There is No Spring in My Future
Received an e-mail from a friend on reaching old age. The writer referred to old age as being the “winter” of her life and explained how surprised she was to find she was old.
I replied as follows:
Next week I’ll celebrate my 78th birthday with a family dinner at our youngest daughter’s house on Venice Beach. I retired in 2004 when I was 76 years old after a 48 year career. The greater part of these working years, my job basically consisted of a close interaction of technology with people. To be an effective engineering consultant, I to had understand both the technical aspects of the client’s problem I was hired to solve, and how to coach the people toward a solution. That is, there are an infinite variety of technical problems which are relatively easy to understand, but only human solutions which are very difficult to affect. Which is why I took an MA in rhetoric rather than a MS in some engineering discipline. People were my biggest problem, and I felt I had to understand better how to move them along the path I knew they had to take to correct the technical problem they had encountered.
The point I’m making is because while I was practicing my career, I was intellectually totally immersed in my work and, thus, took no notice of the passing years. Because the intellect knows no age – thoughts, even memories of the past, are always framed in the present tense -- my “winter” started at age 76 when I retired and laid down my engineering and rhetorical tools. I’m not surprised to find I’m old. I worked damn hard to get old. Not just at my career but also as a person. Now, a couple of times a week, I sit in our hot tub in our back deck amidst the trees of the forest we live in, with a ice-cold bottle of beer, and think of my life today as “my just reward.” By that I mean, that I believe I have succeeded in living up to the model my parents provided to me of what an ethical adult is.
Finally, I don’t see myself in the “winter” of my life. Winters are cold and barren, pretty, certainly, but most living plants and creatures are merely surviving until spring. There is no spring in my future, and I’m not merely surviving. Rather I see myself approaching the sunset of my life. My days in the sun are almost over and night is coming when I will sleep. For me, death is merely eternal, dreamless sleep. I don’t believe in heaven because, like many engineers, I only believe that for which I have evidence. Thus, I’ll settle for dreamless sleep from which I never awake.
If I’m wrong and there is an after life, and God awaits me, then I am ready to be judged.
I replied as follows:
Next week I’ll celebrate my 78th birthday with a family dinner at our youngest daughter’s house on Venice Beach. I retired in 2004 when I was 76 years old after a 48 year career. The greater part of these working years, my job basically consisted of a close interaction of technology with people. To be an effective engineering consultant, I to had understand both the technical aspects of the client’s problem I was hired to solve, and how to coach the people toward a solution. That is, there are an infinite variety of technical problems which are relatively easy to understand, but only human solutions which are very difficult to affect. Which is why I took an MA in rhetoric rather than a MS in some engineering discipline. People were my biggest problem, and I felt I had to understand better how to move them along the path I knew they had to take to correct the technical problem they had encountered.
The point I’m making is because while I was practicing my career, I was intellectually totally immersed in my work and, thus, took no notice of the passing years. Because the intellect knows no age – thoughts, even memories of the past, are always framed in the present tense -- my “winter” started at age 76 when I retired and laid down my engineering and rhetorical tools. I’m not surprised to find I’m old. I worked damn hard to get old. Not just at my career but also as a person. Now, a couple of times a week, I sit in our hot tub in our back deck amidst the trees of the forest we live in, with a ice-cold bottle of beer, and think of my life today as “my just reward.” By that I mean, that I believe I have succeeded in living up to the model my parents provided to me of what an ethical adult is.
Finally, I don’t see myself in the “winter” of my life. Winters are cold and barren, pretty, certainly, but most living plants and creatures are merely surviving until spring. There is no spring in my future, and I’m not merely surviving. Rather I see myself approaching the sunset of my life. My days in the sun are almost over and night is coming when I will sleep. For me, death is merely eternal, dreamless sleep. I don’t believe in heaven because, like many engineers, I only believe that for which I have evidence. Thus, I’ll settle for dreamless sleep from which I never awake.
If I’m wrong and there is an after life, and God awaits me, then I am ready to be judged.
posted by Bob Baker at 6:00 AM
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