally and virtuously in old age?

The Stoics (and I am thinking mainly of Epictetus) say that in old age, or at any time, to be happy, to live a good life, is to free ourselves from expectations:

The only way to a happy life (keep this rule at hand morning, noon, and night) is to stand aloof from things that lie outside the sphere of choice, to regard nothing as your own, and to surrender everything to the deity and fortune… and to devote yourself to one thing only, that which is your own and free from all hindrances.  (from The Discourses of Epictetus)

This is akin to the Buddhist exhortation not to be attached to things: to be attentive but not reliant, to do the right thing without concern for the consequences.  This is advice that we could all use, but probably a lesson we all should have learned by now.  If you haven’t experienced the disappointments of the plans of mice and men by now, you are fortunate indeed.  Nevertheless, true detachment is hard to come by.  And in old age, things we are attached to fall away at an alarming rate, so we had better be good at renunciation.

Then there is the matter of remorse, regret and atonement in old age.  (I have written about this previously in “Old Karma, Instant Karma.”)  Cicero warns us that the mistakes of our youth will follow us into old age.  Yes, we all know that.  Spinoza gives the best advice in this regard (as in most regards): “Repentance is not a virtue, or does not arise from reason; instead, he who repents what he has done is twice wretched, or lacking in power.”  “Twice wretched” reminds me of Nietzsche’s caution that remorse was like “adding to the first act of stupidity a second.” The Buddha calls remorse “the second arrow.”  Something outside us wounds us the first time; our remorse keeps opening the wound.  Some religions have rites and rituals to help us to atone and erase. Again, if you have reached old age without remorse, you are blessed.

So, we should be rational, ethical, and at peace with our past.  What does this mean?  Cicero is very specific about a good old age: “the tranquil and serene evening of a life spent in peaceful, blameless, enlightened pursuits.”  I agree with the aim, but the methodology often eludes me.  Each of us can only define it for ourselves. We must try; we must work at it.  As Spinoza says at the end of the Ethics:

If the way I have shown to lead to these things [peace of mind] seems very hard, still, it can be found.  And of course, what is found so rarely must be hard.  For if salvation [the ethical and intellectual state of freedom] were at hand, and could be found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it?  But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

 I recently read Florida Scott-Maxwell’s memoir of old age (recommended), written when she was in her 80s and in a nursing home:

I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing age that it is a time of discovery.  If they say, “Of what?” I can only answer “We must find out for ourselves, otherwise it won’t be discovery.”

In these times when the stock market is being undermined, when mores are changing, and the known is disappearing into the maw of the suspect, what better time for an internal “excellent adventure.”  Spinoza pursued this question while he was ostracized from his community and dying of spoiled lungs.  Florida Scott-Maxwell did it in a nursing home.  Epictetus did it as a slave.  We should be able to do this. I can give you no more than encouragement and reading lists (more on that in another blog).

You won’t hear the answers from Cicero or Epictetus or Spinoza or Aristotle.  Or me. That would be too easy.  But you might hear some of the right questions to ask yourself.

On a lighter note, I long ago drafted a story (“It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) on the use of music to improve our mood – one way to a good life, at least in the moment. It’s something I pay attention to, and I know exactly what old songs will temporarily soothe my beast.  But, as the story points out, it is a band-aid and not a remedy.  The remedy would seem to be much harder.

How Do You “Mask Despair”? How Do You Handle a “November of the Soul”?

As my regular readers know, I have been mulling over Moby-Dick after a recent re-reading.  (Re-reading is highly recommended; see my blog here.)  In the very beginning of Moby-Dick, Ishmael tells us that when he is starting to despair, when he feels the “November of the soul,” he goes to sea.  Ishmael thinks that this is a universal solution, and the reason that all over “Manhattoes” (Manhattan) people in despair migrate to the shore, to the docks, and gaze upon the ocean: “Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.”  The ocean does help me when I am in the doldrums.   Perhaps it is the immensity and power of the ocean in relation to the paltriness of one human life.  I recently had a welcome dose of the sea, but it is not readily available to us all and is only a temporary antidote.

