When In Doubt, Invent: On Turning 70

When In Doubt, Invent: On Turning 70

So tomorrow, July 2, I turn seventy years used.  Or, I have used up 70 of the total number of years of life I have apparently been allotted … whatever that total is going to be.  Maybe I won’t make it to midnight tonight, and then my personal data will record that I lived sixty-nine years.  Which is actually nearly wrong.  Because from my first breath, until now, it has been 70 years minus about twelve hours.  No, no – eleven hours … soon to be 10 hours and counting down.

And much of what I have learned in that one half century plus a score, is that quite often the only answer to a lot of life’s question’s is, “There might just not be an answer.”  It behooves a person to be ready for that.  This is a concept, a theory, that is just a little spacey to explain. 

It begins this way, “Every person should be moral.”  This arouses all kinds of rejoinders and arguments.  All that is obvious.  To me it basically boils down to, “Life is easiest if you don’t break or kill things.”  And, being evolved creatures and our first driving impulse is to go on living as long as we can, then if something is easier than some other thing, our primary impulse is to do the easier thing.

And, without a lot of obvious discussion, those things that aren’t completely used up, last longer.  Look – it’s like this; 1. It’s easier to be healthy, than sickly.  2. Avoidance does not equal easier.  3. Deciding not to make the effort to be healthy, leads to a lot of effort into avoiding the simple effort it takes to be healthy.  Or, If you don’t use  your body, it will degenerate and die.  We know this.  However, if you use it up, it is, by definition, dead. 

Now living to 70 years old, is not an accomplishment, of any note, in and of itself.  And, the answer to the question, “How do you live to get that old?” is not, “Do this, or that, or eat this and not that.  Don’t do risky things, but you do hafta take chances. “  Lots of standard responses like that.  You can invent all kinds of answers though, that make a lot more sense.

“Everyone should live life to the fullest.”  And, just how do you do that and not take chances … not do some risky things.  “Be smart about the risks you take.”  Well, duh!

But if you’re too smart about some risky things, you will probably talk yourself out of doing them.  “How do you be smart enough, but still do risky things that don’t seem, on the surface, to be all that smart?”  Shit - I don’t know. 

I’ve always done all kinds of risky things.  I won’t list them, just take my word for it.  Well, one thing – I once got lost on a glacier during a whiteout snowstorm.  Okay, one more.  I once rode a bicycle 300 miles in twenty-four hours – when I was thirty! In a remote desert!  During August!  Why?  It just seemed like it would be interesting at the time.  (The glacier story is a bit much to include here today.  But it did happen.)

Seems like I’ve been hearing, “Isn’t that dangerous?”, all my life.  Living to be seventy years old is dangerous.  This old body is breaking down following a rather continuous curve.  So what? Every morning I wake up, I ask myself, “Oh god, not again?  I gotta do this again?  Work, eat, work some more, eat something, dump what I ate yesterday, work some more.  When is this gonna end?”  But, once in a while something really cool happens … each time it seems like a little miracle.  Wow!  And, some day’s things I’d rather not happen, happen. 

But when in doubt, keep going.  Sooner or later I stumble onto the right path or somebody says “Good job.”  Or, somehow things change and I get to learn something new.  So, in conclusion … “huh … did you say something?”

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