Body

 I’m not always crazy about my body.  

I could do without the way my old man potbelly makes my favorite jeans so tight and pushes them down beneath my navel.  And those jowls that dominate the face of the guy I’m always in Zoom meetings with are a source of ongoing dismay.  And howcome with every passing year, I look more and more like one of Middle Earth’s hobbits and less like one of its elves?

But it’s sort of ridiculous, isn’t it, to feel bad about one’s physical form.  After all, if it weren’t for your body, you wouldn’t be able to feel bad—or for that matter, anything—so, really, we ought to continually celebrate our corporeal being since without it, we’d have no ability to do anything, anyway, at least not on this plane of existence.

It’s natural, I suppose, to experience some dissatisfaction sometimes about one’s physique.  It’s easy enough to compare the current form you inhabit to the one you went around in say, thirty years and twenty pounds ago, and thanks to dominant cultural norms and the power of advertising feel like your something less for being something more than you used to be.

But it’s kind of self-indulgent to do so, wouldn’t you say?

I mean, again, it’s only the existence of your body that makes not liking your body possible, so, at the very least, you—that is, I—should recognize how lucky you are to have a body—any body—and stop making a fuss.

This doesn’t mean one ought not to eat healthy and exercise; we should treat our bodies with respect and act accordingly, but part of that respect, as well, is to be satisfied with our body the way it is, since the way it is, (however that is), makes everything—including healthy eating and exercise—possible. 

My body’s not a temple; it’s an amusement park.  Everyday I buy a ticket and take the ride.

Ignorant

I’m a fully grown-ass person—officially a Senior Citizen!—with loads of life experience and an advanced degree in Philosophy, but there’s still much about the world I don’t understand.

For instance, what’s the point of a humanned mission to Mars?  Seems like an incredible amount of money and resources for not that much payoff.  I suppose it would be sort of cool to be the first human on another planet, but the scientific knowledge to be gained from such an enterprise couldn’t possibly be worth it—unless, of course, there really are little green men up there, which, guess what?  There aren’t.  And we don’t need space boots on the Martian ground to prove it.

Or why, in this day and age, do so many world leaders still feel it necessary to command their military to kill people in other countries?  I understand their rationale—national security or whatever—but I don’t understand why their rationale could be considered rational enough to justify killing people.

I’m also puzzled by the phenomenon of stuffed crust pizza.  Isn’t the point of pizza crust to be the respite from cheese?  Why not just not have a crust and go for double-cheese?

And, of course, this marks me as an old person, (but if the shoe fits, you know), but why do people have to record some much of their concert-going experiences on their phones?  Doesn’t it make more sense to be more present in the present rather than having the present experience be a way to present it to the future?

Also, I’d be lying if I said I understood why anyone needs a superyacht.  If it’s just a way for billionaires to spend money and employ people, then, okay, I guess, but why not just a regular yacht?  If it was good enough for J.P. Morgan, shouldn’t it be good enough for Sergy Brin?

Finally, why is anyone compelled to rant to strangers online?  That, I’ll never get.

War

 I sure hope we’re not headed into World War III.  Or even WWII.5, for that matter.

I get it; national sovereignty important, but honestly, when it comes right down to it, wouldn’t you rather be a living resident of a foreign country than a dead citizen of your original one?  (Especially when the boundaries of those millennia-old countries are an artifact of colonial imperialism that hardly goes back a hundred years?)

Seattle would be a likely military target and so it’s entirely plausible that the whole place would be vaporized in the first fifteen minutes of nuclear war.  I suppose that’s preferable to a protracted siege that would result in death by famine and pestilence.  On the other hand, couldn’t we just avoid the whole calamity through diplomacy and compromise?

The real problem, if you ask me, is metonymy.  

We say “the White House wants this” or “the Kremlin wants that,” when what’s really the case is that Joe Biden wants this or Vladimir Putin wants that; thus individual preferences assume the status of national priorities.  Then, all of a sudden, what a single person desires (usually a man, usually an old one) becomes tantamount to what an entire country desires and when you combine that with nuclear arsenals large enough to destroy every living thing on the planet multiple times over, you’ve got a perfect recipe for disaster.

It's terrifying to consider that the fate of humanity ultimately depends upon the degree to which one old white dude with his fingers on his country’s nuclear codes feels as if he’s been dissed by another old white dude with similar access to weapons of mass destruction.  When my grandfather was embarrassed, he’d go off and kill an entire half-gallon of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, not half of the entire population of the world!

Does my attitude here paint me yellow as a coward?  Perhaps, but if discretion is the better part of valor, then at least I’m half-brave.

Kindness

 Is there anything more important than being kind?

When I’m dead and gone (and, for that matter, while I still live), I want, above all, to be seen as a person who treated others kindly.  Sure, I’d like to considered a creative genius, a spiritual inspiration, and a brutally-handsome heartthrob, but compared to being kind, those don’t matter at all (even if they were real possibilities.)

I’m always dismayed by rich and powerful (or, for that matter, poor and weak) people who enjoy being heartless and cruel.  What’s the point being rich and powerful (or, for that matter, poor and weak) if it means you have to be mean?  I know Machiavelli said that it’s better to be feared than loved, but that’s just for princes in the 16th century, and even then, I’ll bet, the kind prince (or princess) slept better than the cruel one.

