The Divine Art of Being

I seldom tackle The Big Subjects on this blog: I really don’t feel at all equipped to do so – there is nothing I can add to the discussion – never-the-less, my world is currently in the midst of one of those periods where the man with the scythe is back from vacation and going flat out to impress his employer.  Death is surrounding me.  My contemporaries are falling off the wheel with the alacrity of a three-legged hamster.  Either The Grim Reaper is getting better at his job or we’re forgetting that the whole point of life is to keep him out of it for as long as possible.

Nobody, but nobody, wants to think about dying, and the closer that you get to it, the less you want it on your mind.  The inevitability of it is oppressive and the only way to cope with it is to wipe it from your mind.  Deal with the day you are in, ignore the day you might not make: it will get along perfectly well without you.  Mortality is a concept that can only be fully understood by the immortal.  As a mortal, you deal with it by pretending that it does not exist: you create an afterlife, you invent reincarnation, you imagine ghosts… There is a kind of logic to the planet as a media on which we can all leave a mark.  We can all leave an echo.  Perhaps we do leave some kind of fingerprint after we have gone.  The battle is to not let death define you.  It would be so easy to spend the closing decades of your life running away from something that is inescapable.  We all die.  I’m not suggesting that you ignore it, just that you stick your tongue out and tell it that you’re not interested right now…

Personally I would be happy to put it off for as long as possible, but I do know people who have given up everything they enjoy in life in order to prolong it and I’m not sure that I could face what might well begin to feel like eternity without coffee, chocolate and whisky.  My loved ones are my life.  My grandchildren bring me more joy than I can begin to express.  The ability to get around and enjoy life out in the world is one that I treasure.  The thrill of seeing spring’s first snowdrop, first butterfly, first nest-building bird is undiminished by age.  Who could fail to find the spirits lifted by a field full of spring-legged lambs?  Life has to be about life.

So, I try to eat sensibly, I try to drink responsibly, I swim, I go to the gym, I plod through my 10,000 steps a day (unless, of course, it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy or the armchair is too sticky) I embrace life in every way that I can.  I avoid politics like the plague (no-one will ever have their opinion changed by a valid argument) and politicians like the plague dogs they unquestionably are.  It is my aim to evade death by thinking about it as little as is humanly possible.  I can’t deny death, but I can try to refuse it immediate access.  I might be surrounded by it, but I will make like Michael Caine in Zulu, and everyone knows that the last thing that Death wants is a Zulu spear up the backside…

You stepped out into nothing, you didn’t fear a fall
You did it with your eyes closed, you didn’t care at all
And when I’m not here like the ending of this play
You can tell them in all righteousness I’m the one that got away… The Divine Art of Being – Lonely Robot (John Mitchell)