1. It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time
The Year of Paying Attention
This whole thing was supposed to take maybe two years. I was sixty (okay, sixty-two), and most of my life had happened already. Now I was going to do what I wanted, as much as possible, worry as little as possible, pay attention, and write it all down, for about a year. I further resolved, why I don’t know, to tell it straight even when it made me look stupid or thoughtless. As usual, I’d go for a few laughs. I’d seen my name on some humor books already, co-written with a couple of funny friends, small books in a rack by the cash register.
But this project wouldn’t be like those frivolous and successful (somewhat) books. Oh no. This book would have a few Serious Things To Say, about what’s it’s like to reach sixty (fine, sixty-two), and to have worked and worked until I was summoned upstairs and put out to pasture by my corporate overlords, my career, as it were, ended. (I am not complaining about that.) I’d write about the soft challenges of trying to relax and have a good time, I believe it’s called “fun,” while doing some Deep Cogitating, you know, reflecting on the big issues, such as death, and the meaning of it all, and can I now stop trying to drop five (okay ten) pounds.
After all, I had some experience to share, marriage and children and 12-step recovery and divorce and cancer, and if I could help you, dear reader, avoid some of the dumber mistakes, that’d be good, right? Since my long marriage was over, I could share some hilarious moments from the Gray Divorce phenomenon, while exploring the rib-tickling fun of being the father of two Millennials! Daughters! What was it King Lear said? No matter.
It’s funny to read articles about Baby Boomers, with my being one, and discovering some of our kids (and now some of their kids) believe we royally screwed up. I chat ceaselessly with my younger sister (mother of three young adults, separated from her husband, a lover of animals, the sibling who took care of our parents until they both died) about what we did wrong as parents. Because look at our kids’ generation! What is wrong with them? (My daughters are perfect, if they’re reading this.)
I did something as a grown-ass man that blows my mind even now, something that I considered an unforgivable act of selfishness, as well as evidence of a profound lack of good sense: I fell in love. With a younger woman. I have some thoughts about that, and you’re going to hear them.
I have real faith in three ideas, each of which opposes the other two. First, I believe I’m pretty much just like you, and we’re just like everybody else, and the fundamental qualitative differences between us are about as great as the difference between those two lobsters crawling in the holding tank at the Salty Dog Seafood Shack. Two, I am terribly special, wholly unique, a radiant child of the universe with qualities only the angels can fully appreciate, and certainly not my children or that boob at the office who sent me packing. And three, people are an unfathomable mystery, capable of inexplicable, often cruel actions I cannot imagine, and were I to fully fathom human nature, my head would explode. Mostly I tend toward number one, you and me and the rest of us like lobsters in the tank, only with resentments, voice-activated tvs and hair product.
I want to be clear. I love life, mine in particular, and so would you, I think, if it was yours. My love affair with my life has had its ups and downs, but we’re in a good place now, my life and me. I remember some unpleasantness in third grade, me the new kid who showed up well after the school year had started. I was in the playground, foolishly hoping to make some friends, when one kid knelt behind me and his shitty pal pushed me over him onto the ground, to the raucous amusement of my new classmates. That set the tone for the next few years. I recall some rapturous moments later on, in my senior year of prep school, on the roof of the science building with my girlfriend. I vaguely recall packing stuff into my Volkswagen Squareback Sedan, an awful car, to drive to New York City, age 25, to start my official adult life. I have a vivid memory of an argument on my honeymoon, me at the wheel of a little topless jeep-like vehicle, sternly pleading with my new bride to get back in the car, while she refused, marching angrily down a hill in St. Martin, before finally relenting. No idea why we were fighting. Next, eyes closed I see my toddler daughters running up a little hill from the pond on Martha’s Vineyard, in their little swimsuits with little peplums, two of the countless gifts from their grandmother. But this is not what I want to share with you.
When I’m in an unfamiliar part of the United States, or some part of Brooklyn I hope never to be in again, or jammed into a subway car, or wandering around looking for a bathroom in the luxurious home of someone I don’t really know — do we ever know anyone? — I may experience a strong sense of otherness. I bet you know this feeling. It’s the feeling that asks, “Jesus, how many bathrooms does a family of four need?” or, “I need to live alone out in the desert, because people are terrible.” These feelings don’t last. But they don’t disappear entirely, either.
It’s easy to get lost in one’s thoughts, never mind parts of Brooklyn I hope never to be in again, but writing it down can clear a path. Of course, writing it down takes time, but that’s something I’ve got plenty of, and at the start of this experiment I had a keen interest, because I knew I was running out of time. Not in a Hollywood movie thriller way, with that scary low alien tuba sound that seems to underscore every movie trailer these days, but in a ready-to-collect-Social Security way. More like the “60 Minutes” clock ticking.
Listen, I know I’m in the catbird seat. If you don’t know what that is, don’t bother with your phone, because I’ll explain: it’s an American English idiom, first used by James Thurber, and it means an enviable position. There’s some dispute about whether Red Barber used it first on the radio while providing color commentary for baseball games, but forget that. My enviable position was to have the time to investigate what makes me happy and fulfilled, and what makes me mad or scared, and whether it’s possible to maximize the former and minimize the latter. This train of thought is as common as dirt. Everybody is ruminating about happiness and satisfaction, often a bit ruefully as they deal with foolishness at work or obstreperous small children or aging parents and cranky siblings.
However, I, with no work and thus no adjacent foolishness, fully fledged adult children and zero living parents, have a much simpler consideration set. The thing that occupied a lot of my time, a full-time job, went away. Once my emotional distress and existential confusion quieted down, I decided to give the topic of finding and holding onto happiness my full attention, for one year. Actually thirteen months, lucky thirteen, starting one chilly December, so you’ll get not one but two Christmas seasons, along with car trouble, relationship issues, funeral services, sex on the floor, Chinese food and trips to Tennessee.
As my year-long quest progressed it seemed a lot like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and sometimes like Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. I was committed to not worrying about wasting time, and when I forgot and started worrying, to forgiving myself for forgetting, and stop, again. And again. This could fill hours a day. While practicing that, I began to see what consistently made me happy, and what regularly threw me for a loop. Over time my goals came into focus. I wanted:
- To embrace and hug and kiss my new status as one of the inconsequential and near-invisible denizens of Manhattan, also known as a retiree;
- To fix up or stop lamenting over my relations with both of my sisters, both of my daughters and, since we’re on the subject, both of my dead parents and a few former friends;
- To forgive myself for falling in love with someone and ending my long marriage, which was my precise definition of Failure As A Man, something I didn’t grasp until it started happening;
- To prepare to get older and older, followed by dead and gone, all the while eliminating as much regret as possible, so I’d have plenty of room to stretch out under the covers of my deathbed, far, far in the future, or later this week;
- Most challenging, aside from eating less pork and more kale and exercising: to not chicken out, not bullshit you as I make my report.
What follows is a spotty record of how I eased myself in and out of the hellish cauldron of comparing, blundered about with friends and family, felt blue or anxious or happy and grateful, listened to music, went out and about and to meetings, and got stuck in repetitive, useless thinking while trying to figure it out. Just like you do. I think we’re a lot alike. I think we could be friends, don’t you? Don’t ditch me.
Next week: How To Clean Out A Desk
