I have been thinking lately about what it means to get older, how I am getting older. To be specific, I have been thinking about the difference, which is a bit of a stark way to put it, between myself as I am now and myself as a younger man, coming of age. I've been reading a little of John Updike's collected works, starting with the volume of his earlier stories, as a promise to myself which has been standing for about half a year. The earlier stories he writes are typically about a male character, having either a wife or taking a fancy in someone. The male character is usually not fully composed, I would say a little self-centred, having some airs but not quite conceited, lacking a little self-control without being impulsive, judgmental in terms of social class and appearance, even a little snobbish, and yet at the same time, quietly reflective, vaguely, anxiously self-aware, feeling keenly his own conscience, and awkwardly fixated on matters of principle, sometimes short-sightedly, sometimes painfully so. As events pass and conversations transpire, with self-absorbed contemplation, and with knowing such emotions as inferiority, a little spite, and vexing desire, these male characters usually come to a sort of full-circle self-realisation, an awareness of their own emotional edges, misconceived intentions, and yet, in the self-knowledge, some part shame and some part relief. It reminds me of the Borges story of the avatar man, which ends with the words, "
With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him." (The Circular Ruins, 1940) I love Borges. I love him with a pride one has for a grandfather who writes unearthly good literature. Naturally, I have already promised myself to read Borges again, jumping the queue. The day is only so long, and only so many books can be so meaningfully enjoyed. Updike's first bound volume is a beautiful one, covered with dark blue fabric, and printed with bible-paper thin sheets. I hold it very, very carefully to read. Borges' uses stiff manuscript, and is slightly jangled on its edges, like the irregular crusts of thin, chipped rock on a high, dry mountain. It also smells a bit more paper-rich, a bit more complex, like a well kept tome in an old library.
To get older. The premise is of course, the ever-present present, the irresistible illusion that the present is wholly meaningful, necessary and sufficient, and thus also an easy source of self-irony. The past so easily seems lighter, simpler, memorable. I have thought often about the things that I have become in my older age, the things I have grown to accept as part of being thirty three, or the things that I do not even think twice about doing, about being, about adopting as part of the person I am. There is football, I was playing a simple game of "tennis" with a younger man, a game which involves shooting into the other goal from farther than half-court, and in which neither player may use his hands. The younger fellow kept blasting away at it with the ball with his stronger foot, and I kept trying to curl it gently in, alternating feet. I recognised myself in him, and I thought how ironic it is that I now try to guide the ball in. I thought of explaining to him that he probably had a better shot of it by shooting more meaningfully, more accurately, instead of spanking it and hoping it would fly in. But I felt that I should not have taken the advice well if I were him, at his age. It's just a thing where advice is not much appreciated, it brings a kind of inferiority to listen to advice, it's a kind of thievery of a means of self-expression, and of the joy in the genius of self-evaluation and correction. I say this all the time, I like to figure it out on my own. Well, as an older man, I still think it maybe one hundred percent of the time, when it comes to certain things, like football, and writing, and many other things besides. I like to figure it out, to get a rough internal measure of the thing, based on my mental-spiritual web of thought, understanding and belief, before relying on an external benchmark. Of course, the score didn't matter, but the important thing is not to show up the other fellow. Well, that probably comes from growing older as well. Playing the right way, hard, tough, and fairly, for all its utility, is appreciated only grudgingly. I think everyone should play hard, tough and fair, but it hardly happens. It is a bastard variant of the "will to power" concept Nietzsche proposes - everybody wants to show off what he can do, because he feels good doing so, but if he has to or it looks like he tries hard to do it, it becomes laborious and well, uncool. And so, God forbid, one should practice
the fundamentals.
Being older. Being older means sighing a little more. My grandma used to get on me for sighing, long and sometimes relentedly. She didn't think young people should sigh, that they had little cause to regret so mournfully. Maybe it's a matter of perspective, from a woman born during the war. You know, being older means understanding that perspective is determinative, in the same way that behavioural science comprises the hugely important socio-culturo psyche that utilitarian analysis takes as assumed. My grandmother was born during the war, imagine that. Sometimes I look at the buildings around me and I think of how it would have been in the days when war seemed imminent, with all its dread. Perspective is a funny thing. From a child of the atomic age to a child of the information age, it's incredible how different our lives are. I wonder if we float a long a little too easily on these latter-day promises of connectivity, efficiency and triviality. Yes, there's that. Being old, I feel that the handphone is a plague, a crutch that has become a crux. There's this deep unhappiness I get from being with someone who looks at the phone - it seems similar to being amongst the cave dwellers Socrates and Plato described, who prefer security in ignorance and darkness rather than stepping out into the bright sunshine, into the light of understanding. The phone and all its minor distractions seem so wholly
stupid, so trivial, so little worth our attentions. But back to sighing, I think sighing is great, I feel that a good sigh takes the air out of a lot of frustration, even if it sounds a little inauspicious, a little discourteous. I feel that sighing is the physical manifestation of my reconciling with events, and with a good sigh the finality of a compromise feels complete.
