Life?

 Well, not much has happened since I last wrote. Things have been incredibly dull this past year. How about all of you, dear readers?

My retirement is looming, and I often address these questions: should I be busy during retirement? Is there something I need to accomplish before I die?  How will I leave a mark? Do I need to leave a mark? And I'm finding the answers pretty interesting. Basically it boils down to this: I could leave something behind of mediocre quality, or maybe even something excellent. I could also make contributions to other people's lives and be a force for good. I could also just enjoy a quiet life, not doing a whole lot until I take the big dirt nap.

And that's a great place to be; a person who is comfortable having had a career, not a notable one, but a nice one anyhow, and is equally comfortable with the idea of passing unsung into the great beyond. It reminds of this poem by Pope: 

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.

Whose heards with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.

Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.

 

By all accounts, Pope himself was a contentious and ambitious man, which makes this verse all the more surprising.  My dear friend and compadre, Mike Wilson, who has himself just retired, seems to be taking this all to heart. He lives alone, and practises his instrument every day, as he has done for the last 50 or so years, paints beautiful water-colours, and reads a lot, mostly history. These days we don't till the land, and milk cows, but we have enough to eat, and hobbies, and even with the disease currently scourging the land, we can see friends, one at a time, or on line. I have found the idea that I might "Steal from the world, and not a stone tell where I lie" oddly comforting. 

It is the work of a lifetime to learn to die with equanimity, so some say, and I agree in a sense. When one has attended this great banquet, and had his fill, why stick around? And yet; there is a pull towards life. I remember my Mother in hospice care, only a couple or two days left to live, taking her jello. I asked her: why do you want this stuff? And her answer was simple: "because I like it". A body wracked with pain, beset by visitors, still rejoicing in a cool, sweet treat. 

I once did a thought experiment: You are dead, but you have the chance to come back to earth for 20 minutes. You will neither see nor speak to anyone, and you will be doing something completely banal or even unpleasant, like driving to work, or scrubbing the kitchen floor. When I asked my future dead self, "would you come back under these circumstances?" the answer was always "yes". I was surprised, to say the least, but I shouldn't have been. Even in times past, when in the throes of a minor depression (it didn't feel minor to me), I knew that this life was " the greatest show on earth", even if that expression makes little sense. 

I am reminded of what Joe Zuskin, my colleague for a year in the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal  once said: "Life is short, but if you do it right, it's enough". And oddly, right now, I feel like I have had a good measure of what life has had to offer, and could die tomorrow with no complaints. After telling this to my dear friend Larry, he confided he felt the same way. Do I wish I had climbed Mount Everest? No! I have never been to Khatmandu nor Timbuktu nor Machu Pichu, nor even Kalamazoo, but I feel quite satisfied nonetheless. I have lived, and I am glad to have lived, and at least for now, I have few regrets.

 Right now, I am reminded unfortunately of the anthem of dysfunctional maleness "My Way", words by Paul Anka, written for Frank Sinatra, who was once lithe of body and progressive in his politics, but who had become a bloated Republican at the end, as so many rich people do. I hate this song, because it's the anthem of the self-satisfied self-made man, whose ego is as swollen as his bank account. Maybe some of you can offer me a kinder interpretation of this tiresome ode to the life of a successful Alpha Male. I like Sinatra the striver, the man who understood a broken heart, not the macher, the legend. 

All this Sinatra-bashing is putting me in a bad mood. I love Sinatra; one of the greatest interpreters of popular song who ever lived. Bashing others makes the soul shrink, and not expand, and we want our souls to be free and not tight in our chests. What is the soul? That's a topic for a later installment, but it's timely. During the current pandemic, we have been afforded lots of time to look at our lives and to ask some questions that in our previous lives we didn't have time for. The topic came up this week; my friend Bob, who is as well-balanced an individual as I know, loves to ask people what a soul is: Is it immortal, or is it just the meeting up of a brain and a body. Is there a cosmic- or world-consciousness? When we die, does our soul go up to heaven? 

There are people whom I love and respect, who firmly believe that is what happens. It amazes me that intelligent, perceptive, even brilliant people will fall for the obviously empty promises of a non-existent super-being. I find the concept of an after-life absolutely unbearable. Life is hard enough without having to attend on the humourless Lord of Hosts and sing in his bloody choir once you have snuffed it. But as the French have it: À chacun son goût.

Lots to ponder, and as we are stuck at home, now's the time. Hope your reflections bear fruit, dear Reader. Be well, and I hope you are finding things to enjoy about your life today.