"We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient
characteristic of Life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent,
here and now without any possible postponement. Life is
fired at us point blank."
... Jose Ortega y Gasset read out loud by
"You will never live if you are looking for
the meaning of life.
Fall in love
with some activity and do it! Nobody ever figures out what
life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the
the world."
Suddenly many
people
I know are in their 70s and 80s. There's nothing unusual about that. In
the last century, life expectancy increased dramatically, so there are
now many more
people
in their 70s and 80s. No big
deal
... except this time, suddenly I'm one of them. And it's come on so
fast. Not long ago I was in my 20s. We
consideredpeople
who were in their 40s to be very old. But 70s and 80s?
They were incomprehensively old, ancient, petrified
relics.
I was
visitingan old friend
who is in her 80s. I describe her as an oldfriend
not because she's in her 80s (which she is) but because we've been
friends
for a long time. We're both relatively
healthy.
We're both
dealing with
the kinds of issues
peopledeal with
in their 70s and 80s. I exercise, but I'm not a big fan of exercise. I
don't exactly look forward to it. With that taken into
consideration,
I've come to realize it's no longer an optional
good idea:
it's an
essential
one if I am going to be responsible for
what happens
to the
human
body at this age, and manage it. My credo is "There's only one thing
worse than going to the gym, and that's not going to the
gym.". Like me,
my friend
is also
a reluctant exerciser.
Whenever she exercises, she says it makes her life better.
There's a very
powerful
realization in there which comes out of
considering
that, which goeswith (as
Alan Watts
may have said) maintaining a good quality of life as aging comes on us,
as it
inexorably
does. Let's be open to the possibility of keeping that realization in
the foreground, but not just as a matter of semantics, and nor as just
playing with
words.
It's this: exercise doesn't make life better. No it doesn't. Not
really.
Sit
with that in your lap - like
a hot brick.
Wait ... what? Exercise doesn't make life better? That's
right: exercise doesn't make life better. Yet it's
a good idea
to do it anyway. Just don't do it to make life better ie don't do it
with an ulterior motive. There's no need to make life better. Life is
already OK. Life is already OK
the way it is
and
the way it isn't.
I'm not a big fan of denying that, as much as I'm not a big fan of
exercise. However, true wisdom is
dealing with
life
the way it isand the way it isn't, not just the way I want it to be. In
my 70s I've realized
the futility
of hankering for life to be better. What that does, is shift the
context
in which I do whatever I do, without changing whatever it is that I do.
So I don't exercise in order to make life better in my 70s. Life is
already OK. I exercise in order to exercise.
Life doesn't become OK based on criteria ie measurable conditions to be
detected before it can be deemed to be OK. Be open to the possibility
that life is already OK, exactly the way it is and exactly
the way it isn't. I'm not an "As long as there's ..."
kind of guy:
"As long as there's
peace,
we'll be OK; as long as there's
love,
we'll be OK etc.". Life never promised any of those. So I'm a
"the way it isand the way it isn't"
kind of guy.
I've cut out the middleman.
My
friend
is a
stand
for ending war (and who isn't?). No more war. No matter what
the reason.
No matter who against whom. But a
paradox
of trying to end war, is that unless war (like the rest of life) isn't
OK the way it is, then all that's available is to change
war. For how long have we tried to change war? How's that going for us?
It's a dastardly
paradox:
first war has to be OK the way it is, then the
ideas
which foster war can be transformed. Changing war has
never worked - there's a great deal of evidence for that. It calls for
something really
big
to entertain the possibility of war being OK the way it is.
It appears that we have very little
power
over anything we want to change - unless we can first have it have it
be OK the way it is. For everything else we want to change and yet
appear to be stuck with, substitute it for "war" in this conversation.
It works out the same.
Paradoxically
enough, as long as there's hope we can end war, it's likely to stay the
same. It first has to be OK the way it is. That's not just some
simple
feel-good bon mot. It's basic,
essentialZen.
