I Feel Your Pain

Things are quiet from my end lately. Life, however, is loud. The waves of change and challenge are crashing down. With a slow emotional reflex, I am trying to deal with it. My mother and one of my good friends are dealing with the hardball of cancer. While both of them vocalize assurances of “I’m-ok-isms “those of us on the sidelines stand idle, not really knowing what to do. We are simply stuck on the mountain in low gear, foot on the brakes.

The sidelines are a tough place to be. You are not in the action. You are not being poked, prodded, zapped, and forced into MRI tunnels. Far from the action, yet you suffer from malaise, frustration and lethargy? It is not your body filled with chemo, radiation or pain. But yet you stand by just hoping to do or just say the right thing.

So, I’ve decided to amp it up! My mother needs me to help her think through the realities of her future. So I need to start thinking, better, smarter, faster. My friend and I are writing a book and right now she is dealing with energy swings post-chemo. But, I can certainly put pen to paper and keep our dream alive. As of today, I am getting off the bench. We are a team and when one is down, the other rises to keep things going.

This is the blessing of love and relationship. It took me aback for a moment, but I am taking my foot off the breaks. I will continue forward a little slower, but much steadier. I am not interested in my Ferrari styled high gear. But I am moving none-the-less, for them both. I now understand the saying “I feel your pain”.

It's Always Too Late

Recently, I read an article written by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker about one of her favorite writers, George Eliot.  Mead had encountered a quotation attributed to Eliot that reads as follows,  “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  Mead thought that neither the wording nor the sentiment sounded like her understanding of George Eliot.  So she set out to find the source of the quotation in Eliot’s writings, or to prove that Eliot didn't  write it.

            After many weeks of investigation, Mead was unable to find the quotation in any of Eliot's work. However, she did learn that it was first published less than a year after the novelist died in 1880.  Eliot was famous for writing aphorisms and other quotable text, and this sentence, “It is never too late to be what you might have been,” was published with several other Eliot quotes.  The other quotes were each linked to a specific work of Eliot’s, but this particular quotation was not.  In the end, Mead had to confess that although she didn’t think the quotation sounded like the George Eliot she knew, she could neither prove not disprove conclusively that Eliot wrote it.

            Mead’s suspicions about the quotation came from two directions.  First, the sentence frankly sounded far too direct and simplistic for the famously verbose and subtle novelist.  More importantly, Mead believes that the idea seems to contradict one of the key themes in Eliot’s most important work, Middlemarch. 

            The protaganist of that novel, a young woman named Dorothea Brooke, marries a much older man, a scholar whom she perceives to be a first-rate intellectual.  To her great dismay and regret, after they marry, she comes to understand that her husband is engaged in tedious, obscure research for a multi-volume work of philosophy that centers on an equally-obscure thesis. In other words, he has been wasting his life toiling endlessly on a project of little merit and less interest to the rest of the world.  Rather than being married to a brilliant scholar, Dorothea finds herself tied to a first-rate “ditherer.”

            What Dorothea does with her life after this realization is much of the story of Middlemarch.  In Rebecca Mead’s reading of the book, the theme is that life—rather than being the stuff of great deeds and great accomplishments and great love affairs—is instead quiet, routine, even dreary for many people.  Unlike Jane Austen’s books in which the “best” people are rewarded with happy endings--usually marriage to someone both wealthy and exciting--Eliot’s characters, good and bad, have lives that feel more real.  The people she writes about carry on and do the best they can, despite life’s disappointments or setbacks or unfulfilled dreams.  In fact, Mead argues, what Eliot is celebrating is the heroism of living a life that doesn't fulfill all of your dreams.

            Thus, as Mead says in her article, it seems unlikely that George Eliot would ever have written that “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  Instead, Eliot would more likely have argued that it is always too late to be what you might have been.  She gives us characters whose heroism is defined not by the successes in their lives, but by their courageous and persistent efforts to live and to thrive within the realities of daily life,  ordinary expectations and small happinesses.

            

Don't Mention It!

        Remember the old advice about topics you’re supposed to avoid in polite company?  Religion, politics and money usually make the list.  But there’s another subject in our society that is so taboo, we’re not even supposed to think about it, much less discuss it with others.  That subject is death.  Especially and particularly our own deaths.

         Death—the idea of it, the fear of it—is not just discomforting; it’s downright terrifying to most of us.  But the fact of the matter is that we are all getting more old than we are young.  (That’s true of nearly every Western society, by the way, not just of individuals).  The reality is that much as we hate to contemplate it, we’re not going to be around forever.  So we try to ignore, dismiss, or avoid any thought of what comes after—after.

         And what goes right along with this is an attempt to deny the aging process, too.  The logic is clear:  if you get older, you’re getting closer to your own personal “D Day.”  Therefore, Western culture in particular not only doesn’t honor the notion of aging, we cringe at it, we mock it, and we deny it. 

         And when we deny both aging and its ultimate consequence, death, we also deny something fundamentally important about ourselves.  Human beings seem to have an innate need to create some type of “immortality” for ourselves.   For some people, this may center on the idea of an afterlife in some other sphere.  But whether we believe in an afterlife or not, most of us also want to know that we will leave an impact here on earth.  And, whether we have ever thought about it or not, the choice of whether and what kind of legacy to leave here on earth is ours alone.  

         We often talk about creating a legacy, and that seems to be the right word.  Because ultimately, legacy building is a creative task.  it relies upon imagination, hard work and hope:  three things without which nothing creative would ever exist.  We have dreams for the future; we labor to accomplish them or at least set them in motion, and we rely on a fundamental sense of hope that they will bear fruit in years to come.  That's really what legacy is--hope in the  future, in things that are lasting and valuable not just for one person or over the span of one life, but well into the future.  

            What do you hope for the future?  What will you create that will live after you?  What will be your legacy?

Consider Me Antique

Automatically, when we think of aging in this society, we think of all of the negatives, all the things we lose rather than what we gain.

This is easy because the things that change, fade or decline are mostly physical and the improvements are not. So we look in the mirror every morning and see the crow’s feet and the gray hairs. However, you can’t look in the mirror and “see” wisdom. You can’t try on a new pair of shoes and realize that you know yourself better.

Think of a piece of antique furniture. The chair or dresser is likely to have a few nicks or scratches. The finish may be worn in spots, and the drawers may stick or the chair joints may groan a bit when you sit down. But an antique dealer will tell you that the value of a piece like that doesn’t lie in its being in perfect condition. Far from it. The value is greatest for a piece whose provenance and authenticity can be seen and felt. Ironically, the imperfections of an antique—the very nicks, scratches and other blemishes that show its age--are what make it most valuable.

Similarly, we can look at ourselves and focus on all the little nicks and scars of age. We can fuss over the superficial blemishes, the signs that we are not the perfect specimens we once were. We can try to cover up, remove, fill in, buff out the surface signs of age, or we can do what the antique dealers do—look beneath the façade to see the true value that lies within. And then care for ourselves—about ourselves—in the same way we would a valuable antique—marvel at our resilience, cherish our quality and rejoice in our beauty.

So, from now on consider me antique!

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