A New Yorker cartoon several years showed a despondent young man leaning against a fence. Off to the side one of his friends asked another, "What's the matter with Jason?" The friend answered, "He's sad because today he hit the big One O." Well, shortly I'll hit a big "O", too, and I've navigated my way through the One O, the Two O, the Three O, the Four O, the Five O (played Pebble Beach for that one), Six O (greatest thrill of all time with daughter and son-in-law returning from Nepal for that one), and now in a few days, the big—and yes, it does seem really big to me— Seven O.
I just returned from a high school reunion in Cincinnati where everyone present either hit or will hit the big Seven O this year. We had a wonderful time, and I reconnected with my high school rock n' roll band to play songs of the early sixties, the time when we last played together. We remembered and played them faultlessly, knowing each other's musicianship as well fifty-three years later as well as we did when we played in the Battle of the Bands in Covington, Kentucky in 1962.
It was a wonderful three days, reconnecting with old friends, and recognizing that although most of us are retired and closing in on the end of our lives there is much that brings us happiness, love, gratitude, and joy.
I took a class last year called "A Year to Live", in which we studied and practiced not being here. We did exercises that involved giving up things we cherished, writing our eulogies, even discussing the words we'd like to have on our tombstones. Our final exercise was to spend a half hour or so on a busy street imagining that everything we saw and experienced could—and was—taking place whether we were there or not. And when we're no longer there, people will still line up in Starbucks, cross the street in front of Andronico's, and put coins in the meters along Solano Avenue. Nothing will change, except that we won't be there. We're all a part of this great fabric of life, and the fabric will be there whether our thread is part of it or not.
So this is a time for me to look back on the last sixty-nine years and three hundred and some odd days and celebrate all the richness in my life—my loving wife, my three children, my five grandchildren, the wonderful home and community in which I live, the soft blowing summer fog and the deep rich colors of the winter sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Oliver Sacks, after learning that he had terminal cancer, wrote this:
"I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure."
I haven't written nor have I read nearly as much as I should have. But I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and for the privilege of sitting in the front seat of this roller coaster the whole time I cannot express my gratitude and appreciation deeply enough.