An Old Man's Happiness?

Another recent article, perhaps a book review, in my weekly newsmagazine referred to various views about the philosophy of human happiness. Apparently a thinkers’ consensus stipulates that humans who live in and for the present, with little thought of past or future, are the happy ones. Those who continually review past experience or worry about the future are generally unhappy.

The proposition leaves this old man in a conundrum of sorts. In earlier years I was often fearful of the insecurities of the present, unhappy with my past performance and worried about the future. I spent much too little time enjoying the few peaceful and enjoyable moments and relationships when past, present and future all merged into one.

Now, after several rather sad and fearful personal and world tragedies of the first few weeks of 2010 I have very little to feel happy about in the present, and not a great deal of time left of my future in this world. The result is that I spend a great deal of time on what amounts to nostalgia. I find myself going back to events that happened at various times from childhood to the recent past, often jumping at random from one period to another completely unrelated circumstance, both in sleeping and waking hours, generally looking for those moments when I found myself at peace and feeling happy about something, shuffling away from those other times when I may have disgraced myself in some way.

Shakespeare’s character, Antonio, says in The Tempest, “Whereof what’s past is prologue, what to come in yours and my discharge.” Shakespeare’s prologue to the play has taken the characters to their present state of affairs, so that they can now decide where to take the drama from that present. That may have been well and good for plotting that drama with characters still upwardly mobile but is hardly helpful to the old man now, with but few options to determine what is to come, which is not really “in my discharge”.

Among the many philosophical comments about past and future are those of Blaise Pascal, a brilliant mathematician and philosopher of the seventeenth century, who died at 39 leaving an extensive body of work. He said in his own version of Passing Thoughts that “we anticipate the future as too slow in coming … or we recall the past to stop its too rapid flight. For the present is too painful to us. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the present and future. … The past and present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”

I am still somewhat dismayed at the ever more rapid disappearance of my “present”. As a young boy I could not wait to be bigger, more powerful, better off, more successful, more this, more that and preferably someplace else. As a teenager I doubt if I ever knew what I wanted, either in the present or in the future, but I could not wait until I finished school, became “independent” and found a mate of my own. That stage finally came about through some effort and a lot of help but without taking any real advantage of the scope of resources that present freely offered. I could not wait to be successful so I could provide for mate and offspring, hopefully in a way that was better than had been my experience. So I kept looking, thinking of the future, of security for me and mine, of retirement, of everything but what was there for me to enjoy in the here and now. Before I knew it, the children were gone, the years consumed with nothing but efforts to get them into their future.

A few consolations are left for me. First, the disabilities of age make it necessary for survival to focus more on the present, to stay alert enough to be able to deal with those disabilities independently and in order to do that I must be able to see the joke of it all and furthermore enjoy the comfort and security my age also makes possible. Thirdly, I am no longer concerned about my personal future either in this world or the next, knowing that I must accept whatever that future provides, with a little help from the bit of steering power I have left.

It is also true that I happily contemplate what I consider a bonus of many happy years in retirement, and grieve for childhood friends and contemporaries who were stronger and much more active than I ever could be who have already suffered early dementia or death. I will keep on looking for better things in 2010 and beyond!

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Am I a Foreigner?

Among the special articles in The Economist magazine's 2009 year-end double issue, I found a thoughtful three page piece on Being Foreign. The writer makes several points:

• That in today's global society, being a stranger in a different land, nation or community is perfectly normal;
• There has been long philosophical consensus that the human social animal is best off at home, in the comfort and stability of his own country, nation, people, religion, culture, and familiar laws;
• The philosophers have been in error, he says as he reviews the history of foreign travel, in assuming that people should belong to some particular society. He cites the many joys people have experienced by straying from the home group, saying "you could re-invent yourself, if only in your own mind. You could be irresponsible. Irresponsibility might seem to moralists as an unsatisfactory condition for an adult, but in practice it can bring huge relief."

As an old man now I am finally forced to believe that my life-long search to feel at home, to be a core part of some group, to feel safe and secure in a stable environment, has come to nought. Like every human animal I have been part of many social or working groups from birth and generally adapted to them, but from my closed religious village of childhood, through schools, businesses, churches, political parties, lodges, clubs and professional organizations, I have often felt myself to be a foreigner in their midst. In many ways I still do, as witness my expressed opposition to the forthcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics already claiming the almost total absorption and large support of our west coast population and media.

