New Year -- Looking (Way) Back

At the new year, there's all sorts of looking back on the past year. Not surprising, but for some reason I find myself looking way back this time. Maybe it's that I turned 70 this past year. A bit of a surprise, I guess, since I haven't taken terribly good care of myself over the years. Perhaps more of a surprise is that I've managed to outwit the assassins for so long. And losing both my brothers in just over 2 months last year certainly contributes. Anyway, I find myself looking back on my life, and wondering what are some of the important things I've learned over the years. A very good question, I think.

First would probably be the impermanence of things. The world I came into is very much not the world I live in now. The continents and oceans are pretty much in the same place and all (and even they haven't always been where they are) but that's about it. Many a decade ago, I thought unchangeableness was an ideal to be aimed at, a sort of perfection. I did finally disabuse myself of that, but I do still find myself uncomfortable with ephemera. I keep on collecting, and after a while purging for the sake of my hard drive, pretty photos and funny memes taken from the 'net. I only realized recently I do this because I want the beauty and the humor to last, even though the very nature of the digital photo and the meme is that they one-shot disposables. Nothing I deem worthy should be temporary... even though I darn well know better.

Another is that people are mostly weird. I find most people rather mysterious, I think, and certainly the larger the crowd of them the more baffling I find them. I once thought I had people figured out, or at least had the key to finding out why they did what they did. That old certainty has passed, as so many other certainties have. People do what they do, and often do the opposite of what they want to do. It's a mystery, and it's likely best to give them wide berth, with the exception of a handful of close friends.

Sometime in my late 30's or 40's, I did think I had things figured out in general, knew what I believed, had nice solid ideas about things. In good Socratic fashion, in my 50's I realized I actually knew very little and was uncertain about most things. I've concluded that the big questions about "life, the universe, and everything" really are unfathomable, and that "42" is as likely an answer as anything else.

So at 70 have I become a nihilist? No, not really. What I've developed is an acute sense of the limits of human understanding--especially MY understanding--and a surprising comfort in not knowing and never knowing. Maybe I'm a sort of quietest (not in the religious/philosophical sense). The universe will do as it darn well pleases anyway and, in good Stoic fashion (Stoicism is as close to a religion as I get these days) the  most and best I can do is adjust my attitude to what time and the cosmos brings. This brings tranquillity to the soul.