The cosmos seemed to be speaking to me the other day. I kept running across web posts about
aging and death. I thought at
first it might not have been a good day to go out and about, but I survived
with no ill effects.
The first message came in an article about a study that
showed it is dangerous to fixate on your own aging. The news article said the study compared people constantly
worried about growing old with people constantly concerned about being fat. The study found that women of all ages
complain about being old, and that calling yourself old can make you feel as
bad about your body as calling yourself fat. The research links so called 'old
talk' to greater levels of body dissatisfaction, which can in turn lead to
higher rates of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and more physical and
mental health problems."
"The study included only women because the author
suspects this is less of a problem for men, 'because men are allowed to age'
said the author, a psychology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio,
Texas. 'You just look at aging male celebrities – they become 'distinguished'
or 'handsome' in this older way where as women are not really allowed to do
this.'"
Here's some news for her: All men are not movie stars. Some, in fact a lot of us, don't age into the distinguished category. The way I have approached it has been
to embrace the age, but don't necessarily live by society's expectations for
someone that old. In simpler words
I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I have also found a way to at least laugh in its face, for instance,
calling myself the second oldest lil monster or preferring to be a dirty old
man to being a senior citizen. I
am not fighting age, but I am not giving in to it either. Her advice in part was not to talk
about it but I think that is wrong.
I think maybe it is better to talk and laugh and move gracefully into
it, not fight it or let it diminish your own self image. There was even a poll on the story
asking people how often they are guilty of "old talk." The choices were never or rarely,
sometimes, and often. I woud have
hit often, but would have objected to feeling any guilt about it whatsoever. Guilty, are all these stories written
by children?
After going through the aging thought process, another
item showed up. That's the
picture. When I was younger and environmentally idealistic, and
thought about death, I imagined my burial in a plain wood coffin that would
deteriorate quickly and without embalming so my body would also. Then have a few tree seeds placed atop
the coffin as it was lowered into the ground. That way a tree would grow in time, with two benefits: one,
that I would have given something back to Earth, and, two that the living tree
was acceptable to me as a path to eternal life. That tree would grow, drop seeds and others would grow and
so it goes, eternally unless interrupted by some outside force.
Now I find, well, forgive me, it's like there's an app
for that. These folks have
designed and sell a biodegradable
bucket just the size for cremains and with nutrients and maybe
seeds. I suppose you could add
your own seeds to fit your climate.
But it serves the purpose and looks like a good way to go. I have been to their web site but still
haven't figured out how to order one, but I am going to and take one less
burden off the people who have to clean up my lifetime mess. To me that is a good use of a
body.
But the soul, oh the soul, what do you do with
that? I don't believe in heaven or
that kind of eternal life but I do feel the presence of a spirit within the
mind that might amount to what religious people call a soul, that 21-gram
entity that departs the body at the precise moment of death. Most people, myself included, as they grow older at some
time or other remark about how time seems to move faster. Part of that, of course, is that each
year becomes a smaller percentage of your total life as you age. But my theory is that maybe time or at least our passage through it does
speed up with age. As it gains speed, it eventually reaches terminal velocity, and given that we are on a spinning sphere, centrifugal force spins the soul out of the body and flings it into the
vacuum of space, leaving the remains behind to regenerate the earth. I can live, and die, with that.
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