You're Too Old to Believe In Happy Endings, But Wise Enough to Believe in Endings.
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back
Why knowing you are ending is perhaps the greatest secret to happiness
Melissa came back transformed. Bhutan had long been on her bucket list, and finally she had taken off a few weeks from work to explore this famously happy country. She hiked the mountains, met lots of locals, explored and above all, sated her intense curiosity.
What she had learned, and what she dips herself in regularly, is an appreciation of the immediacy of death. While to Westerners that sounds pretty awful, it is, in fact, one of the real secrets behind how Bhutan’s people are so very happy.
The calm acceptance of the end of life allows them to celebrate and revel in right now. Right now can - and does- end without warning at any moment.
The person in top photo might well have been run over by an ox cart seconds after that shot.
Right?
You and I can be taken home suddenly. If that happens, have we really lived up to that moment?
Or have we been whipsawed by our fear of aging, our fear of living to the fullest right now? Fear of risks, love, looking foolish, costing us our lives?
We are way Too Old to keep sleepwalking through life as though it’s a dress rehearsal. We are IN IT, right now.
Perspective, grace and the beginning of joy
Melissa has also done several years of work in elder hospice, which is a form of service to those who need help in a variety of ways as they age in place.
Such work, as she aged into her middle sixties, gave her kind insight into what happens when people choose to be joyful right now as opposed to being terrified that youth has left the building.
As though the appearance of youth (combined with money and being thin) are the only valuable things in life.
Really now.
Her trip to Bhutan locked in those impressions and has become a way of life for her, with which she struggles as she- and the rest of us- deal with Western denial of age, aging, and death.
She also introduced me to the profoundly important book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
It’s frankly terrifying. Because it’s true. But because of that truth, ultimately hopeful.
The other book we both read, which gets right up in your face, is Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande.
Both of these books invite the reader to dance with the idea of death in a way that is, for us Westerners, terribly awkward.
We gonna live forever, right?
Bezos and all the billionaire bros are gonna buy their way into immortality, and that stardust gonna rub off on us, right?
That Frankensteinian attitude kicks the can of living well right now down the road, in that awful way that “I’ll deal with it later” allows a cancer to metastasize.
Each day we don’t live is a day we’re dying, a day we don’t get back. Because living or dying each day is an attitude.
Some years ago I posted an article which dealt with the regrets of the dying, based in part on palliative nurse Bonnie Ware’s excellent book. An old childhood friend promptly sent me a vicious response: SOME OF US AREN’T RICH.
I was- and largely still am- living on a military disability. By most measurements, that is hardly rich. I scrimped, scraped and slept in hostels and tents to be able to do my adventure travel. I gave up all kinds of comforts for the sake of experiences.
In that way I was indeed rich. But not my bank account.
But you can see how Western assumptions about riches infected her attitude, as though money is the sole determinant of joy in life.
One of Melissa’s elder hospice clients was in her 90s and filthy rich. She constantly complained about how she didn’t think “this would ever happen to her,” as though funds are some kind of magic talisman to fend off death.
She was filthy rich and thin. And miserable. Money guaranteed her nothing other than a slightly more comfortable death.
Death is coming. Can we dance towards it?
My favorite YouTube on this topic is by Prince Ea from 2016:
I challenge you to watch that several times and ask the same question.
Martin Luther didn’t have a dream.
The dream had HIM.
What dream has you, if you would but let it?
This exquisite video begs the question of each of us:
Are you really alive?
If not,
When will you start living?
The gift of this in-ya-face question is all day, everyday.
About 150,000 people die every day. Today, that was NOT you.
Isn’t that worth celebrating?
Can I be intensely grateful for the fact that at least most of my parts are still working, even though these days some hurt more, and some most assuredly don’t work like they did ten years ago?
Or am I going to descend into complaints about what age has taken, rather than celebrate that life just gave me another day?
What are we waiting for?
Permission?
If that brought up pain, or tears, or regret for you, you’re in excellent company.
You and I GET to choose how we frame the day the moment we wake up.
Oh crap. Another goddamned day. I hate my life.
or
I GET another 24 hours. Where do I want to go today? What do I want to do? Who do I want to be?
If the latter angers you, go back to the YouTube by Prince Ea.
Those folks on their deathbeds, with their absolute clarity of vision, would give anything to GET another shot to do what they never did: risk, love, try, adventure, speak truth.
Knowing that I am ending gives me permission to do what I want to do right now. Explore, try, risk, laugh, faceplant, stumble, fail, LIVE.
There are plenty of unhappy endings in life. If you’re around long enough you will live through your share. You and I still have time to fill our lives with something amazing.
Let’s be deeply humbled by the intense, shimmering brevity of life.
To paraphrase Gandalf,
What are you and I going to do with the time we are given?
Let’s play.
I can’t believe you made it this whole way. Whew! Thanks. If you like this kind of material, consider reading a few others or even….
Know someone who needs a lift? Consider:
This was everything I needed to read today, Julia.
When I was 31 I had a friend who changed my life. H convinced me that I did not need to sell my skills to a huge corporation that regarded me only as another cog in their machine. I left my job and became my own employer for life. H also taught me another good lesson. Although he was devoting huge amounts of time to build his own business, he also pursued anything that interested him, from long motorcycle trips to hang gliding. He was in his mid-40s when the leukemia took him, less than 2 weeks after diagnosis. At the funeral one of those eulogizing said "He died with no regrets." So should we all.