WE NEED A REASON TO KEEP GOING

 

WE NEED A REASON TO KEEP GOING

            (Originally posted 12/2017) 

                           

I suppose there is some comfort in knowing that it is not normally a late-life thing….falling victim to the latest fad, jumping in headfirst before knowing how deep the water is. 

  After all, how many of us old-timers are ready to make a significant change in our life’s journey? Not many, I'm guessing. Yet, on the other hand, perhaps there is a case to be made for being a little bolder. How can we nurture the thriving and Becoming I so often rant about….the path I believe we are called to pursue....if we refuse to move beyond the same old rut?

  I won’t pretend to speak for you….not in light of my own suspect history. For any of us, climbing out of our comfortable, well-worn rut to move toward something new is apt to be a daunting mental/emotional journey….moving from the known to the unknown, or at least the less-well-known. 

  As sometimes happens in my November storytelling world, an evolving storyline is apt to have me pausing to revisit and examine some “taken-for-granted” part of my own late-life routine. That process became all the more personal when the story I am presently assembling focused on an October fellow who is sunk deep in his own existential rut.

  The new friend I have imagined into being, I call him Neal Fanning, is a semi-disabled, apartment-bound widower who has reluctantly resigned himself to a confining, home-based lifestyle. His most basic of Basic Cable packages allows him a mind-dulling routine of TV game shows, dated situation comedy reruns, and evenings spent nodding off in the middle of old movies he has seen too many times before. For all practical purposes that routine has become his life.

  Of course, scattered throughout those endless hours of uninspired detachment are the quiet moments that overtake all of us from time to time….when bittersweet recollections of times past float to the front of our mind.

Remembered bits of childhood, some of them sentimental, some traumatic, may capture our attention. Or the unsettling highs and lows of long-ago school days may hold court. For Neal those reveries will usually include endearing, but somewhat-hurtful memories of special times spent with his recently-departed wife of forty-some years.

    Having spent months adapting to his spartan lifestyle he has come to accept the latest, and apparently final stage of his long life as the only future in sight, the best he can expect.

  But what he has not foreseen are the insistent efforts of his daughters, who are determined to steer their father toward a more fulfilling future….. setting out to expand his isolated life by exploiting capabilities he had never considered. 

  Of course he will grumble each step of the way, railing against the possibilities ‘the girls’ are trying to sell him.  After all, what can they possibly offer that would move him beyond his well-worn rut? Let’s see if I can explain?

         *************

  Perhaps like you, I grew up in front of a television set, weaned on dramas, comedies, and variety shows that reflected the 1950s world I knew. Sadly, in today’s 2017 universe…..with its too-violent dramas, phony fantasy, too-graphic relational tales, and unhumorous comedies….there is little left for someone like me to watch. Beyond my nightly news fix, Rachel Madow, and a good ballgame or documentary it too-often feels like I have been left behind.

  Then, about the time I had resigned myself to that mundane existence, out of step with today’s cultural tastes, I came face to face with a most disruptive change….a technological firestorm that seemed to rewrite the rules and change the landscape.

  Could you and I have imagined such a thing in our well-remembered glory years? Just think about the timid, perhaps overwhelmed teenager you might have been back then. Could you have made your way in the intimidating new world of Twitter and Tweet, Gmail, and Facebook? Could we have handled today’s internet? 

  Of course, that was then. This is now. Here we are, a tick or two past our prime….living, if not thriving, in that brave new internet world. If you are at all like me you have set up shop on the fringes of that on-line techno-world, holding on by your finger tips.

  For a long time my internet involvement was limited to Gmail, Facebook, this blog, and The Daily Mail. Those had become the elements of my after-breakfast routine, before I moved on to the day’s more mundane activities….until, that is, I started looking around for more 'online candy.' The more I looked, the more I found, and the more I realized how much the internet, aka ‘the web,’ has to offer.

 In the course of late-life conversations I have met more than a few peers for whom the internet is at best a foreign idea, and at worst a threat they would rather avoid. You probably know folks like that. You might be one of them. It is not my place to say those concerns are wrong. But I do feel the need to explain, even briefly, what I think they are missing. At least I will try.

