My father is sixty five. He’ll be sixty six in August. I don’t really know what sixty six is supposed to look like, but I’m guessing that he looks pretty good for it. Maybe he’s carrying a few extra pounds around the middle, but I think he looks pretty damn fine. He’s strong and has a nice tan and his short, wavy hair is mostly silver now, but still lovely.
But looking at himself in the pictures must have set him back. Because he sees himself now as being in his sixties. I think we all have a static image of ourself in our minds eye. My father's almost certainly is the image of the slender young man leaning against a vintage 1950's automobile with a gang of his friends.
I may be wrong about this, as I’m yet in my mid-thirties, but I’m guessing that as we age, we continue to see ourselves as we were in our youth, in the prime of our lives. Indomitable. Unstoppable. To suddenly have that image challenged must be very unsettling.
It’s not like we’re unaware of our aging. I was commenting to my close friend Josh, who I have been running and hiking with since 1993, that my body doesn’t seem to be bouncing back from injuries as quickly as it once did. A sprain I suffered in September still gives me the occasional jab, and my knee, which I cracked when I fell full body weight on it crossing a creek in Montana two and a half years ago, will likely never be the same. I’ll likely have to wear a brace on it when I run for the rest of my life. If I live that long. Josh kids that when you turn thirty the warranty expires. Sad but true.
But looking at the sequence of photos – of my two boys, Rio (4) and Silas (not yet one) – and Kat and I, who are still in the prime of our lives – and then at his own stately self, must have driven the point home that, well, we’re not getting any younger.
The Tao te Ching doesn’t address death and dieing in many verses, but one in particular does deal with it almost exclusively. Here is verse fifty of the Tao as Gia-Fu Fent and Jane English translate it in their lovely 1989 edition, published by Vintage.
Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death
Also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.
He who knows how to live can walk aboard
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to
Thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons not place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.
He who knows how to live, not merely as one passing through, but to really live, must not fear aging and dieing. Death has no power of us if we live life fully.
So don’t worry papa. You may no longer see that Buddy Holly look-alike, leaning on the car with all your friends when you look at yourself in digital photos displayed on a lap top computer. But he is there. He has had a good life, and will have much more yet to come. And he lives in me, and in your two grandsons. May they too not fear the piercing horns or wounding claw, as they live their lives deeply, with compassion and love as their guide.
