I’m getting older and life is getting harder. There is no need to whine about it; life is hard. If I had more money life would probably just be harder. What is interesting about getting older is that the game of life becomes obviously about survival. It really always has been. When you are younger, you associate survival with acts of aggression against your predators, who or what ever they may be. Dylan Thomas urged us to “rage against the dying of the light.” Frankly, I don’t know what that would accomplish. It might just piss God off and when you’re older, you don’t want to piss anybody off. You don’t have the energy to deal with that. Really, I think that is life, isn’t it?
The idea that we should be outraged about death is really an odd one when you think about it. I’ve never seen an animal get upset about it. That death should upset humans must come from their notion that they can change the order of life events to at least some minimal degree. One must be amazed at such a thought. I don’t see any other part of nature trying to change it. All across nature there appears to be a general acceptance of the way things are, except in the human domain. Since the scientific revolution, humans seem to have grown increasingly proud. In the last two hundred years we have evolved a high opinion of ourselves. None of the other creatures on our planet have taken that path. How did we get to this place within ourselves? When you take some perspective on the issue, it doesn’t seem at all obvious that we would be so full of ourselves.
One would think that as a species we would have put all our efforts into helping one another rather than killing one another. I’m not a believer in the idea of the survival of the fittest. There is nothing “fit” about solving your problems by killing one another. How can nuclear weapons possibly be “fit” in any intelligent sense of the term? I have a friend who is 83 years old, and she owns a small hand gun. She said it makes her feel safe. She told me I needed a gun. I told her I haven’t needed a gun in 72 years and I doubted the need would ever arise. The idea of being “unarmed” was incomprehensible to her. As a nation we have been armed with nuclear weapons all my life. and they have never made me feel safe– just the opposite.
Killing others has never made me feel safe, and I have always doubted the need to kill. My doubts appear to be increasing as I age. It is beginning to seem obvious to me that survival has nothing to do with killing each other, I don’t care how great the “evil.” Evil just doesn’t seem to be the kind of thing that can be killed. As science reveals more of the universe, survival seems to be about something else than killing. Guns and killing are beginning to seem childish.
So what is survival about then? My personal experience is that it is about not needing to survive anymore. The need to survive has always been a background feeling in my life. It has always been part of living that I have vaguely sensed. It was like carrying an extra 10 pound weight around on your back. It fatigues you but you don’t notice the loss of energy, especially when you are young. When you are older, you notice those extra expenditures. You start thinking about all the things you did in your youth and, you think, I didn’t have to do that. One thing about growing old is that I’ve started feeling safer than I ever have, and I haven’t bought a gun. It seems like when you get old enough to know how to live, you die, or maybe evolve.