Last year at my 40th Demontreville Retreat, one of the exercises that we were given by the Retreat Master included a very challenging set of thoughts. The worksheet for the activity was labeled as “A Testament.” I took the worksheet and instructions home with me. It had fourteen tasks or reflections to complete. I did not desire to complete them during the retreat. It is now almost a year since my retreat, and I have decided to make the mental and emotional effort necessary to complete this “Testament.”
The worksheet started with these instructions:
Imagine that this is the last day of your life on earth. In the time that you have left, you want to leave a “Testament” for your family and friends. Each of the following could serve as chapter headings for your “Testament.”
- These are the Things that I have lived for.
In my first reflection, I declared that “Things” were never very important to me. However, this reflection forced me to look at some “Things” that have mattered to me in my life. It is hard to admit that any things were ever really important since “Things” are so trivial in many respects. Nevertheless, it is hard to exist without a few “Things.” Thus, what are those “Things” which have really mattered to me, and a bigger question is why? Here are a few of my favorite things and why they matter to me.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things — By Julie Andrews, “My Favorite Things”
I love rain and stormy days: I figured the “why out years ago. On a nice day, my father would say “Get your ass outside and go play. It’s too nice to be inside.” Thus, I could only engage in my favorite activity (which was curled up with a good book) when it was raining, and I did not have to go outside. To this day, I get a thrill when a rainstorm approaches. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to see the rain and feel the raindrops on my head.
I love books: I buy more books than I will ever finish in my lifetime. I have already at every move given hundreds of books away. Just holding a book gives me a sense of excitement that nothing else in life does for me. The book pulses in my hand like a living thing saying, “Read me and learn.” “Let me tell you about a million things that you do not know.”
I love a nap: 2 PM in the afternoon and I have nothing to do and no place to be. I will take a nap. I close my eyes wondering if I can really get to sleep and forty minute or so later, I wake up feeling energized and ready to continue taking on the woes of the world. I am not sure where I get my joy of napping from. Karen is not a napper, and I seldom can get her to take a nap with me. It is a solo activity, but I guess it gives me a temporary respite from the trials and tribulations of everyday living. Maybe it is just fun.
I love food: I have never met a food that I did not like. One of the great joys of life is going someplace different and trying foods out that I have never eaten before. I have eaten the local foods in all 44 countries that Karen and I have traveled to. I will try anything though I draw the line if it is still moving. I have eaten several unknown species of Arthropoda (Bugs) in China and Korea. I have had rattlesnake in Texas, fresh eel in Japan and one of my favorite Italian foods, Scungilli salad whenever I get back to visit my sister in Rhode Island.
I love music: Is music a thing? Generative AI has the following to say about this query:
“Music is a cultural universal that is a human-created meaning, not a fact or thing in the world. It is the arrangement of sounds to create a combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or other expressive content. However, definitions of music vary by culture and throughout history, and there is no consensus on the precise definitions of the elements that define music.”
Nice to know what AI thinks. Not sure it settled anything though.
Moving on with my thoughts, I find music sometimes soothing as with a Strauss waltz. Sometime exciting as with the “Toreador Song” from Carmen. Sometimes, a song reflects how I feel about life as with Ricky Shelton’s “I am a simple man.” Sometimes, music reflects my sense of devotion for certain things. I am always moved by national anthems like the “Star-Spangled Banner” and the “Marseillaise.”
I love what some call “World Music.” I can spend hours surfing the various music offerings on YouTube. I am always amazed at how much great music never seems to find its way into the US music stations. As with food, I have never met a music genre that I did not like. From Baroque to Grigorian Chants, to Asian, Latin, Hip Hop, Reggae and a hundred other music genres, I can always find an artist or musical piece that I fall in love with. In Japan, it was Enka music. In Portugal, I was Fado music. In Spain it was the Tango music. I could go on and on but every place in the world contributes to the store of great music that is out there.
Well, there you have it. A few of my favorite things. Perhaps I should add a few.
“Cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels
Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles
Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings
These are a few of my favorite things.” By Julie Andrews
Next Reflection:
- These are the insights that I have gained in the school of life.
The concept of tracking time brings forth images of tracking some wild beast in the woods. Deer, moose, bear, cougars, tigers all leave very distinctive tracks. Time also leaves distinctive tracts. Time leaves physical as well as emotional tracks on all of us. Not to mention the tracks that time leaves on the environment. Emotional tracks are evident in the greater cautiousness and fears that we have as we age. From experience, once burned, we no longer want to get so close to the flame. Indeed, many of us will not even go near the fire again. Divorce, rejection, death, pain all leave emotional scars. For some of us they may never quite heal. Physical tracks show up as lines, creases, joint aches, hair thinning, broken bones and disease. I often joke that physically I am aging more like cheese then a fine wine. I am getting squishier and somewhat moldy around the edges.
