When you get to be middle-aged it’s disconcerting because
you’re in the prime of your life, but for the first time you can see the other
side of the hill (and the finish line.) It’s weird to look around at your
friends and realize you’ve all entered the next age bracket. And your conversations
inevitably turn to the body: energy levels, aches and pains that were never
there before, the advantage of having a child around to fetch things off the
floor… Joint and back pains take the place of wild road trips and crazy late
night antics. The old cliché is true; just as you mentally start to figure out
what it really means to win in life, your body begins to show signs of defeat. In
these conversations, as everyone bellyaches about their pain and loathing,
someone always pipes up with, “Well, it beats the alternative.” To which I say,
“Does it? Does it really?”
Is our fear of the unknown so strong that we would rather
choose pain and suffering? Not me. I prefer a sudden death to spending years immobile
or worse, in constant pain. I’m pretty sure I know how I’m going to die and it
will be sudden. According to the palm reader at Mountain Fair my pancreas could
‘flare up’ while I’m driving, which I take to mean I’ll die in a car crash. There
was something about the way she looked up at me, then quickly back down at the
folding table, that made me think she could see the cause of my death in my
palm. Plus, car accidents run in my family.
Probably my favorite thing about this life is that no one
knows what happens when we die, and yet everyone subscribes to one theory or
another. Mine is kinda like reincarnation, but with a slightly different take. Not
like the movies, where an old man sits on his porch in a rocking chair— cut to
a beautiful sunset on the farm, and by the time we get back to the man his
chair has stopped rocking. Then, in the very next scene, he’s a baby being born
with the same old man voice. I believe when we die the energy, or soul, or
what-have-you; the difference in weight between a living body and a dead one;
goes back to the source, back to where it came from. And I imagine this source
as an abstract ball of gaseous matter that spits and sparkles like a geyser at
Yellowstone. Instead of picturing individual lottery balls being thrown back
into the forced-air lottery machine, I think each one of us is like a spoonful
of soup; we are eaten by life and then regurgitated, so-to-speak, back into the
pot on the stove.
I also like to think that, just like a video game, the
levels get harder the further we go. In other words, we each started out as a
white man of privilege, born somewhere like England, or Texas, and by the bonus
round we’ll be a burro in Central America. With each life, as we overcome
obstacles and gain empathy, we progress to a harder level of living. It might explain
some of the injustices we’ve got going on in the world…
I’m hoping the in-between time is peaceful and calming, like
the feeling as a child when someone plays with your hair. But I could see it
being like the movie Defending Your Life starring Albert Brooks and Meryl
Streep; everyone’s assigned a public defender to look back on their triumphs
and trials, and a judging panel decides if they are ready for the next round.
And then there’s the popular Sunday School theory; a long single file line
ending with a white man with a white beard consulting a book to see if we’ve
been naughty or nice. I have to admit, it’ll be a real knee-slapper for me if
that turns out to be the case.
However this crazy beautiful thing we call life ends, and
wherever our energy goes, I know there will be love. And hopefully, a nice
little bench to rest my aching feet.
