While this series of “mini”-reflections on aging are clearly personal and about my own aging process, they are also meant, hopefully, to resonate with the experiences of others at or near my age.  And so, here is the fifth post in this series.

The Time That Remains to Me—What Do I Have to Offer?

As noted above, these musings are not meant in any way to suggest what others might consider as they think about the question posed.  I suspect, however, that it is not uncommon for people who, like me, are in or flirting with their 80s, to be thinking about “the time that remains,” and that for many of us there is a “trigger” that posts the question like a luminescent sign in our minds. For me, it was my heart attack back in February—being told that my cardiac event occurred due to blockage in the left anterior descending artery, known as “the widow maker,” and would likely have been fatal had it not been caught early, was a confrontation with mortality at a level I had never known. And thus “the distance from now to the finish line” and what I wanted and/or should do with that time moved front and center.

I cannot say that my thinking about this was motivated by fear or depression. For whatever reason, neither of those emotions ever found their way into my daily life. I had already come to terms with some inevitable factors that accompany the aging process. Are my mobility and balance less than they used to be? Yes. Is my energy level lower than it used to be? Yes. Is my memory a bit less dependable than it used to be? Yes (although my wife insists that it never was as sharp as I’d like to think!) Do those things matter? Well, yes and no.

Because beyond those issues I was acutely aware that things had changed and that I was living within a different set of unpredictable boundaries than I had ever consciously confronted. But rather than settling into that “nook” in waiting mode, I somehow saw this new reality as a time of opportunity. How that happened and why, I truly don’t know but, while I guess it will sound a little over-dramatic, I was reminded of a quote from Albert Camus that I discovered a long time ago, but hadn’t thought of until recently: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer” (The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays). And, thus, the question, What do I have to offer? To others? To myself?

What I may have to offer to others, which I think is the most important of the two questions, depends in part on what I know and am able to do based on my background, my education, my professional and avocational careers. But it is also based in part on none of those. And in some cases what I do for others, I’m also doing for myself, and vice versa. 

To some degree, then, it’s impossible to separate “for others/for self” in a given activity. Here are some examples.

• One of the volunteer activities I do is recording printed materials for the blind and vision impaired. I looked for this opportunity based, in part, on my avocational 30+ years of experience in doing commercial voiceovers for radio, TV, and videos. But there are any number of other volunteers who do this very effectively through the same service organization as I do who have no prior experience at all. And while I was drawn to this initially as a service to a population who find it difficult or impossible to read printed material, I also enjoy it and gain personal satisfaction from it. So for others/for self.

• I serve on the Board of Directors for a non-profit service organization in Asheville and will soon join a second one. One of them (the Mountain Area Regional Reading Service) supports and makes possible podcasts and internet streaming of the recordings noted above. The other one (Hands and Feet) sponsors and provides volunteers from all over the country for a year of service to some of Asheville’s most vulnerable citizens, with a focus on poverty, hunger, homelessness, and discrimination.  In some ways, my 25 years of administrative experience provides a helpful background for participation on these boards. But I brought no expertise at all to the actual work that these organizations do or the populations they serve. And I draw a great deal of personal satisfaction not only from the policy-making and oversight duties of the Boards, but also from moving beyond those to participation in the endgame of the services they provide.  For others/for self.
• Then there is the blog in which this will become the next post. Some of what I have written has come directly from my career in the world of teaching and learning, both as a teacher and an academic administrator; some from my long and continuing fascination with philosophy and the questioning mind that it feeds; and some from purely personal reflections on my own experiences. Have I written in the hope that others will read and profit in some way from my reflections? Yes, of course. But on another level, I write because of my own need to revisit and coalesce in my mind some of my earlier writings, to explore in these advancing years the continuing development of my own world view, and to give expression to the ruminations of my questioning mind—as Wittgenstein put it, “to scratch where it itches”—i.e. I would continue to write the blog even if no one read it. For others/for self.
• A few months ago, I joined the Autumn Players, a group associated with Asheville Community Theatre that does eight or so Readers Theatre productions each year and am currently in rehearsals for a role I am playing in an upcoming production. Since these are offered to the public in Asheville and surrounding communities, one could say, quite accurately, that I am doing this for others. However, given my avocational acting career of thirty-plus years, and the fact that my age and limited mobility make the likelihood of my ever again being “on stage” in a traditional theatre production highly unlikely, one could also say, quite truthfully, that this is my way of continuing to do something I love in a venue that is possible and that feeds my own needs. For myself/for others.
• A cardio rehab program is where I spend an hour and a half three times a week in an intensive exercise program as well as trying to stay faithful, most of the time, to a low fat/low sodium diet. It’s something I absolutely do for myself—my health, my well-being, my very life could depend upon my faithful persistence. But is there anything at all altruistic in this effort? Well, yes, I think so—I’m trying to stay healthy as long as I can for my wife, my children, my grandchildren. So for myself/for others.