Another example is my continued opposition to the multicultural policies of the national Canadian community. For fifty years I have scribbled about that opposition until today that policy has become the pride of Canadian nationhood. Have I been proven wrong? Who knows? I still believe as I wrote in my memoirs twenty years ago that Canada's cultural and linguistic multiplicity is in danger of spreading division into more and more regions and local communities, and that "With increasing migration pressures such policies will confirm the shifting foundations of our Canadian nationhood to the point that the people of one city block may have no common ground with their neighbours down the street and the country may develop into a series of minority ghettoes on every side, all competing for the attention of the state. Will we become a country of neighbourhood nationalism on a rampage?"

At the beginning of my personal memoir I said, "... ultimately we are each of us, a minority of one." In the end, that is what I called the book. So in a sense, we may all be foreigners, even in our own homes. The trick is to deal positively with the feeling of isolation that goes with not belonging. As The Economist's writer said, "The dilemma of foreigness comes down to one of liberty versus fraternity--the pleasures of freedom versus the pleasures of belonging. The foreigner chooses the pleasures of freedom, and the pains that go with them."

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Of Wishes and Gods

The old man's personal New Year's Eve tradition is to sit quietly at home to contemplate what has been in the year just gone and what is to come in the year yet to be.

Last night as I reviewed my pathway through 2009 I noted several things in particular:

• Amazement that I am still here at my age and condition, while at the same time noting how rapidly my various parts seem to wear out, weaken and stop functioning the way the should.
• Concern at how little our "Great Recession" has affected our rampant consumerism as a people. The industrial machine must be kept going so we the people must borrow the wherewithal from our great grandchildren to permit our corporate bureaucracy (the government) to employ more consumers to use what is left after they are paid, to stimulate the economy as they decide is best, to keep the rest of us consuming.
• Disappointment at how quickly Barack Obama, the Great Crusader of American politics in 2008 became just another president in 2009 as current captive of the American Imperial establishment.
• Sadness that in spite of, or perhaps because of all the scientific and technological wizardry of the golden age of our western civilization, we have befouled our nest like all previous civilizations by failing to live within nature's limits, and we continue to exhaust our surroundings as our life-giving water disappears.

When I consider what is to come I look forward with some hope to continue a self-manageable future a little longer for myself. In the short term I think our country and our world may yet achieve some stability but I wonder how adaptable we can be to the inevitable global changes around the corner. The old man is not a seer or a futurist but here are a few thoughts about 2010:

• I plan to get through the year with as little medical attention as possible, to keep on with walking and other daily exercise to the extent possible. I intend to keep my "little grey cells" funtioning by exercising them with reading, crossword puzzles, scribbling the Post and other nonsense, taking pictures and all the other pastimes I have wasted time with in recent years. Furthermore, with my wife (of the same age), I intend to continue to manage our household and financial affairs to the necessary extent.
• I am not looking forward to the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will dominate at least the first two months of the year in our area. What was for a while a movement to encourage amateur athletics internationally has become, I feel, the private financial fiefdom of a self-perpetuating international Committee, which is all about money and often uncivil competition between nations and teams of individual professional athletes. Even now, the imminent event in Vancouver-Whistler could prove disastrous from the point of view of uncertain weather, movement of people and finances, though for the sake of our country I wish for a roaring success on all counts.
• We are likely to have a federal election in Canada this coming spring. Once again it is likely to be an exercise in futility. Canada has had an almost constant election campaign in and out of parliament since before Jean Chretien resigned as prime minister and that will undoubtedly continue after the next vote. Whoever wins then I expect little difference in our national policy directions.
• In the U.S. the mid-term congressional elections will dominate, the two parties will continue at loggerheads, President Obama's determination to reform health care will continue in stalemate and his administration may well lose what little support it now has in Congress by the end of the year. If the war on terror in central Asia continues to deteriorate as I think it will, Barack Obama may end up being a lame-duck president after two years in office. I hope it will turn out otherwise.
  

If wishes were water
And our gods were all friends,
We would give up the slaughter,
Live as nature intends!

Notwithstanding all that, the old man wishes one and all and especially the few who may read this issue the best of health and happiness in their personal lives through 2010 and beyond!