The truer tests of being older, I feel, are two: in cherishing solitude, and in accepting that romance is one of those helpless things you have to kind of navigate around rather than towards.
Solitude is one of those things, I think as a younger guy it's so difficult to wrap your head around it. It kind of peters around a bit of social ineptness, a shunning of multifarious social situations, requiring fluidity and calm in various masses of people. To be highbrow with the nerds and to be slapdash with the clownies, also everything else in between, and of course, not to be self-conscious. Solitude is difficult, it is different. It is a sense of self-preservation, but more than that, of the pervading importance of identity and innermost rigidity. But it is difficult to set aside the familiarity and low commonality of social interaction, it is difficult to forsake, in a way, fraternal steadfastness and brotherly bonds. To accept that never again would I turn to another person to commiserate, to mourn, to hold on to in times of trouble. Solitude is often self-fulfilling, people can sense a person who holds back in the presence of company. So that itself is delicate, to cherish solitude without being cold. Well, there is frankness, and a sense of purpose, to commend it. But there is also patience, and I think patience is one of those things which is wholly contextual. It is silly to say of someone that he is a patient man or woman, without setting out the conditions in which, presumably, one was patient. Nevermind, back to solitude. Solitude is being quite glad to be alone, and to not feel left out of something; to feel that what one has, in the present, and alone with one's thoughts, is not only better, but that it is truly good and worth seeking. To know that genuine, frank and polite disinterest is respectable is wonderful, peaceful solitude even in company. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha teaches that suffering includes these five kinds - to be born, to grow old, to grow sick, to be far from the ones you love, and to be near to those you do not love. Solitude seems to sit meditatively between the last two, but I think it underlies much of his teaching and philosophy.
Romance, probably I have had more cause to regret than take joy of, but it is not an aching kind of regret, more of a foppish regret. It's funny, the older I get, the more I think of Gatsby and his great old love. In the end, jilted, all lost. He was too late, he was too unfortunate, and his love and her love measured little. I think of Gatsby, and of Carraway's impression of his mystery, that when Gatsby looked at you, he made it seem like you were the only one in the world. And I think he meant Gatsby's genuinity, or genuineness, I don't think he meant it as Gatsby's ability to charm an illusion on someone. That's such a lovely way to be a person. Yes, I think of myself as a bit of Gatsby, with my old love, with my longing, with my solitude. Staring at a green light in the night, standing at the end of a dock, from across the water. And finally, for the dream to die, for the revelry to fall away, for the dapperness to be a final, ironic stand, hoping against impossible odds. I think of the women I have sometimes had to say no to, and a girl I long to be with, and I think to myself, God, it's a mess. It really sucks to say no, and dating is such a drag and a crapshoot. So being older, I kinda give up on the whole thing. I don't even hope for serendipity any more, I figure these things take time, and I have to be in the moment and not care about the search for romance. So, navigating around rather than towards. It's a bit monastic but I find that I manage.
I would say that the essence of growing old for me is to think wider, to see farther, in the sense of appreciating the wider world, and it's precious oddities and persons marvellous, beyond the narrower ken of my own imagination, and yet at the same time, not abjuring the weight of the inner man, of fire, dash and vigor. To live by the soul. I have often thought about these four things Nietzsche wrote about. His prophet Zarathustra gave this advice in the context of sleeping well, but of course I take him as meaning how one should live so as to live contentedly. There's something so true about this writing - to overcome thyself, to reconcile with thyself, to find truth, and to laugh. Who shouldn't sleep well, by this prescription? And I think that growing older has made sleep, regular, early sleep, quintessential and precious. I am glad for it, to wake up early, to exercise, to eat early, and to have a long, full day in the sun, until one tires out in the evening, old and with cheer.
Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul.
Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled.
Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry.
Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.