                           ************

  First of all, long story short, my fictional friend Neal will use the internet possibilities his daughters are selling to expand his life. That is the story I want to tell….how so many of us October/November folks can use those tools to broaden our own horizons. More to the point, if you have been told, or have told yourself, that you can’t do that, that it is too late to change your spots …..YOU ARE WRONG. Again, allow me to explain.

  They tell us that younger generations no longer rely on newspapers to stay current on the issues of the day. But I’m guessing that many of us October/November types have never outgrown our reliance on a morning newspaper with our breakfast coffee. What many of us don’t realize is that if you are a ‘newspaper person’ the internet is definitely for you. 

 By now most every major newspaper in the world has an online, often English-language edition. It has never been easier to follow international events, in a format you can read, often presented from a very different perspective than our home-town press. As an avowed Anglophile one of my personal favorites is the site that lists websites for virtually every newspaper in England.

  Or maybe you are the social sort….perhaps the kind who fostered pen-pal friendships as a youngster. Rest assured that virtually every country has online senior pen-pal sites, making it easy to meet and visit with international friends….October types like us. 

Today, following a few common-sense rules, (Do not disclose personal information, succumb to romantic overtures, or send money.) it is still possible to create satisfying and lasting international friendships. I know, because I still visit with English friends most every week.

    Or you might be a senior who would rather use the internet for your personal entertainment. It is hard to overstate the range of entertainment and educational videos that await your viewing. There are literally thousands of videos featuring your favorite performers and their music from years gone by, along with classic stand-up routines and the situation comedies you remember from your own glory days.

  And finally there is the ultimate retirement staple….late-life travel. In both photographic and video formats the internet offers an incredible selection of travel material to whet your appetite. Most every country is represented….each with their own enticing photo essays and comprehensive video presentations, documenting the virtues of travel to and within their country. 

  Whatever your imagined destination, no matter what you hope to see or do, you can be sure that someone has been there, camera in hand, to illustrate the possibilities from every angle. Their efforts have literally taken 'armchair travel' to a whole new level.

  And how do you find all those treasures? If you don't know by now, you should certainly learn. It may be ’Google.' It may be ‘YouTube’. Or one of many other 'search engine' options.

 You call up the website, type any question you want answered, ("Where can I find old music videos?") and bingo, your screen will be filled with hundreds, if not thousands of answers. That works for any question you can imagine.

  So, it will be some of those possibilities, along with many more, which will finally win Neal’s attention….and hopefully allow him to move beyond his numbing retirement experience. And in the end, when the time comes for a break from those online diversions, his ‘most-favorite-of-all’ internet destination….Sixteen Exciting Solitaire Games….will remain just a click away.

                               **********

  Finally, as I am prone to do, I will end with one more bit of context for the ‘Neal’ story I am telling. It was a few years ago when an upsetting cancer diagnosis had me seeking a late-life purpose, a reason to keep going.

  I would never claim to speak for the Divine. But it felt as though my continued meanderings through today’s tangled, but satisfying late-life landscape…. trying my best to shine a light, dim as it may be, on  opportunities and challenges that might await us…. was as close as I could come to a valid reason to keep plowing ahead. 

  Too often we allow ourselves to approach these years with dread, when we ought to be focused on the possibilities and potential. That’s what I would like to do. Hopefully, my friend Neal, and the story I imagine for him, will lend a hand in that effort.

                                *********

    Postscript ...... By late 2017, when I first posted this piece, I had roughed out 10 or 12 chapters of Neal's story.....doing my best to tell of his sad circumstances, while relating some of his daughters' efforts to bring him into the new, slightly foreign online world.

    Sad to say, it was then my storytelling ran out of inspiration. Truth to tell, I simply did not know where his story was leading. I had yet to imagine a convincing way to use what the girls' had set in motion.

    And so it would remain until early 2023, when in a most unexpected way Neal's path forward, which ironically looked a lot like my own path, began to take shape. Once that course was settled the story I titled A Geriatric Adolescence seemed to complete itself. By April Amazon's self-publishing arm had sent me the copy that now resides on my bookshelf.