I Hope I Die Before I Get Old, Part Two

Image by Ralf Designs from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal." -Ray Bradbury (from Fahrenheit 451) 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

In part one, I declared that there's bad old and that there's good old. I explained bad old thusly:

"I don't ever want to be so old that maintaining my personal financial and ideological status quo is the primary reason I keep getting out of bed in the morning -- the pursuit of purpose and meaning, and fun, be damned. 

I know/have known/know of a lot of people who are younger than me but who are actually much older than I am. I'd rather be dead than be that sort of old."

{I know that I still think quoting yourself as often as you do is a bit creepy.}

Now, as to good old...permit me to begin with a disclaimer. 

Not that it's going to stop me, but unless/until/if you're good old you're not going to fully understand what I'm on about. Also, like many, perhaps most complex/subtle things, it can be pointed to or hinted at with mere words but must be experienced to be truly understood. 

Placing things in their proper perspective are words to live by, particularly nowadays. The seemingly ever-increasing speed of daily life + the never-ending information tsunami + the time-honored media (old and new versions) strategery called If it Bleeds it Leads = a seriously skewed perspective. 

{So we're skewed?}

Not necessarily, Dana. We can (try) to live like a stoic philosopher, or a recovering drunk/druggie, and change what we can while making the best of the rest. 

Big BUT, never forget that nirvana/heaven/utopia is ALWAYS going to be just around the next corner so (try) to relax, and make the best of the ride. It's going to be over much sooner than you think. 

If you're fortunate enough to become good old, which doesn't necessarily (but commonly does) have anything to do with being physically old, you will be blessed with Cosmic Geezer(ette) Perspective (CGP). 

"Memento mori (Latin for 'remember that you have to die') is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death." -Wikipedia

I first encountered the term when I bumped into it somewhere and read something about medieval monks keeping a skull in their cell to serve as a memory aid. Remember dude, heaven or hell is waiting for us all, best not wander off Straight&Narrow Blvd.

However (the Wikipedia article provides a broad overview), this "symbolic trope" is common all over the globe in widely varying cultures, has been for thousands of years, and doesn't necessarily refer to following all the Rules&Regs of a given ideology to obtain paradise forever and ever, amen. 

For many H. sapiens, including me, it serves as a reminder that no matter what comes next, or doesn't, you will eventually be deleted. 

{Not once H. sapiens figure out how to upload themselves to the cloud!}

Let's hope so, who wouldn't want to spend eternity as a ghost in a machine? Get away from that plug! Achieving CGP means — that no matter what's next, or isn't — acceptance. You now know in your very bones, so to speak, that you're gonna die, and you can live with that.   

For the uninitiated, looking death in the eye, can, and often does, bring on a panic attack. Holy shyte! I could wake up dead tomorrow... I could drop dead any second! I should do something! 

If you're one of those demented people who think H. sapiens are to "Gaia" as terminal cancer is to normal H. sapiens you'll be thrilled, right?

If you're one of those fortunate people (more or less) confident that heaven awaits, you'll double down on following the Rules&Regs as best you can and hope God is a forgiving sort with a sense of humor. 

If you're an atheist or an agnostic and have a panic attack you'll be able to easily reason yourself out of it, right? If not, medical science has developed a plethora of specialists and medications to assist you in living with this and any number of similar problems.   

CGP, on the other hand, is sorta/kinda enlightenment for the masses. The Sanskrit word nirvana literally translates to "blowing out." You know how when some really intense experience (good or bad) ends and you experience a deep, heartfelt sigh, PHEW! (for lack of a better word)?  

It's like that...combined with acceptance and a new perspective. The bad news is that it will come and go. The good news is that it keeps reasserting itself like an alarm clock with a snooze function that can't be disabled. I think that if it becomes permanent you will be enlightened, or close enough.      

If you were born with Must Be Used By _______ stamped on your bum how would you spend your time? 

{Say what?}

If you achieve CGP you won't know what your use-by date is but you will know you have one, it's inevitable, and that it might be any time now. It will feel, um...really real, as opposed to vague, abstract, and waiting for you somewhere beyond a distant horizon.

The good news is that there's no bad news. 

You may be in no hurry to die, but you won't be particularly upset that you're going to. All of the passions, fears, goals, duties, dreams, etc. will still be there, but the pot will be simmering, not boiling. 

Clarity. You will know what you still have to do, what you really want to do, and will balance them as best you can fully aware that life is what happens to you while you're making other plans so there's no point in getting upset about it, although you still will from time to time. 

"Good" implies "bad" and vice versa. Together they constitute an inseparable whole and there's just no way around it. All that you can do really is all that you can do. 

Deep inhale, blow out, laugh at yourself.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Why Old Men Cry (Part One)

  

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples." -Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Dear Stickies and gentlereaders,

I am, officially speaking, a member of the (in?)famous Baby Boom generation, people born between 1946 and 1964. Have you ever wondered who decided on those dates? Or the dates that bracket the Ds.O.B. of other generations? 

