Category: Aging

Measured

I am, if nothing else, measured.

I think linearly. Deliberately. Some might even say ploddingly. When I gather data to make decisions I plug my emotions, shut them below deck even as they heave against it; they unbalance me from time to time, but I don’t let them get to full throat. I consider as many perspectives as I can, though that seems innate rather than something for which I can take credit. And I try to be generous towards other people in my assumptions about them.

In my head I know there’s a place in the world for me, because there’s a place in the world for everyone. Yet in my heart I have doubts.

The world of arts and letters is stuffed with talent. I haven’t chosen to write as much as I feel compelled to do it. But of what interest are my thoughts, my ideas, my observations compared with both the wide and the deep perspectives shared by other authors and artists, particularly those who come from places underrepresented in our collective narrative? My prose doesn’t soar or dazzle, and my themes are simple, universal. My advantages are an unflinching gaze and pleasingly straightforward expression. That feels meager.

The world of analysts is also full, and though I have the talent and the nerve for it I don’t have the fire. Analyzing for profit is a competitive market, and I lack the motivation to win. I’m curious and creative and unafraid of ideas, but I might be collaborative to a fault. I have no agenda other than understanding. It is how I’m wired.

So I have a compulsion to create where I won’t necessarily succeed, and where I can more likely excel I have little interest. The conundrum of my life, though one I don’t own exclusively. I know there are others with similar situations, people who want to do what they aren’t best-suited for doing.

So how do I measure my value in such a place?

I haven’t a clue.

I am testing that value. I’ve committed to a year of writing to see if my voice does matter, if there are enough people interested in what I have to share to make the dedicated effort worthwhile. I will always write – compulsion, remember? – but it might be more of a hobby than a vocation. It’s a beautiful dream for my writing to support me, and once in a while dreams do come true.

But if this dream remains just that, if there isn’t space for me in the world of letters, then I’ll need to make peace with that and try to return to the world of analysis. I don’t really know how that will work, however.

I’m older and definitely wiser, but I also stepped out of that world for quite a while. My business performance since I retired from corporate jobs is abysmal, though the covid pandemic is wholly responsible for that failure. And while I’ll probably be more at peace with a role back in the business world I will likely still lack the passion that a full commitment requires. Commitment is kind of important to those who would engage my services and pay me for them.

Perhaps I’m destined to close out my working days doing a collection of part-time jobs. Credit counseling. Tutoring. Perhaps even making coffee or stocking shelves. In other words, doing things I’m neither suited for nor driven to do.

And wouldn’t that be fitting for someone who couldn’t find his place because his head and his heart just weren’t aligned?

New Year, New Home

2023 will be one of significant change for me (I hope).

Change in how I spend the bulk of my working day. How I earn a living. Where I earn that living. With whom I share my time. Yet as we turn the page into the new year my thoughts are with my parents, who will make just one significant change (I hope).

They are leaving their 4-bedroom home with its huge patio and multi-terraced garden in favor of a 2-bedroom apartment in a senior independent-living complex. I’ve been staying with my parents while waiting for my post-divorce life to begin, and though I was initially opposed to their move – they love their house, and my father is an enthusiastic gardener – I’ve come to see the wisdom of the move. They just don’t have the stamina they once did. My father is 87, my mother 82, and keeping up with the house and garden takes more energy than they want to give them. The reason for the move makes eminent sense. And I get it.

So they are not leaving their house kicking and screaming.

And yet it’s still not without stress.

Odds are that this new apartment will be the last place they live together. If – really, when – their health fails, it’s unlikely it will afflict them at the same time and in the same way, so even if they are in the same facility they may not be in the exact same place. And while we don’t talk about it, I think it’s clearly on their minds. How could it not be?

Mortality is the tie that binds us all. We all come face-to-face with it eventually, with varying degrees of grace. And this move for my parents is the most tangible evidence to date that they are approaching that point of their lives when their deaths are real possibilities. Not likely, but definitely possible, and more possible than it’s been before.

My father faced prostate cancer a few years ago and kidney cancer last year. He had moments of fear during each scare, but the information he got from his doctors in both cases was encouraging, and there were other options for treatment if the procedures didn’t succeed. We are eternally grateful that they did succeed. He was also in a small-plane crash in Tanzania 28 years ago, but that happened so fast he didn’t have time to reflect on his risk.

My mother has age-related macular degeneration, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Those illnesses erode her quality of life and hint of struggles to come, but none of them are currently life-threatening.

But moving into a smaller apartment with no yard to maintain is a tangible admission from them both that the scope of their remaining time is narrowing. My friend Jim’s parents lived in a retirement community that talked about the go-go years (where people were able to do anything they wanted), the slow-go years (where they could still do some of the things they wanted to do), and the no-go years (where they were limited to things in their residence). My parents are still enjoying their go-go years, but the end of that freedom is in sight, and the implications for what’s ahead are sobering to them.

And they are feeling it.

They’ll still make the move, but settling into a new community will include living with a new awareness, that, after a lifetime of moving about in the world, they might finally be in the last home they will see.