As is obvious from all (and probably too much) that I have said, I haven’t found anything, at least in my life. that is purely altruistic—i.e. intentional and voluntary actions that aim to enhance the welfare of another person with no expectation of any self-benefit.  Perhaps “pure altruism” doesn’t exist, although that is philosophical conundrum well beyond what I wish to explore here. Suffice it to say that I tend to agree with the philosopher, Peter Singer, who presses for what he calls “effective altruism,” by which he means doing things to benefit others in the most effective way possible without raising the question of its “purity.”

Finally (sigh of relief permitted), let me turn to a couple of activities and some reflections that seem purely—or nearly so—offerings to myself.

• Some months ago I joined a men’s group through OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The group, one among many, is composed of 8-10 men who meet twice a month and—to put it succinctly—talk about “things men don’t usually talk about.” While there are topics proposed for conversation at each meeting, there is also time available for individual members of the group to bring up anything going on in their lives that they wish to share with the group. Trust is the foundation of the conversation—what is said in the group, stays in the group!  Do individual members benefit from what others in the group contribute to a conversation? Yes, of course. But I feel that I participate primarily for what I receive rather than what I offer to others.
• Also through OLLI, I take classes that are offered, usually for eight two-hour sessions, three times a year. There is a wide variety of course topics taught by highly qualified people. I can’t see this as anything but an offering to myself for what I learn and enjoy.

Then beyond these activities that involve interactions with others are those times of introspection, of quiet contemplation that happen along the quiet corridors of our minds—sometimes with purposive intent and sometimes as an unbidden surprise. My friend, Joel Stegall, in a comment on my previous post, raised some intriguing questions and perceptive insights about such ruminations at this stage of our lives. And while I’m quoting him somewhat out of context, I think he is on to something when he speaks of “a longing for something more . . . . a restlessness of the soul.” He puts it this way:

“Maybe it is the part of the mind, or spirit, or soul that keeps looking, not out of desperation but in a desire for fulfillment.  . . . Could it be an underlying and continuing drive to find something better, something beyond present experience? Living in the here and now is a view I can appreciate. On the other hand, it also seems authentic to give a nod to the sense that there is something more. Maybe that push, that drive, is the manifestation of a deep spiritual need to be a part of the larger experience of whatever it means to be fully human here and now.”

If he is correct—and in my own experience I resonate with his observations and insight—this is something we offer to ourselves and something we should offer to ourselves because it is also an “offering of thanks” for the gift of the life we have had and that we seek to fulfill in the time that remains to us.

After having gone on way too long, I will close with this beautiful and relevant quote from Diane Ackerman:

“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills every day.  Where there is no risk, the emotional terrain is flat and unyielding, and, despite all its dimensions, valleys, pinnacles, and detours, life will seem to have none of its magnificent geography, only a length.  It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what savage and beautiful country lies in between” (A Natural History of the Sciences, p. 309, in Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, p. 113).