I consulted the worldwide web of all knowledge and the very first hit returned revealed that the rumors aren't true. There is not an obscure department — buried so deeply in the Census Bureau and staffed by bureaucrats that are the otherwise unemployable relatives of powerful Senators and Congresspersons who rarely bother to actually come to work — where this sort of thing is decided. 

Pewtrusts.org: "...through a somewhat haphazard process a consensus slowly develops in the media and popular parlance." 

Are you aware that people born in the "early 2010s" aren't Zoomers, they're Generation Alpha? Have we started over? Why wasn't I told?

{Are you wondering what this has to do with why geezers cry?}   

That's easy. A fundamental tenet of my Overflowing Cistern hypothesis includes the age of the Geezer in question, more on that in a minute.   

I recently saw an interview in which Jordan Peterson (Boomer) was asked why he cries regularly, and in public, which reminded me of former Speaker of the House John Boehner (Boomer, Red Tribe) who was regularly attacked by members and supporters of both tribes for being a lacrimaniac. 

{What's a lacrimaniac?}   

Well, technically, there's no such word as best I can tell. 

{Ah, you're making up words again.}

But in my defense, lacrimation (the secretion of tears) is a word so it follows logically that... 

Anyway, I thought the responsible thing to do, before proposing my hypothesis, was to have the research department investigate if there might be a scientific consensus; does old dudes crying have anything to do with the physiology or psychology of old dudes?

Answer, no. There are myriad opinions floating around, but no consensus. The guys couldn't even find an unimpeachable meta-study that'll be debunked at a later date.  

Therefore, for your consideration, permit me to present the Overflowing Cistern hypothesis. 

A cistern, if you're unaware, is according to Wikipedia, "...a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water."

The word waterproof is important in that in this context refers to the fact that although there's a way for water (or tears) to get in it's supposed to stay there. 

{Permit me to cut to the chase to save us all some time, big boys don't cry, right? You're cistern thingy is an obvious metaphor. At some point, the cistern all the old dudes have funneled their tears into over the years starts overflowing, right? Next thing you know a given geezer is crying at both appropriate and inappropriate times, Bohener was famous for crying about all sorts of stuff and...}

Thanks for your help, Dana. Permit me to return a compliment you have paid me on occasion, you too have a keen eye for the obvious. However, there are devils lurking in the details. 

First of all, the reason this missive began with a fascinating and informative digression about where generational names and dates come from is because I came across this information when I was researching the three sub-generations of Boomers, a phenomenon neither widely known nor discussed.

These subdivisions are important to my Overflowing Cistern hypothesis and I was searching for the approximate date Sub-2 ended and Sub-3 took over.

{Hoo-boy. Here we go again.}

Remain calm, it's really quite simple. Sub-1s are the early Boomers, and were as much influenced by the previous two generations (the Greatest Generation, 1901-27, and the Silent one, 1928-45) as they are by Sub-2 and Sub-3 Boomers. 

{Fascinating.}

Right? I was trying to determine at what point during the rise of the Sub-2s (when Boomers started tossing out the tot with the Jacuzzi water) the big boys don't cry ethos morphed into the big boys should be more gentle, sensitive, and not hide their feelings ethos that the feminists convinced us would get us laid more often (which unfortunately turned out to be B.S.). 

{Oh my dog! you can't...}

That's a subject for an entirely different column I'm highly qualified to write because I confess I bought it -- hook, line, and sinker. But unfortunately, the rest of this column, for reasons not interesting enough to bother you with, will be published next week. Think of it as a cliffhanger, but in compensation... 

Update: as to the ongoing tempest in a teapot that is the Ohio legislature's stumble-bumbling-fumbling attempt to legalize weed, Ohio's five-foot-tall governor is upset.

While our state senate quickly passed a law overriding the citizen's initiative we morons recently voted for (yeah, they can do that) the house (and senate) left town to begin a month-long break for Christmas without taking any action. 

Fun facts: Our legislators have to scrape by on only $70,000 a year, but "leadership" positions pay a little better. According to ZipRecruiter, the average Ohio working stiff makes $47,000 a year. As for what the mean wage is, which I would guess is closer to 40k based on my 38 years of living here in paradise, I couldn't find it on the worldwide web of all knowledge. 

Also, according to Open the Books, Ohio has 164,821 state employees whose wages add up to $9,517,773,573.09 a year.

Anyways... It's occurred to the governor (Mike DeWine, multi-millionaire and full-time politician since 1976) that since the initiative remains in effect till our betters fix it for us it's now legal to smoke weed in Ohio but there's no place to legally buy it so people will be risking their lives by buying it on the "black market" (and not paying the 10% sin tax, which Mr. DeWine would prefer to be as much as 18%).

All over Ohio people who would never even dream of buying weed when it was illegal to smoke it for fear of paying the $100 fine if they got caught are roaming the streets in search of a connection. 

{You're making that up!}

Not the $100 fine part, that's actually all that happens. But I must also confess that our governor is at least 5 foot 6, a solid 140 pounds, and pretty sharp for a geezer pushing 80 and who doesn't cry, not in public anyway.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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