In October this year, I slipped and fell. I’d been shampooing my carpet and didn’t realize that there was soapy water on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it with bare feet. They immediately flew up into the air, just like in a cartoon. As my hip and elbow hit the floor, I had one of those, “Your life flashes before your eyes” moments. I thought, “Is this it?” The container of dirty water I was carrying punctured my leg and foot in a few places. Blood flowed, but nothing was broken.
In recent years I’ve been increasingly careful, walking with my feet slightly apart like a duck, holding the handrail on steps, being extra cautious on rocky hiking trails. This fall was another reminder of how, at any moment, life can take a sudden turn — sometimes for the worse. Be careful!
In November I turned 85. That’s a milestone. My dad died in his early 60s from dementia, my mother at 76 from strokes. Hopefully, I’ll have another five or so years, though I’m more or less ready for whatever walks in life’s door.
Being careful and staying upright includes reducing stress. Our social media would disapprove. They want us stressed and anxiously waiting for their next, “Henny-Penny-the-sky-is-falling” article of panic, gloom, and doom. There is an endless list of disasters for the ever-hovering media to cluster around. As I write this, they have flocked to post-election madness. It’s a repeat performance that I’ve watched too many times. So now, like many previously stay-on-top-of-the-news liberals, I’ve stopped reading anything connected to the machinations of our president-elect, his acolytes, and the swarming media groupies.
Unlike his 2016 election, which shocked and disoriented me for three days, his reelection hardly phased me. I was ready both for his escalating narcissistic attention-seeking actions, and for the media’s attention-getting, anxiety-inducing, and enabling behaviors.
Donald Trump’s self-preoccupation, his lack of interest in policy and the structure necessary for effective action, made his first presidency historically one of the nation’s most ineffective. So now I’ll wait and see what actually occurs, rather than succumb to the talking heads’ dismal prognostications. The social media only wants my attention. They don’t care for me and I’m not giving them my time or attention.
I also keep in mind:
“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”, Niels Bohr.
“We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” Seneca.
With a handful or so of years remaining, I’m not building any grand plans. I’m content with family and friends, volunteering, a little travel, exercising, some creative arts and crafts, and these jottings. It is more than enough for a deeply satisfying life. My partner Penni and I just returned from a rich three weeks visiting family and very long-term friends in Australia — the land and people I left 61 years ago.
Staying upright is joyous, though the world around clamors, “Read this. Buy that. Look at ME!” With only a little effort we can ignore those seductive siren songs trilling “Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!”
Savor the moment — our love and relationships, what we’re doing that feels good and makes a difference, smiling outside and inside through the day, happily appreciating the life we each created on this precious jewel, our living planet.
This is the reality I know and choose for these remaining years: enjoyment, pleasure, love, happiness.
Thank you for reading,
Barry
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