I don’t know what it is about getting older, but the luster of many things has dimmed a bit for me. The ecstatic joy I used to feel over the slightest little thing—a trip, an event, some experience, an acquisition, maybe an activity—seems to have dimmed considerably in the last year or so. Oh, don’t misunderstand, I’m still embarrassingly happy and love almost everything I do, and I still get great excitement and pleasure out of everything! It is obvious that I am still far more enthralled with life than most people appear to me to be, but I will accept, no, I must admit, that the raw edge, the sharp vanguard—the promise, if you will—of treasures just down the road, is beginning to fade. I’m not AS excited, entranced, enthralled, enthusiastic, and anticipatory as I was in my youth. It seems that what was once exuberant excitement and utter joy over whatever I was experiencing at the time is becoming now more of a studied pleasure, an overwhelming contentment and an encompassing satisfaction. As I told my neighbors who have also traveled extensively and seen a lot of the world and done many exciting things, “maybe I have become overly-expectant.” Alton, the husband, suggested that perhaps “ jaded” is the better word for what is happening to my emotions. And he may, unfortunately, be right. But I hope that’s not true for each and every experience is and are unique and hold its and their own private rewards! One cannot compare Little River Canyon in North Alabama with the Grand Canyon out west, a trip down the Tennessee River to a journey down the Yangtza River through the Three Great Gorges, a hike to the top of Diamond Head in Hawaii to a climb to the summit of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, or even dinner at Phuket Thai Restaurant at Providence Square in Huntsville to an authentic Thai meal savored in the mountains of Chiang Mai Province of the Kingdom of Thailand. I know it is ridiculous to even think about making such comparisons! Each new experience should be greeted with anticipation and wonder, and enjoyed for what it is; its own unique characteristics! And I try so very desperately to do so as I once always naturally did, and I also try to not even think about others as to whether they are bigger, better, longer, deeper, farther, higher, brighter, prettier, tastier, more exciting, or any other superlative! Such comparisons inevitably spawn disappointment! Yet, lately, more and more often I inadvertently end up feeling a bit of a sag, or maybe a lag, in my emotions about things I’m doing! The anxious anticipation that once accompanied virtually everything I did now often needs bolstering! I somehow just can’t seem to find the “Umph!” to boost my enthusiasm and raise my excitement level; my joy! However, I am beginning to track down the culprit! Aside from health issues that tend to drag anyone down and hovers over everyone’s bliss like a gloomy cloud now and then when we are cursed with them, I have also recently caught myself thinking morbid thoughts about the temporary nature of life and the impermanence of my own life! I sometimes catch myself thinking, “what’s the use of buying that,” or “what’s the purpose of doing that,” or “why plant that tree,” or “no point in painting that,” or “I’m just wasting my time buying a new car,” and other such morbid thoughts with always the same gloomy conclusion, “because you probably aren’t going to be around a whole lot longer anyway!” I am becoming too keenly aware that there is far more life behind me now than there is ahead of me. I am such a rational being that I can’t deny the facts! Sixty seven is old age . . . not middle age anymore, but OLD age! And, considering the state of my health—fibrillating heart, peptic ulcer, gastrointestinal problems, endochronatic problems, osteoarthritis, back problems, knee and shoulder problems, etc., etc., etc.—I know full well that, at best, I’m probably not going to see two more decades! I think back two decades, and it was virtually only yesterday! And time accelerates the older we get! So, like it or not, I’m afraid it is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that has tempered my enthusiasm, honed the edge off my joy and muted somewhat the enthusiasm I used to have for everything! Oh, I’ll keep planting new things in the garden including trees that I know I’ll never get to see flower (but someone will), I’ll continue going to interesting places, I’ll proceed right along doing new research for my lectures, and I’ll persist in planning for tomorrow even though I know full well that my odds of seeing it grow less and less with every passing day. And that’s the rub! It’s the diminishing future that is robbing me of my joy! I spent my youth thinking about and planning for tomorrow whereas, now, alas, I’m afraid I’m guilty of spending too much time thinking about yesterday and looking with anxious trepidation what tomorrow may hold. For, my friends, no matter what we may say or what we may hope for, the passing of time is not a pretty thing for most of us. More things slip away from us and the road ahead, though downhill, gets rockier and harder to traverse. Oh, I also know that I have a problem with being just a little too philosophical, but that, too, is a product of the aging process. When I was young and never thought about the final “curtain call,” I was less contemplative and much more impetuous and spontaneous! I grabbed excitement and pleasure wherever I saw it lurking, but as I get older, my mind engages more and more in mental gymnastics contemplating the meaning and purpose of life. Once I thought only of the departure and the journey, and now I spend far more time pondering the approach to the terminal. Oh, I think almost nothing of the end for that will take care of itself, but it is the last few miles of the way when most of the passengers have already departed at various other stops along the way, the dining car is closed, everyone has packed up and just waiting for the rush to disembark. I contemplate too much the last stretch of the way when we go underground away from the light coming into the station and lose sight of the beautiful scenery that accompanied us along the way. I don’t mind the train stopping in the least, it’s the getting there that causes me consternation. Oh, I have always been way too philosophical for my own good, rejecting as I did the trite clichés and the tired old paradigms even when I was a kid! I have always sought truth and facts rather than myth and mystical hope and I’ve preferred reality to fantasy, but, in old age, they bespeak a painful and harsh reality. I look around me and observe the truth of life, and, frankly, I don’t like it. It’s depressing! And I see no way around it. Oh, I could indulge in wishful thinking and subscribe to irrational and illogical dogmas that try to sooth our fears and allay our apprehensions. But, alas, I am too accustomed to following the truth and not deluding myself. Thus, I see a not so romanticized end coming faster and faster toward me and I see the inevitability of the unwashed reality just on down the road. No matter how much I try to divert my attention and find joys and pleasures to distract me and take my attention off the inevitability, it’s still coming relentlessly no matter what I do. So I just do my best to think positively about every present moment, cherish the past, hope for the future and try my best to hold onto that youthful wide-eyed glee with which I once greeted each new experience! In the vigor of my youth, I knew that, if I didn’t like what the moment brought, I had many more opportunities coming down the road to change it to something more appealing. Now I just try to savor the good of whatever life brings my way at any given time! I try to squeeze all the zest out of whatever each day brings! Maybe we’re not meant to have the same excitement and enthusiasm we had when we were thirty now that we are septuagenarians. Perhaps we’re meant to lose some of youth’s vim, vigor and vitality as we grow older, but I don’t have to like it. It could be that less thrills and chills and more thoughtful contemplation and appreciation is the lot of us all in the maturity of our lives. Maybe I need to stop thinking so philosophically all the time, stop projecting so far on down the road, and stop wanting to be thirty again. Perhaps I should just ride that ox cart, or that catamaran, or that elephant, or that sky-lift, or whatever made life thrilling and exciting for a time, and enjoy the downhill slide wherever it takes me. After all, the ride is free from now on for I’ve already paid the fare . . . ! Here are a few pics of some beautiful things in my back yard to lift the mood and being joy, I hope, to your heart . . . they do mind!
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 01:58:00 +0000