The Shape of Things to Come
I am always pleased when a meditation rounds out—comes back to where it started with asense of completion. I never know where this process will take me, but I hope, when con-templating an uncomfortable truth, that my uneasiness will resolve into some kind of deeperunderstanding.I like to think that life rounds out as well, that with age comes wisdom, a sense of completion
and fullness, but the evidence is not reassuring. I worry that life simply aenuates. I have
frequently heard older people say, “we have downsized out of our big house,” and I say thistoo, but not without trepidation.
We don’t have room for as many things. We have goen rid of much. We hesitate to add
anything because there is less space in our condo. At a certain stage of life each acquisition
is an armation, a statement that life grows in possibility, endlessly opening outward. Thepromise shimmers, almost, almost innite. In shedding the things we so joyfully accumu
-lated we acknowledge the opposite.At my 65th birthday party I was talking to my friend Alice. I was aware she was older than
me, but I wasn’t exactly sure how much older. She knew, she said, because she had aended
my 60th birthday party. “I’m ten years older,” she declared emphatically, adding that sheremembered feeling at that previous party that it was unfair.I think of Alice and of the Alice in the children’s song who disappears down the drain, and
it seems to me my friend Alice is aenuating. Partly this is because she is so thin—shemaintains her weight with a ferocious aention to her diet and exercise—and partly be
-cause she has withdrawn from life in many ways. I’ve known her for about 15 years, since before she retired from a career as a high school art teacher. It may be she has always found
the world a bit of a burden, but I don’t really know—this aitude may only have developed
in recent years. Nevertheless, for her, now, this is freedom, a freedom that she recognizes asconditional and limited.I have travelled half the distance to the age that Alice called unfair and am discomforted at
the prospect. I worry about my own life aenuating. I too eat carefully and exercise regu
-larly, and I hope that my good habits will carry me along for many years still. Nevertheless,I have seen enough friends slip over the edge to perceive life as somewhat fragile. I amconcerned—a concerned citizen!—but don’t know what to do, don’t know what to think. I
am a rm believer in social action, but organizing won’t help. There is no civil disobedienceto address this injustice. Demonstrating won’t set it right.
I ask myself, what can I do to change the shape of my life, to round it out rather than see it
gradually diminish like a line narrowing to a point, to nd some wisdom that will promotea sense of fullness rather than loss. A good diet may add some days, but it neither lls nor
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Thanks, David...okay...and when the things that seem to you enough..aren't enough...what then...i'm more than just interested...your quest is my quest...
David, Thanks for this. I'll be 67 on my next birthday and the elder in my men's group of 31 years just died. We're a group of 7, and I'm the middle brother, sometimes leaning toward the 3 younger guys, sometimes toward the 3 older. But with John's death I I move into the elder group, and I may even be in the "next man to die group." Ah, life is wonderful, all the way to the end.
strange and wonderful and unpredictable. I didn't intend to become the poet of old age.