Growing Old

“Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth (...) In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy.” 

― Allan Bloom, "The Closing of the American Mind" (1987)

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Dear Kate,

"How you live today is already determined the night before," I said this a night ago.

My prophecy was fulfilled, wasn't it?  Any new thought came over you since you read the sentence last night?  Any new light under which you are seeing yourself today, readying you for your destiny, not fate?

I think not. "Life is life," isn't it?

My birthday, next week.  I've never been a birthday person, partly (a very big part indeed) due to growing up poor, expecting not much and the "big day" would usually play out accordingly.  One time, the only time I could remember, my parents took me to a huge toy store just opened in town, in Hong Kong, for me and my older brother (our births one year, one day apart) to pick our "birthday present," an item, an idea so foreign to me that on our way bussing there, I thought I was making history, that humanity has finally turned a corner.

After I don't remember how long, we arrived at and availed ourselves of the clearance bin, in which there were He-man and his green tiger, separately or together as a packaged deal, throbbing muscles and yellow stripes top-to-bottom, generously filled the cage of our once-fantasy: He-man wasn't cool by then.  Now I am sure my memory is vain like me: I remember pulling my brother back from aisles he would rather wander down to convince him that He-man is still cool, cool enough as our first turn of fate.  He, the Man, alone without his pet, was $8.95 HK dollars and I didn't want to trouble my parents beyond that.  I would only learn subsequently the place was called--you guessed it, Toys"R"Us.

We are growing older.  Four words I spoke just now, read like a lament to most, especially to a lady.  (Ladies I know and heard them lamenting.  Don't blast me for being "sexist"; I am just doing a field report.)  But why?  Why is growing older something lamentable?

Imagine yourself growing up in a culture where growing old is not only a good thing, but the best thing that can happen to a person.  People would come to you, the younger the more eager, to learn from you, your life experience, your wisdom, and celebrate you.  Your birthday would be one of the biggest days in town, more so every next year, your stature and dignity grow with your age.  No, I am not asking you to imagine being old in such a culture: I am inviting you to seize the vision of being young, looking up to those ahead of you, growing up to emulate their eminence.

What kind of nonsensical culture is this, one might ask?  The kind that has been all around the world, in all human civilizations, until....um, very very recently.  Imagine human history being a line one inch long, the way we see things now, the way we talk to each other about aging, the word you speak to yourself every morning in a mirror, is so tiny a dot on the line that it is barely discernible.

Indeed we have twisted our humanity so out of shape that it is now beyond recognition, by, say, even someone as recent as Socrates, possibly the wisest "old" man on human record.  Our vanity grows (and we let it, without restraint) as our vitality dims.  Now we call our seniors "the most vulnerable ones," as if it is a badge of honor we are hanging on their surgery gown (with strings at the back to easily open them up to reveal the nakedness of their "vulnerability").  We think the grandest dignity we could ascribe them is an access to the first vaccines, our "fight for justice" on their behalf for better nursing home treatment, a bigger pension, a long and comfy "retirement."  All these are decent endeavors, even necessary, but to think labelling someone as "the most vulnerable" is to bestow on them human dignity is really a roundabout way to say we are more dignified than they are.  A "vulnerable" person is not a resourceful person.  A "vulnerable" person in fact sucks up resources.  A "vulnerable" person is not someone who we look up to, or would want to learn from.  We expect nothing from such people and they should expect of themselves nothing likewise.  They are victims of their personal circumstances and historical situations, and should be known first and foremost as such, and we will keep pitying them, keep giving them stuffs to show we are not part of the victimizing System.  A "vulnerable" senior is no Stone Angel.

When was the last time we walked around in a care home, humbly in search of wisdom, opening our heart and ears to the fragrance of life stories, in a place that is anything but fragrant?  Do we even sit down around dinner table anymore and listen to each other's stories?  If we so not want to expose our aging forefathers and mothers to exploitations and despairs, shouldn't building strong families and communities be one of the most indispensable narratives in the grand weaving of our collective destiny?  We can't even get to like our parents without feeling morally dirty, let alone admiring or thinking we can learn from them.  We smash statues now, claiming that we want to do away with the old, bad, colonizing ways, that there's nothing to learn from a past that has nothing to do with us.  Yet our "visionaries" are those sending rocket ships to other planets to colonize them, and we celebrate these people, shower them with our money and praise and attention.  When was the last time you watched a movie about familial love?  A song you heard maybe?  Nothing comes to mind, right?  But we do care about Mother Earth and don't mind killing a brother or two for stopping me from hugging a tree or saving a whale.  Sins of our fathers and mothers are the only sins we know.

"Destiny is not fate. A destiny is a spiritual drama that is still unfolding. If I am sure of my destiny, I am not afraid of the fate embodied in my personal circumstances and historical situations."  When we know our destiny and are committed daily to live it out till our very end and beyond, we are visionaries.  "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

What Word is speaking to you today, giving you a vision to live out and live up to your destiny?

Yours, Alex