75
This particular thought has crossed my mind many, many times in the past few years. Sometimes it sparks to life when I wake up in the mornings and am rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Sometimes it pops into my noggin when I’m walking my dog on our daily ambles around the neighborhood. It even rumbles out of the darkness sometimes when I’m brushing my teeth on a gloomy morning before heading out to exercise class. And the question I’ve been musing about is this:
Why am I still here?
I guess a lot of this pondering is due to the fact that I turned 75 recently. And, to be honest, that number is, well, a doggone big one! Actually, 75 big ones. And if you didn’t give that fact a think or two, you probably are a bit brain dead. 75. Holy moly and son of a gun! I reminisce about my family and how this attainment was not achieved by many, if any of them. Actually, in my growing-up family, not at all. My mom made 52. My dad made 71 or thereabouts. My next younger brother only made 42. So… Why have I surpassed all those numbers to attain the big magilla that I’m at today?
And I try to attach some reasons to the fact.
Perhaps it’s just genetics. The combination of genes from my parents sort of hit a full house in the poker hand of life. Maybe. Probably not a royal flush though. I’m not 100 mind you. But 75 is a darn nice poker hand. A high-card flush at least or the aforementioned full house. Yeah, that’s probably the reason that has the most scientific underpinnings to it. But… then again, my brothers had the same parents, very much the same genetic roll of the dice and the results of that are: I’ve lost one and the other has had many heart problems and he’s 9 years younger. So that reason might be a bit suspect on further examination. Hell, we all had the same shots, most of the same kid diseases and lived in the same house together for all of our childhood. So? Why the discrepancy? Was it really the genetic dice roll?
I must be honest and acknowledge that I have had a heart attack and open heart surgery myself not that long in the past. Whether that’s the missing factor in the equation of my life I don’t know. I can’t imagine it being much of a thumbs-up, but who am I to say?
Then I start thinking about stuff I did or still do and other stuff I didn’t and still don’t do that may or may not have affected my longevity. Good things and bad things – at least good and bad according to most scientific studies. I smoked for many years and that surely did not add to my longevity. Lord no. When I think back on that dirty habit I wonder how I survived it. But then again, I don’t and didn’t very often drink to excess. Is that a plus? Did that fact partially nullify the smoking? They say red wine is good for you. Then again, recently, I’ve heard that’s a fallacy. Funny how that fact and many others wobble around in the purgatory between OK and not OK.
I’ve been pretty much a one-woman man most of my adult life, but then again, I did date and do this and that as a younger male. You may fill in those “this and that” blanks as you wish. Maybe all told that’s not really a plus or minus. A push maybe?
Then I start thinking about things I’ve done personally that might be the longevity reason d’entre. Maybe eating oatmeal occasionally is the be all and end all secret to longevity. Or loving or hating chocolate is the key. (I personally love it.) Or possibly the little exercise class my wife and I attend thrice weekly is the watershed event. I really have to figure that as a plus in any evaluation.
I’ve often queried my dog (take that as you will) as we wandered through the neighborhood on our daily walks on these questions and, although she’s pretty emphatic on her disapproval of squirrels, rabbits, other canines and definitely on individuals of the feline persuasion, she’s not very helpful on my existential ponderings. So be it. She’s entitled to her own doggie thoughts.
I then look upon my siblings and think about what they may or may not have done to achieve the consequences that they have enjoyed and suffered in their lives. Did I do or not do any of those activities? A lot? A little? Any? And did those activities affect their ultimate fates? Or mine?
A whole lot of questions end up floating around and very little answers are forthcoming. I’m beginning to feel that may be the ultimate answer to life – that the questions keep piling up and the answers become more and more difficult to come to. And maybe that’s the way things were intended to be. Some questions being very, very difficult to answer, even approaching impossible, due to the myriad of variables involved.
I’d like to tie this mental exercise up in a tidy bow, shiny paper, with a card and a kiss, but my unfortunately finite mind keeps trying to up the ante with more and more outlandish propositions. Maybe it was the near-accident I almost had last Thursday down the street. Maybe I was supposed to bite the big one then, but due to… what? I didn’t. The angle of the sun in the other driver’s eyes? The banana I had for breakfast a half-hour before? My great-great grandfather’s aversion to strawberries? Some other cosmic event imperceptible by we mortals?
You can absolutely and positively drive yourself bonkers falling down those rabbit holes.
So, in any event, I’ve attained the elevated and majestic age of 75. And that achievement may or may not have been arrived at by… who knows?
All I do know though, is that I’ll again walk my dog and she’ll keep a close eye out for furry critters along the wayside and I’ll keep a weather eye on the clouds and the west wind and try to meld those climactic observations into a new version of why, how and when. And once again, undoubtedly conclude that the whole exercise is and will forever be a fool’s errand.
