Origins

I am not at all ready to write this post…

I should… I need to… think about it more… in greater depth… to come to conclusion… or insight…

I am perhaps driven to write by an artificial deadline.… I am flying across the country tomorrow on a trip to see my son, his wife and sons. This piece will publish when I am trying to sleep at thirty-thousand feet on the redeye home.

I suppose it is a reflection on aging… I turned seventy-nine three weeks ago.

That isn’t a big decade-marking age, when I might be forgiven introspection. It is a weird age,  not quite eighty, twenty-one years, a young majority, from a centenarian.

I have now outlived my sister Connie, who died of lung cancer at seventy-eight.

My sister Lynne celebrated her ninetieth last spring.

When my mother was seventy-nine, she broke down in tears. “I never knew anyone who was seventy-nine,” she wailed, even though her husband had turned seventy-nine four years previously, and her sisters and mother had lived to their eighties. The family has since concluded that my math-whiz mother had begun to see memory loss and other symptoms of the dementia that plagued her till her death at ninety-three.

I’m not seeing memory loss, beyond wondering why I went downstairs into the den earlier today only to remember that I wanted to retrieve a book… after I came back upstairs. Arrrgh!

So why do I find myself watching YouTube videos on Carl Jung’s views on aging today?

My health is mostly good.

A friend of Lynne’s once said “after fifty, it’s patch, patch, patch.” I have some minor patches to chase.

Trigger fingers are responding to cortisone shots, stretching and massage, precluding surgery, so far. Restless legs, which I always thought was a bullshit disease invented to sell drugs, is diminishing with acupuncture, allowing me to sleep.

The writer’s ailments, backpain and constipation from sitting too much, resolve when I remember to move. Hearing aids lower the TV volume and allow me to hear my granddaughters better. I am getting my second dental implant in a week, and will schedule cataract surgery after the first of the year.

So mostly good.

I do have a little exercise-induced shortness of breath impeding my walks, which medical professionals and I haven’t quite figured out yet. I was pleased to see that my Jordanian LinkedIn friend Dr. Ali Anani is writing about his resilience, despite being older and having a few more patches than me.

Which is why I was completely taken aback by my reaction to a Substack post by Andee Scarantino. Andee is in her forties, a marathon runner, and a writer I quite admire. Andee writes of her own growth with a raw realness that I have compared to Beat poets.

Andee wrote how she was done with chasing improvement for its own sake. She used her marathon running as an example. She asked that her readers refrain from the kind of “Come on Andee ‘Buck Up’ encouragement comments that predominate online, saying it would “make her angry.”

Was I jealous of her running, an identity I had to give up at her age due to injuries and weight gain? Was I feeling sorry for my old, fat self. Probably.

I wrote a comment that can only be described as nasty, a grumpy old man rant, accusing her of whining that her young life sucked. She responded that “Her life didn’t suck; she loved her life. She had only tired of the drive for constant improvement.”

The next day, I realized how inappropriate my comment was, and went to take it down. I found myself locked out. I wrote Andee privately and apologized and said “I’d block me too.”

Private apologies for public acts are unacceptable.

This post is as close as I can think to come to a public apology.

I am sorry, Andee. You didn’t deserve that reaction to what is apparently going on beneath my old skin and has little to do with what you wrote. I need to remember something told to me earlier in my life, which is obviously a lesson I am still learning:

“A chip on your shoulder cuts off blood-flow to the brain.”

Carl Jung

Today, I am looking at videos about what Carl Jung said about aging:

I read a lot of Jung in my twenties and thirties. I found his concept of the collective unconscious a great explanation for those creative ideas that seem to just arrive. His work on archetypes, I have revisited several times during my career.

What I probably didn’t read, or at least don’t remember if I did, is his work on the second half of life. Oh, well… I was in the first half then… young and stupid… “I hope I die before I get old…” as Pete Townsend wrote.

So I will set myself the task of reading Jung’s “The Stages of Life,”  Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and “The Afternoon of Life.” For as he said,

“ The morning asks what you can become; the evening asks what you have become.”

I have just begun to investigate this wisdom. What I have learned so far is the five pillars that Jung describes as happy aging:

1. Good physical and mental health. The way you think about growing old changes your body. The way you use your body changes your mind. Until two days ago I would have said I was doing well here. Today not-so-much.
2. Good personal and Intimate relationships. In youth more is better. In age fewer deeper relationships.
3. Build eyes for beauty in art and nature. I have always been extremely aesthetically motivated, but I have family and friends who are better at this than me.
4. A reasonable standard of living and work that still matters. I am blessed with the freedom to write stories and songs, but must carve wood again. And maybe build something physical.
5. Something to stand on. Philosophical or religious underpinnings of living. I heard what Jung said when asked if he believed in God. “It was difficult to believe, I know. I don’t need to believe, I know.” Mystical? An expression of faith in something beyond oneself ? I probably have the most work to do here.

As I said in the beginning of this piece, I’m not ready…need to think more… seeking insight.

Watch this space.

P.S. Billie and I often vacation at the end of the earth looking west and I am definitely not a morning person. So, I’ve seen more sunsets than sunrises in my life, like the one at the top of the page – Cape Town, South Africa 2015 (photo by author). I resolve to balance the scale with more sunrises. Like this one of NYC from the ridge (photo also by me).

P.P.S. I have reflected on aging before. This LinkedIn post from five years ago shows I was  more mature then than now.

P.P.P.S. Andee Scarantino, Again. I’m so sorry