Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
Age-ing (Growing Older)
Originally posted on September 25, 2017
I’m age 80 now. My wife and I are reading an intriguing book about ageing titled
Aging: An Apprenticeship, edited by Nan Narboe. This book’s goal is to help us think about the finitude of our living and to prepares us for our dying, our mortality, our limitedness.
The book got me thinking about my own philosophy, which, I must confess, is entirely improvised, cobbled together from parts of different theories, different traditions, plus my own ideas. I confess further that I’m apophatic, which means I know explicitly that I cannot know. This fits with my dimensional theory. But stated metaphorically, I get to be an assistant to God’s evolution—perhaps indeed a part of God, analogous to one of my brain cells being a part of me. Lest I be criticized on any number of grounds (horrors!), let me confess that I just made this up, and by no means is it a fixed opinion. I know for sure that even if it is a bit true, it is so very limited, as I am so limited; and that’s okay with me.
Anyway, the idea of working towards building a better world, even if this is only one of innumerable inhabited worlds, somehow satisfies me. Not that I’m unable to envision more mind boggling ideas; it’s just that I’m no longer inclined to do so. My duty, my dharma, is to think about certain aspects of this existence. (I’m aware that there are myriads of other aspects I don’t care to bother with, to think about.) And if I can, I’ll express those musings on this website, in these web-pages.
I viewed this book on Amazon that you guys are reading. It does seem interesting. I will add it to my every growing wish/to read list. Aging does bring about reflection, comparison, contrast and musing from so many angles (me at this age or that age, me early in my career vs now, me physically, emotionally, spiritually, socially, economically, me married, single and or dating etc…). The me asking the ultimate questions like will it hurt, will I be alone, will I know and understand, what happens afterward. Will I have control? I like this part below taken from the book sample –
“If not endings, what? Shifts, transformations, the caterpillar to butterfly. Pauses, illuminations, and moments, briefest moments of conclusion. The slipperiest of moments, proved from the diploma, the divorce papers, the eviction notice. The Berlin Wall comes down, concluding fifty years of visible separation. Monica’s book hits the remainders table, concluding two years of national insanity. Elvis is dead and yet he lives. In black ink, the bard says three hundred years later, “My love may still shine bright.” Death is an end, so they say, but how does this simple story come to be?”
I turn 54 tomorrow and from a well know “Buffy the vampire slayer” character, I do see myself as cookie dough. I am not done baking yet.
I’m glad my book found its way into your hands, and into what sounds like an intriguing life-long conversation between you and your wife.
My best to you both.