Thoreau reminds us that “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation,” so we know we are not alone.  There are others, many others, in the clutches of despair.  Old age may or may not be more liable to this condition, but it definitely provides less distraction from our own minds.  In our younger days, when we had jobs, children, obligations and a hectic schedule all around, there was still despair, but perhaps little time to consider it.  Now, it descends during quiet late afternoons and the wee hours of the morning.  And, lately, every time we turn on the news.

The ocean helps, but so does nature in all its forms.  Wendell Berry finds relief (not alleviation) from despair in wild things:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.

Berry finds “grace,” but only “for a time.”

There are other ways, additional ways, that we handle despair.  Niall Williams’ latest novel, Time of the Child, is about an older doctor who has lost his wife and also lost his faith.  Yet Doctor Troy attends mass, in an effort to ward off despair and order his life with the comfort of a schedule, a routine:

The doctor attended Mass, but without devotion.  After his wife Regina was taken by a cancer he hadn’t seen coming, he had lost the relic of faith he once had.  To mask despair against God, he chose an old tactic: retain a semblance of order, and in this way meet the greatest challenge of life, which is always nothing more or less than how to get through another day.

Oh, the things that we do to “mask despair”!  Is this perhaps the reason that we old people cling to habits, our houses, our ways of life? Rituals, habits, and repetitions paper over despair.  In a world and a body that are failing us, they are something that is ours – built up over a lifetime.

In an earlier book, This is Happiness, Williams talks about how an old woman has braced herself against despair:

As a shield against despair, she had decided early on to live with the expectation of doom, an inspired tactic, because, by expecting it, it never fully arrived.

Again, we know pessimistic people like this, we know times when we are like this ourselves (practically every day in the political realm, I am finding).  Not a pleasant way to live though, but, for some, expecting the worst is often a partial armor against despair.   

 So, what do we do with this despair in relation to our fellow elders: should we share it to make others know that they are not alone?  I remember, as a young woman, the first time I read Virgina Woolf’s admission that life “is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength.”  Someone was finally admitting to me what I thought was obvious, but I had never heard anyone articulate.   Mary Oliver says, “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”  Yes.  The alternative is to buck up and, in our bravado, give others the hope that despair can be overcome.   Later in Walden, Thoreau exhorts us: “We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.”  I think I’m with the ladies on this one.

And there is another reason that we should share.  Our fears and worries, spoken out loud, are seldom as scary as when whispered silently through our minds.  When we expose our fears to the light, they do not disappear, but they often seem to shrink – or, at least, stop growing.  Also, remedies can be shared, as noted above.  Go to the sea, go to the woods, find comfort in ritual or habit.  And discovering that others have survived despair is the best encouragement we can find.

For anyone who came to this page by googling “despair,” and is in its clutches, please remember that you can talk to someone by texting or calling 988 for the suicide hotline.  Despair is a fact of life for all of us at times, but if there is no relief, please get some help.  You are not alone.

When I was young, I often used fantasy to counter despair.  I find it doesn’t work so well in old age.  I wrote a story in order to think about that: “Amnesia at the Airport.”  Try it.  Better yet, write your own story.  And share it.

Ishmael, Odysseus, and Seeing a Friend after 40+ Years

Ishmael, Odysseus, and Seeing a Friend after 40+ Years

In Moby-Dick, we don’t know how much time has elapsed before Ishmael – the only one who survives the voyage of the Pequod – tells his tale.  “And I only alone am escaped to tell thee” is the quote from the Book of Job which opens the Epilogue.  Ishmael has to remember, but there is no one left to keep him honest.

I recently had the experience of having lunch with someone I hadn’t seen for over forty years.  We were young wives and mothers together, and very close over a period of seven or eight years, but then moves, divorces, and misunderstandings drove us apart.  There was no internet in those times for casual contact, no Facebook to keep track of our families.  In addition, I knew this friend through my ex-husband’s family; she had been a lifeline when I had felt isolated in a new marriage.  But after the divorce, she drifted away with all the distanced in-laws.  After all those years, I finally told her how grateful I was for her friendship.

