As If
I’ve spent several days in the last week talking about truth spurred by a documentary on Thoreau and his search for truth. Then I spent this weekend confronting my own truth. I’m dying, not in a specific way such as a horrific diagnosis, just in the general way that everyone dies. Time is running out. I’m entering my eighties, and for the first time, when thinking about a tree to plant, I realized I might not see it through to maturity. That’s a sobering thought.
Of course, if things go well, I could have another ten to twenty years, so I have to be careful in what thoughts my mind sends the way of my body and how I approach this end game. I have a feeling that positivity counts. Luckily, over the years I’ve been fairly successful in working my way past and through dark thoughts. This writing about them is one of those ways. Putting it on paper, so to speak, helps me quantify the unquantifiable, giving it shape and form. It’s a bit like therapy.
The banisher of my angst seems simple. I need to work on my “as if”, the part of me that did things as if I’d live forever, or at least a long time, just as I’ve always done. That seems doable. They used to call that an attitude adjustment. I have no idea what folks call it today. But now that I’m here and recognize it, I believe I can get on with it. Basically, it probably has something to do with remembering how to find the joy in life and simply deciding to smile. The latter is an easy thing to do when I step outside, as I did this morning, to cool air and ground wet with rain surrounded by the coming of spring.