I have settled on "growing down" as a description of the next 30
years of my life ("if, if, if, cry the green bells of Cardiff").
A childhood of sorts is coming on, a slow losing of touch with
reality as my hearing deteriorates (the world is too noisy, anyway). How long before my eyesight goes,
my sense of smell, my ability to feel? I'm not worried about
Alzheimer's, if I get it that won't be my problem; I will be in some
other planet. I do hope I can avoid pain.
There's also a dawning realization of what wasn't and won't be. I
didn't grow up to be President of the United States like John F. Kennedy nor win the Nobel
Peace Prize like Albert Schweitzer. I wasn't a particularly well-liked individual (although I
was a profficient seducer, one on one). I took care of myself and mine,
passably well in material terms, but I don't think that outside my household anyone's life is
better because I existed.
My generation was going to
bring peace and love and and sharing ... and here we are ...
fighting "terrorism," watching African-Americans unjustifiably killed by police with
impunity, watching how even in the
richest countries the poor swallow up the middle class into their pits of misery while a banal meaningless few live in Luxuristan.
Growing down is a kind of solution. Perhaps there is reincarnation.
Perhaps I was even worse in a past life and in the next I'll carry the
lessons of accomplishing nothing in this one.
Eventually it will be all
over. A thousand years from now, or one hundred thousand perhaps, an archeologist will
pick up a bone fragment from my skull and exclaim, "ah, a primitive from the turn of the 21st
century."
