When Conrad Hilton, the hotel magnate, was asked late in life what he had learned, he supposedly said: “To keep the shower curtain on the inside.” It’s a piece of wisdom I’ve taken to heart: first, because it keeps the bathroom floor dry, and second, because it also says that there is very little wisdom we can pass along. If there were, the young would be a lot wiser.
Not that they’re stupid; but they’re not always ready to learn whatever it is that we can teach them once we’ve attained a certain age. I got very little advice, and even less good advice, back in the day. And now that I’m older, I seldom give advice to younger friends (and frankly, they seldom ask for it). When I do, it’s usually the same piece of advice, which they routinely – no, universally – ignore. That is: if you’re having a baby, don’t read books about having a baby. Just have the damn baby and do what comes naturally, as you did in making the baby. (And I love babies).
I could add that old age sneaks up on you gradually; what a gem of insight that is. Incrementally, I am shocked as parts of my body (or worse, my mind) don’t function quite as well as they used to. What’s that about? Why are there more subway stairs? Why do escalators and elevators seem more attractive? I’m not shocked because it’s unexpected; just shocked, as in “what kind of universe is this anyway?” And I’m sometimes at a ridiculous loss for words – a loss for ridiculous, everyday words. Fortunately, as a writer, I have the luxury of waiting for the words to arrive. Turns out it was a hidden benefit of the otherwise dubious decision to become a writer.
The body is, if anything, more mysterious to me in its pattern of gradual decline. Things that were once easy become harder (like getting in and out of a car or a bathtub), and I wonder why that is the case – not just in a scientific or medical sense, but why there is decay at all. What pleasure or purpose does nature get out of it?
I get the part about entropy, how energy always disperses except when we force it to do otherwise, through the use of tools, technology, or human cunning. From what I can gather, the universe as a whole is unspooling; indeed, physicists tell us it’s happening at an accelerating pace. Not a good sign.
But there is also growth, an amazing phenomenon that defies entropy. And the flowers that bloom every spring, and the perennial return of the sun and of baseball. So why do we spend so much time decaying? It all reminds me of a movie title (a Civil War comedy, if such a thing is possible, of which I remember nothing): “Advance to the Rear.”
Perhaps I’m wrong and there’s some sort of natural arc to these things. It seems we spend our first twenty or so years growing, the next twenty or so in very gradual decline, then another twenty in steadier decline, and so on until we fall through the trap door of Eternity. If it were up to me, we would grow for twenty years, thrive for another sixty or so, and then just find the trap door on our own.
Watching our friends or parents decline may or may not improve our characters. I think it comes a bit late for that. Maybe, as I’ve been told, it prepares us for our own demise. But apart from that happy thought, witnessing the gradual coming apart of others doesn’t do anything identifiably wonderful either for us or for them.
As for the terminus – what we New Yorkers call the last stop on the D Train: I don’t fear death as a state. No more emails, passwords, or usernames – it sounds like the definition of Heaven to me. But the process of dying is something else again. Maybe the whole point of decay is simply to prepare us for the end – not for death per se, which I reckon to be identical to the state we were in before conception – but for the process of dying. Even though we experience it in very different ways that are almost entirely beyond our control.
Still, even if in our latter stages we have little to share with younger people, maybe we have something to share with each other. I think such shared wisdom could be profound, and even sacred. I don’t mean sacred in the religious sense, but in the broader spiritual sense that embraces everything and everyone we connect to or with.
Here, then, is my contribution to the sacred text of how to advance together toward Eternity. It complements the advice of Mr. Hilton:
If you drop a bar of soap in the shower, don’t bend down to pick it up. Bending down is a bother, and probably one reason we get old. Leave the soap down there and use it to soap your feet. All it takes is a pat of the foot, and then wiggle your toes to get the soap between them. Consider soap-on-the-shower-floor a reward for getting older. That’s what a bar of soap owes you at this point in your life.
Follow Duke Ellington’s advice and stay on the A(live) Train as long as you can – at least you won’t end up in the Bronx.
And of course, with regard to the soap on the shower floor: unless you’re actively looking for the trapdoor to Eternity, don’t trip on the damn thing.