The older I get, the more I am forced
to deal with the fact that I am mortal. Every day, I am confronted
with reminders of this. Every new ache, every time I don't spring
back as quickly as I used to from some physical problem, every time I
observe the signs of my age in the mirror, every time I see people
whom I love suffering with problems that come from aging, all of
these things stand as testimonies that life is transient.

Shit! Sixty! I'm freaking pushing
Sixty!

I know it cliché, but... where the hell did the time go? How did I fill up those almost sixty
freaking years?

When I was a youth, I would spring up out of a chair and run out the
back door of my house in pursuit of new and exciting adventures. Now
when I get up out a chair, I turn around to make sure none of me is
left behind.

And the sad part is, I think I can still do the things that I used to
do in my twenties. It's only after I attempt to do them and my body
screams at me and doesn't respond the way I had truly expected to
respond that reality comes crashing down around my ears...and I am
always honestly surprised by my newly acquired and gradually
increasing limitations.

I look at Dixie, my ten-year-old German
Shepherd, and I remember her just a few short years ago, fluidly
running with abandon across the pastures, happily chasing sticks and
tennis balls. Today, her personality is still the same as it was
then; she is just as sweet, funny, affectionate and feisty as ever,
but her movements are stiff now, her hips are giving her a lot of
grief, and I have to carry her up the stairs every night so that she
can sleep with us in the bedroom.

Then I look at Fritz, my
three-year-old, puppy-ish German Shepherd, as he joyously charges
full-tilt to nowhere across our yard and our pastures and through the
rooms and halls of our house, and I think, Oh, Fritzy-boy! I hope
you live forever!

In reality, I, of
course, I know that in a just a few years, he will be in the same
condition as Dixie, and at some time during those same few years,
Dixie will cease whinnying with us.

The beauty of being
Fritz is that he lives only in the moment. He has no concept of
future, and has no idea that he is going to die someday. All he
knows is what he is experiencing, and, most of the time, he LOVES his
life! The quintessential existentialist!

Lacking any
knowledge that all of this going to come to end someday, he lives his
life jubilantly, loves openly, and doesn't give a damn what
impressions he makes or what legacy he is going to leave behind. He
is an inspiration to me. I strive to be like him. (I'm serious!)

+++

I have no
biological children. I've got two adopted kids, who are now in their
thirties. I've two assimilated kids that I acquired when I married
Mary Ellen, one of whom is in his forties and the other one is in his
thirties. I also have all of their significant others, whom I
consider my kids. I've got great relationships with all of them, and
I love them all very, very much.

But my bloodline
stops with me. Not that that's all that important, but I do find
myself thinking about it once in a while.

+++

Okay, I'm going to
come right out and ask it; does anybody else wonder if they're going
to be remembered after they are gone?

I do.

And I want to
be remembered.

Since my genes and
my blood will not be passed along, my only connections to the future
are the memories that I leave in the minds of others.

I used to want to
be liked by people. But now that I'm older, I really don't care if
others like me or not, as long as they remember me when I'm no longer
around.

Sounds silly, huh?

Can't help it. It's
how I am.

That's not to say
that obsess on it.

I don't.

But it does cross my mind from time to time in quiet moments.

I don't wonder what
my legacy is going to be; I wonder if I'm going to leave one.

I think this quirk
stems from the fact that I never felt acknowledged in my younger
years. In my family, I was overshadowed by my siblings.

I am the oldest of
three brothers. My father's favorite son was my middle brother,
because he was an athlete. My mother's favorite was my youngest
brother because he was the baby of the family. Neither of my parents
tried to hide who their favorites were.

Believe it or not,
in my younger years, I was a very shy person. I slid through school
without participating in sports or clubs, and I was always somewhere
in the middle of the pack when it came to grades. I was anything but
outstanding, and drew very little attention to myself.

I am not writing
this to elicit any responses from others. I'm not fishing for
compliments. I'm writing this as sort of a meditation.

So, where does this
all lead?

Damned if I know!

Except that, as I
have grown older, I have become painfully aware of the time that I
wasted in my life and the opportunities that I missed and/or
squandered.

One of the
frustrating things about seeing time as a linear thing is that, once
something is experienced, it's over. You can't go back and reclaim it
or alter it or delete it. Like a Hindu sand painting, it exists in
all of its beauty, precision and magnificence for a moment only, and
then it is scattered to the winds, forever gone.

In my more pensive
and reflective moods, I know that Regret is a completely useless
emotion, and it is also one that we all feel from time to time.

I have done much in
my life that I've regretted, and to dwell upon those things is a
total waste of time.

(Regret's first
cousin, self-pity, is another colossal waste of energy. Both of these
emotions, when taken to the extreme, can lead to depression and send
the person who wallows in them down the long road of perpetual
self-victimization.)

I guess, rather
than cry over things that have happened and things that have not
happened, the best thing to do is to learn from those past feelings
and try to live life with passion and compassion from the present
time forward.

Live life with
exuberance, and, as long as you do no harm, care little about the
judgment of others. (So often in my younger days, my actions were
shaped by the opinions and perceptions of others. Today, I view the
perceptions of others as detour signs rather than guide posts.)

1. Never miss an
opportunity to tell those you love that you love them.

2. Enjoy life
around you and inside you.

3. Be a positive
force, even in a world where positivity is often viewed as juvenile
and ignorant, and openly admitting your emotions is viewed as
weakness.

I would like to
live my life with these three goals in mind for as long as possible,
without worrying about being judged by other mortals or by some
elusive God with an agenda.

And what of my
legacy?

Well, I think it
would be terrific if, after they scattered sands of my life to the
winds, all of my friends and family would get together at The Main
Street Cafe, eat cheeseburgers strafed with jalapenos, drink great
flagons of Certified Gold Lager, and laugh over the good times and
soft feelings that I helped create with my life.

In closing, I'd
like to share a piece of writing by the French poet Charles
Baudelaire.

GET DRUNK by
Baudelaire
ONE SHOULD always be drunk. That’s the great
thing; the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be
drunk without respite.
Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with
virtue, as you please. But get drunk.
And if sometimes you should happen to awake, on
the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary
solitude of your own room, and find that your drunkenness is ebbing
or has vanished, ask the wind and the wave, ask star, bird, or clock,
ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that
flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them the
time; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird and the clock will
all reply: “It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the
martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with
poetry, or with virtue, as you please.”