Perhaps you see the idea of “tracking time” through a different lens. Maybe you have a need to track your minutes and seconds each day, a twist on tracking your dollars and cents. Perhaps, if you watch your time carefully, you may have more of it. Mark down your time spent each day in an Excel spreadsheet and carefully log your corresponding activities. This last task seems somewhat obsessive to me even though I am often accused of being a Type A personality. I once worked at a job where I was required to check my work in fifteen minute intervals each day and log what I was doing during each interval. After I left this company, I decided I would never again work for anyone where I had to justify myself at this level of detail. It was simply an exercise in obsessive control and domination.
Meaning and purpose are Yin and Yang to each other. Purpose is outside you and is what you do in the world. For me purpose involves doing. Meaning is inside you and what you do for yourself. Meaning involves being rather than doing. Let’s use a running race as an example.
Meaning in my dictionary is about living up to my potential, my values and my beliefs by doing the best I can each day to be consistent with them. No one may ever know if I am being kind, compassionate or patient today. You cannot see the inner virtues that I want to live by. I am the only person at the end of each day who can judge whether or not my life had any meaning today. If I can be the best person that I want to be each day, I will die feeling that my life had meaning. To the rest of the world, I may just be another old teacher, old veteran or old guy who lived an average life and died at an average age. Meaning to me is about being and not doing.
If I answer, I want to be rich, my meaning in life will be defined by how I go about becoming rich and what I do with my money. If I want to be a writer, my meaning will be defined by what I write and how I go about the writing process. If I want to be happy, my meaning in life will be defined by how I go about achieving happiness. No one except me can judge how I define myself. People may say that I am not very rich or that I am not a very good writer, but it is what I believe about myself which will define my meaning in life. Vincent Van Gogh is now widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of all time. His paintings sell for millions of dollars. However, in his lifetime, he sold only one painting. It was to his sister-in-law who felt sorry for him.
“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” — 
I conclude with the consideration that Meaning and Purpose may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I confess that it was much later in my life and many hurdles had been taken and many obstacles overcome before I started caring about the meaning and purpose of life. Now I look back and shake my head with some sorrow that I did not grasp their import on life when I was in my teens. A have learned that a life without meaning and purpose is not a life, it is just living.
This theory says that happiness is dependent on other things happening in your life. You must have these other things going on or you will not be happy. If you have a good family, or good job or you have meaningful work, you will be happy. Contingency is like a correlation in statistics. The process of having a good family correlates with happiness but having a good family does not make you happy. Some things have a higher correlation with happiness than other things. Some people believe that having less things is more conducive to happiness than owning a bunch of things.
This could also be called the “Cause and Effect” theory of happiness. This theory says that certain things or activities will lead to the outcome of happiness. For instance, becoming an Olympic Gold Medalist may lead an athlete to happiness.
You will always be happy in proportion to how happy others are around us. If I have a great deal of money but my friends have more, I will be unhappy. However, if I have a bigger office than anybody else in the company, I will be happier than they are. The state of being happy will always be relative or in comparison to some other standard that I mark my happiness by.
This theory views happiness as something that has no limits. The sky is the limit. Extraordinary happiness awaits anyone willing to go for it. Every day will bring more and more happiness if you only believe it is possible.
The strangeness of the situation caused me to be somewhat nervous about proceeding further but I thought, I have nothing to fear from an old lady. Coming nearer to the woman, I jokingly asked if she was the same old woman whom I had met years ago and if she remembered me. “Yes”, she said, “but you were much younger then. How did your journey down the Farewell to Life trail go?” How could this be I thought? I don’t believe in magic, miracles, or spirits but suddenly, I began to take her words quite seriously.
Second, what are you going to do about your fears? Fear is an adaptive mechanism. It helps to keep you alive. If you are in the woods and walking down a trail and see a large bear or cougar coming towards you, it is quite healthy to have some degree of fear. But fear alone is not going to save your life. If you are paralyzed with fear you may just be eaten. Fear is an alarm. An alarm sounds to wake us up. The next step is to do something. Doing something is a risky effort with no guarantee of success. Sadly, there are few guaranties in life, but the evidence seems to suggest that doing nothing is worse than doing something. This is where forethought and preparedness come in. One of my favorite quotes is by the Roman philosopher Seneca (died 65 CE) who once said that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Dylan Thomas said, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” I don’t know about the raging part of his poem. I prefer thinking about my life as I get older and not raging. But he makes a good point. It is all too easy to give up on life as we age. We can live in memories of what we used to do, or we can find new activities and new levels to pursue old activities at. For instance, I may not have the stamina to play tennis or racquet ball anymore, but I can still play pickleball or go for a short ride on my bicycle. I used to do six-minute miles in road races. My personal best was 38.48 on a 10K. The race I ran for Frederic Family days this year on June 12, 2021, I averaged 10.14 per mile for a 5k. Quite a bit off of my pace from years ago but I still got my t-shirt. I run for t-shirts these days and not trophies.
Aging Capriciously 