But how do you summarize forty years of your life? Especially, how do you do that with someone you once were close to? There are the facts of relocations, jobs, divorces, marriages, deaths.  There are the milestones of the children and grandchildren.  Ten or twenty minutes took care of the timelines; on what was really important in our lives, I think we barely got started.

And there is the question of what is important.  Seven or eight years into his trip home to Ithaca from Troy, Odysseus is washed up on the island of Phaeacia and the local king gives him a banquet.  He asks Odysseus to tell the guests about himself.  Odysseus had been king of Ithaca, he had been ten years at the war in Troy, and many years at sea.  He responds with these questions (which might very well have been Homer’s questions to himself when he started writing his epic): “What shall I say first?  What shall I keep until the end?”  These are the questions I asked myself when I sat across the booth from my old friend.  These are the questions that I ask myself when I think about my life.

I have done a lot of writing in my life   – novels, blogs, stories, reports – most of which were for my own amusement.  This blog is the only location where I share. And I have never written straight-forward memoir.  As I get older, however, I have had the urge to go back and try to make sense of the sweep of my life.  An autobiography, of sorts – or at least fragments of one.  But trying to piece my life together for my friend reminded me of how difficult that would be.

First, how honest could I be?  I found myself not sharing the more uncomplimentary pieces of my life.  Understandable, but regrettable.  If we don’t share our mistakes, we don’t bless the mistakes of others.  Secondly, I wonder how reliable my memory really is.  With friends, with family, we have all had the experience of recalling an event that no one remembers or that everyone remembers differently.  I brought up some things this week with my old friend that she had no recollection of and vice versa.  Did they really happen?  When biographers piece together a life, they look at documentary evidence of dates, events, truth.  Should we do the same with our own memories?  It should be noted, of course, that even if some of these events never really happened, they shaped our lives because we think they did.

Melville is, of course, writing fiction.  He slips in and out of Ishmael’s perspective and had to have a survivor of Ahab’s tragedy in order to have a frame for his tale.  Melville knew how the tale would end and what he wanted to include to come to that terminus.  We are trying to make sense of a life that, perhaps, does not make any sense.  We may be honorably trying to tell the truth, but our truths are more complicated than can be corroborated by documentary evidence.

I have tackled memoir-like writing at times, but always hidden behind the mask of fiction.  I wrote a novel about a woman visited by the ghost of Jonathan Swift.  By having to explain her life (and the last few centuries to him), she is forced to recapitulate and justify her life.  I also wrote a fanciful piece about a middle-aged woman and child trying to co-write – at the instigation of the child – a rule book for the best way to live (excerpt here).  I published neither, but learned a lot in writing them.  I’m with Montaigne, who said, “What I write here is not my teaching, but my study; it is not a lesson for others, but for me.” But, still, there was cloak of fiction, of story.  Was I being honest with myself?

Borges says that part of the problem is words. Words reduce the ineffable to the mundane.   In “Aleph,” Borges talks about seeing life as a whole, but the tragedy of having to move it into “successive language:” Yet, in his powerful poem, “Everness,” the master tries to convince us that nothing is completely lost:

One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
And his prophetic memory guards from loss
The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.

“God saves the metal and he saves the dross.”  God may save, but we must sort out the “metal and the dross” for ourselves. Borge’s poem reminds me of a line from Shakespeare’s powerful Sonnet 146: “Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;” I don’t know of a better credo for life.  But to do this, we must be able to identify the dross, and honest memoir writing would probably help.

Meanwhile, how would you explain the last forty or fifty years if you ran into a very old friend?  How would you explain it to yourself?

About five years ago, I wrote a blog relaying some suggestions as to how to write a life review: “Feast on Your Life.”  Maybe it could help us as we think about it again.