"LET US LIVE WHILE US LIVES . . ."

         A dear friend of  many years sent an email in response to What a Mess ! His observation was a personal comment about some of the 'realities' of growing older, particularly that at some point, it's all going to end.  That awareness is causing him great existential angst...ANXIETY in CAPITAL letters.  We grow old, we die. Then what?  In greater or lesser degree, many share my friend's observation, myself included.
(And, in an effort to be fair to my friend, I realize that perhaps I have 'read into' the intent of his comments.)

      Other friends from their faith perspectives will assert with certainty that they 'know' what comes next. In this current post, I have no interest in joining a theological dialogue, conversation, or , even, argument. Perhaps at another time.

    For now, my friend's lament is causing me to focus, instead,  on what I call The Meantime.  The duration of that period obviously can contribute to great dis-ease. Posts, commentaries, opinions, geriatric stories abound in cyberspace. Just google, Growing Old, and see what you find. Some is substantive, some just plain JUNK. (I hope these musings do not fall into that latter category. I claim no profundity. . . .Just some personal musings and mutterings.)

     I went back to T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Literary criticism (to say nothing of comprehension) is not among my skills.  But these lines virtually waved to me: I grow old, I grow old.  Just previously, he had inquired, And would it have been worth it, after all ...?  

    Circumstances can make huge differences in how someone responds to that last question... matters such as one's physical health; loneliness or a strong support network; abuse and other trauma, past or present, and whether or not healed;  mental illness or health; hope or despair; etc. I do not see our 'meaning' to be that of  Sisyphus perpetually rolling that stone up the mountain only to have it roll back down upon him just as he reaches the top. ( Albert Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus comes to mind.)

     Purportedly, William James, author of The Varieties of Religious Experience, told an interviewer that he believed in a life beyond this one because (paraphrased as I remember it) he thought the Universe is not wasteful and "I am just getting fit to live".  

   Well, at 75, it is past denial that "I grow old..." I hope that I do not die anytime soon.  There is much that I still wish to do, see, accomplish, family and friends to spend time with. . . and on it goes. Which brings me back to The Until and , has it been (is it) worth it. I know 'stuff' now that I wish I had known back then.  Guess what?  I didnot know it.  Probably that means at some point I am going to know 'stuff' that could have been good to have known in 2013.  Too much obsessing on that can produce a kind of 'analysis paralysis.'  How, then, am I going to live the NOW ?  (If you wish, ask that of yourself.) 

   One of the keys for getting good ANSWERS is to ask good 
QUESTIONS.  For now, I am grateful that my 'answer' is affirmative.  Many persons, circumstances, events have assisted me in arriving at this conclusion, lest that affirmation carry some kind of self-sufficiency tenor that is not intended.

    A story has provided a kind of 'touchstone' as I have reflected on my friend's email.  In the1970's, I taught US History in a nearby college.  In Part II of the survey course, students wrote 'Family History' term papers based on conversations with family members about the impact upon their families of events such as The Great Depression of the 1930's, World War II, sociological changes, Viet-Nam,etc.
One student reported that during the Great Depression while her grand-father was working with a tenant farmer on a chore,  the tenant's child came by en route to the nearby store and inquired if his father wanted him to make any purchases.  The father drew a nickel (5 cents) from his pocket with the instruction to purchase a pound of pork chops.  As the child was walking away, the father called him back, gave him another nickel with the instruction, "Here, boy. Buy two pounds.Let us live while us lives."

     It likely is not the whole story, but let us live while us lives.

        Satchel