Large Fierce Mammal

Welcome back fellow Traveller to this chapter of The Goode Fyght where today we will begin our look at energy and the economics of action as they apply to aging.

Right up until you die, you will find that your only option is to keep getting older, just as Nature intended. Some try to pretend it isn’t happening by dressing, acting, surgically altering themselves, all in protest of this singular inevitability. Some others seem to embrace age as an excuse for lack of effort and inadequacy. But hyperbolic news flashes notwithstanding, death stands as the only proven method to arrest the aging process, and to my mind it should stay that way. My advice — either go now and die without further delay, or commit to ride the wave because the quality of your experience aging through life will depend on the quality of person experiencing it.

“One may have grown dissatisfied with one’s appearance as it has changed over time, and become caught up in squandering time, thought, and treasure in a fruitless battle to recapture a fondly remembered moment of perfection, and hold it in stasis forever. A moment of perfection that never existed; for perfection, for each of us, is not a thing that existed once upon a time, but in the moment that is now, and if you can’t find it there, you won’t find it anywhere …” ~ A Long Winter’s Night 2014 — Day 11: Perfection

Let’s pause a moment for a word from the late and incomparably great Warren Zevon with his thoughts on the matter, kindly presented complete with singalong lyrics courtesy of YouTube user RobotUnicornMadness.

There’s a saying from aviation that there are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots, and humour aside, there’s one point made in Mr. Zevon’s song that bears repeating:

I said, “My shit’s fucked up? Well I don’t see how.”

He said, “The shit that used to work — it won’t work now.”

That’s open to several interpretations, and in the one we’re going to run with today (mine), he’s not talking about physical bits not working (erectile dysfunction for example because I know that’s where most of the young ‘uns will go by default) so much as that a guy’s life is out of wack because he’s reached a point where youthful vigour and dumb luck have become unreliable, even worthless, options for going forward. There’s another old aviation yarn about a student pilot being told by his Flight Instructor that everybody starts out with two buckets — one labelled “Luck“, the other “Experience” — and when the day comes that you reach into the Luck bucket to find it empty, you’d better put the work in now to make sure that other one isn’t!

Unless you were born with a severely limiting physical or mental malady, or had a seriously sheltered upbringing, you’ve gone through that indestructible period during which you knew all you need know about life. The one that drives youth pregnancy rates to the moon and kills teenage male drivers in droves. That one. This isn’t to say youthful bravado is a bad thing. Quite the contrary, for I regard it as essential to development of sound skills in conflict resolution, understanding of one’s limitations (the ones you can fix and the ones you can’t), courage, and the spirit of adventure!

If you came to adulthood in a spirit that refuses to accept any age you’ve reached beyond 29, or as I said at the top of this piece, clasp your elder years to your bosom as an excuse for lack of effort and inadequacy in the present, let’s be candid — your shit never really did work, did it?

I’ll now relinquish the floor to Bruce Campbell to talk us out.