Sixty and Still Here
Imagine if you will being six years old, watching your
grandfather die at fifty-nine from lung cancer and having your own grandmother
tell you that you and your father will also die before age sixty. Terrifying,
right?
Then visit a Jamaican voodoo woman with your girlfriend
when you are sixteen and hear from this woman who does not know you that you
will not complete your sixth decade.
Jump from there into the army during the Vietnam War and
exacerbate the problem by entering into a special occupation with a six weeks
to six months life expectancy. Not enough?
Add to that a visit to a psychic with your spouse when
you are twenty-one for a question that she wanted to ask about getting cancer
herself. While there have the woman take your hand and look you in the eyes and
say “I’m so sorry.” You ask about what and she says “You will not see your sixtieth
birthday.”
You can rationalize that it is all bull and that your
grandmother was just a mean old woman who was hurting from her loss and was
lashing out. The other two were just saying things that would scare you into
coming back and paying them for further “readings” or potions to “save you.”
You can do all that. But it doesn’t take the creepy
thoughts out of the back of your mind. The “what-if” machine works overtime and
no matter how scientific and rational you are it is difficult to not wonder
about it. Three people who don’t know each other and two of them know little to
nothing about you, have all said the same thing.
When I was young and going at life full-tilt I didn’t
worry about reaching sixty. Most of us didn’t believe we would see thirty.
Considering what I did as a young man it was very unlikely that I would survive
more than a few years anyway.
Then your child grows up a little more and you can’t
imagine leaving her alone so you change your occupation to something less life
threatening. Life throws you a curveball and you have to go back into the
military, but you choose differently this time and try to be safer. Two more
kids come along and you definitely can’t check out now.
Out of the military again and the transition period from
soldier/sailor to civilian begins. The things you had to do in the military
cause nightmares and guilt to nearly drive you crazy but you persist because
your kids need you.
Age starts accumulating and another life change happens
where one marriage ends and another begins. You still have the nagging voice in
the back of your mind saying “remember the predictions… sixty is it.” You take
out the maximum life insurance policy at work. Even at that stage when asked
about retirement you give your standard answer, “I will die on the job. I won’t
live long enough to retire.”
The opportunity to manipulate your service time around
and retire at fifty-six happens and you go for it. The whole process is a fairy
tale to you for years afterwards because even after you do it, you don’t
believe that it happened. My own prediction of not living long enough to retire
has failed. I’m good with that.
The years tick down to the magic number “sixty” and even
on the night before your birthday you still have the voice in your head saying,
“OK, this is it, get ready.”
It took until the day after my birthday to believe that I
wasn’t going to die somehow and make those predictions come true. I didn’t want
it to be true, but I have heard it since I was six years old and it was
ingrained into my psyche.
So what happened, why am I still here? Was it because I
changed my lifestyle, or altered my path? Did I do enough good deeds to help my
karma? I don’t buy into the God’s plan story so it shall remain a small
mystery.
What have I learned from this?
You live until you die, so don’t stop living prematurely.
And, that the how and when you cease to be are vastly unimportant when compared
to how you live right now. By “how you live” I mean how you treat the people,
animals, planet around you. Is the world a better place because you are in it?
If not, you still have a chance to make it so.
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