Singer-songwriter, Nick Lowe, made the musical point that you’ve got to be cruel to be kind but be that as it may (or may not), the goal is still kindness.  Perhaps I do have to be just a little bit harsh from time to time in my aspiration to be compassionate, but surely, that’s just in small doses, not like all Simon LeGree or anything.

I realize that the danger of valorizing kindness so highly is that, as a parent, or educator, or citizen, I may sometimes emphasize mercy over justice; or I may make compassionate exceptions that undermine the principle of fairness; or I may simply be taken advantage of by those who care less about kindness than I do.

But, so be it; and if it means that I’m something of a failure as a parent, educator, or citizen, then perhaps it’s an opportunity to practice kindness to myself and allow for those failings.

Better to be Jackie Robinson than Ty Cobb; Thich Hnat Hanh than Genghis Khan; Ferdinand than those other bulls; me, I hope, than Mitch McConnell.

Ordinary

There are about nine billion people on the planet, so even if you’re one in a million, that means there are still at least nine thousand people just like you.  Or, as wise counsel counsels us, “You’re not special and no one cares.”

Of course, there are some people who are special: Greta Thunberg, Beyoncé, Julio Rodriguez, for instance, but, for the rest of us, we’re just the rest of us. 

This used to bother me and resulted in my inability to accept the truth of the matter.  I tended towards a kind of solipsistic perspective which put me at the center of all things.  If I didn’t exist, then nothing would; therefore, I had to be special—in fact, the most special of things in the entire Universe.

Now, however, I’m comfortable with my ordinariness; I’m glad that I’m just another random human being going about their day.  Granted, I’m a good deal more fortunate than many, but this doesn’t confer upon me any distinction; it just makes me one of many who ought to be grateful for what they have.

Perhaps surprisingly, accepting all that I’m not doesn’t make me less likely to act in ways that define me as an individual: I still try to be creative; I continue to have my “ways;” and I haven’t given up the pretension that what I do or don’t do matters in some way.  It’s just that I realize that I’m not the only one who’s just like this, and no doubt there are many others just like this who do it better than me.

I’m not even the special edition version of me, in other words.

But that’s cool, because it means that instead of having to be one in nine billion, I get to be one of nine billion.  Rather than having to stand out, I get to stand with.  I’m a member of the biggest team in the world: Team Ordinary.

And that’s special.

Nothing

What do you do when you have nothing to do?

You could meditate, of course.  Or medicate, for that matter.  Or, if you were 13 years old, something else that begins with “m” and ends with “ate.”  (“Micturate!”  Of course; that’s what you were thinking, right?)

Certainly, there’s no end of tasks you could undertake: cleaning, gardening, Bible study, re-organizing your sock drawer, learning Spanish, volunteering at the local food bank, writing letters to your Congresspersons, making potato salad, even taking the dog for a walk, and on and on.

But, naah.

As the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Zeno of Elea reminds us, doing something requires first doing it halfway, and before that doing it a quarter-way, and before that, an eighth, etc., etc., so since there’s an infinite number of steps to finally accomplishing anything, that means we can never do so, so why begin at all?

Or, as the contemporary philosopher Homer Simpson put it, “Trying is the first step towards failure.”  Again, may as well, therefore, do nothing.

Unfortunately, doing nothing is doing something, so once again, we find ourselves faced with the original question posed at the beginning of this piece.

I suppose you could think.  But think about what?  Might as well try thinking about nothing and get yourself all tied up in the same loop all over again.

Eating seems to be the default.  If all else fails, make yourself a sandwich, or even better, stand over the sink shoveling food into your mouth harvested from leftover containers tucked in the back of the refrigerator.

The problem is: all of these endeavors are relatively short-lived and so you soon find yourself with nothing to do once more.  And since you, yourself, are relatively long-lived (at least in comparison to over-the-sink-eating), you’ll still have many a year with nothing to do for many a year.

Oh well, there’s always writing; so you could do that and eventually end up with something like this.

 

Lucky

 How in the world did I ever get to be so lucky?

How come I can ride my bike down the hill to Lake Washington, relax in the sun with a book and a beer, take a few swims, and then, catch a bus—for only a dollar, Senior fare!—back up the hill as my afternoon entertainment, when all over the world, even in our fair city, people are suffering all the time?

Why is it that my complaints merely include a favorite sports team losing three games in a row or that someone has underlined passages in a book that I’ve checked out from the university library at which I have unlimited borrowing privileges whereas millions and millions of my fellow human beings have far more pressing concerns, like where their next meal is coming from (if at all), and if they’ll be able to find a safe place to sleep?

Why have I been spared serious health challenges (so far, and let’s hope this doesn’t jinx it) even into my mid-sixties, when countless babies, children, and young adults have had to deal with life-threatening diseases and debilitating conditions all their lives?

I thank my lucky stars to be sure and try to live with gratitude and kindness, but it’s surely not fair.  I’ve done nothing, really, more crucial to my good fortune than being born in the right place to the right parents; I got lucky in the genetic lottery, that’s the main thing.

A simple reading of some spiritual perspectives might suggest that I did some things right in previous incarnations to have ended up where I did, but that just kicks the can down the road, doesn’t it?  How come I was lucky enough in those earlier lives to be able to improve my lot those times around?

It’s a mystery and/or perhaps just pure random chance; in any event, I open these arms to the Universe and offer my eternal gratitude.