The past is always dying – decaying, being buried – not just our selves and stuff flaking into dust, but yesteryear’s wonders, which once folks couldn’t live without. The deterioration is incessant, inexorable. We forget this, especially when we’re young. The paragons of my college years, who would reign forever, have changed shape in the intervening decades, many dwindled, a few grown. We do not revere our parents’ idols or, if we do, revise them to fit new needs. Makers dismissed as eccentrics in their hour shadow ours.
We are always packing up, moving on. What do we keep, what shed? What of my detritus will my heirs retain? We must make room for the new: to discard is not disloyal. What do they owe us and we them?
This process is solemn, but not sad, a slow parade. We are moving on – from what toward what? Libraries and museums retain a sliver of yesterday until they themselves gather dust.
Modernity resents the past’s competition of our attention. New merchants want to sell us “New and improved!” “The same” is pejorative. “Not your Daddy’s Shakespeare!”
Growing old I lose zest for the new. I respect the old for its survival – why not I? I write to preserve myself, like summer’s harvest for midwinter. (All makers are self-picklers.) Maybe we weren’t amazing, but we were – isn’t that amazing?!
Memory is the playground of retirement – but we must venture there. Recent retirees may dread the loss of yesterday’s pleasures. Open your door, friends, to new pleasures you did not expect! Your wealth is infinite – and securely yours. Why slam your door? Do you fear what you might find?
The past takes time, discipline, care. Who was I really? What drove me? What confused me, blew me off course? What have I accomplished? What haven’t I? What makes me most glad?
What to make of the past? You need not bake cakes of all you’ve been. Delight yourselves with discoveries.
Nervous modernity decries retrospect. Nostalgia! Sentimentality! Morbid! Subscribe to the new! What’s the latest?
I recoil from the new. Friends recommend – I sample – but how can the new compete with words that have weathered? Join the conversation! I suppose I must, I love company, but recollection too is a conversation, leave time for that.
The climate of the past is forgiving: no more storms. It hurts to strive. Dreams taunt. We have been who we have been, seen what we have seen, who can say more? The thinker Santayana, an old man, told the GI’s liberating Rome from the Fascists they could not rescue him for he lived “in eternity.” Eternity – the dreamiest of retirement communities, the most seductive address.
Sadness in old age is mismanagement, not an inevitable syndrome. Rejoice in what you possess, do not grieve for what you don’t. Your best years are behind you only if you place them there. You are not a “player” anymore? – write your own play. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – well then, get busy, not a moment to lose.
Modernity measures success in inches and ounces. How long was his obit? Did he have a big career? Wrong questions, stupid questions. Any sum divided by infinity equals zero if I remember my math. Did you live, love, laugh? Are you glad to have been? There is your fortune, spend it wisely.
Some reading these words will spy mind-tricks to make myself feel better: “Turn that frown upside down.” So what if that’s so? Whose verdict counts after all? Only yours. Saint Peter is the silence, with his keys.