A Melancholic Birthday

Another birthday came and went yesterday. In some ways, the year preceding it was a typical year for me. I won’t dwell on that. But some noteworthy things, at least to me, occurred.

My wife and I caught Covid on separate occasions after being fully vaccinated and boosted, and it was no worse than a standard cold for either of us, except that I had an unusual sore throat for a couple or so days.

I saw a local 15-year-old bowling prodigy named Saphyre compete in the U.S. Women’s Open in Rohnert Park last August and stun and thrill me by beating some of the best female bowlers on the planet, including my beloved New Hui Fen, on one of the oil patterns. Later, she took Jillian Martin, probably the most heralded female junior bowling phenom ever, to the wire in two Storm Youth Championship tournaments and convinced me that she’s a young sorceress with her amusingly nonchalant bowling style, deadly powerful release, and deceptively wizardlike lane play skills. Watching and rooting for her has been one of my biggest recent if not lifetime surprises and pleasures.

Speaking of bowling, I shot a 300 in league a few months ago, and a 290 and 278 more recently, but I’ve struggled to carry consistently and score well on the new lanes and oil, which is all the more frustrating when I see so many others in my league tearing them up. But I attribute some of this struggle to my unwillingness to put in the time and effort to get and do better. Isn’t that a central element in the story of my life? And can I change that? Will I change that? Not only in bowling but in every other important respect?

My mom seems to be doing well as she approaches 85, but I’m not sure how forthcoming she’s been about her health and well-being. One concern I have is that one of her step-daughters who lives nearby and has been so helpful to her may be moving away before long, and I will need to take up the slack that I may be ill-equipped to do.

My wife is still with me but I don’t know for how long as her parents back home get older and older and become more dependent on her overworked younger sister. When she finally does leave, my life may change drastically.

Finally, arguably the most important event of the year since my previous birthday and unquestionably one of the most important of my entire life occurred less than two weeks before my newest birthday. My best friend of over fifty years, Craig, was found dead in his car with a gunshot wound to the head miles away from his residence in Southern California. The police and medical examiner have ruled it a suicide, but I and everyone I know who knew him just can’t believe he killed himself. There were no signs whatsoever, even in retrospect, that pointed to suicidal ideation or tendencies, and there’s no apparent reason why he would have done such a thing and many reasons why he wouldn’t have done that to himself at this point in his life when he had so many things he enjoyed doing and so many achievable plans for his retirement. Yet, it looks like his family has accepted the ruling and that he will be cremated and buried soon.

I’ve been shy and reclusive all my life and have had no other friends for as long as I did Craig or shared as much with any other male friends over the decades as I did with Craig. I got drunk for the first time with him. I saw my first Bruce Lee movie and countless other movies thereafter with him. I went to my first Mahavishnu Orchestra concert and many concerts later on with him. We bowled together. Played basketball together. Spent countless hours in each other’s company or on the phone talking about this and that.

Even as our interests diverged over the past few years and we had far less contact than we used to, it was reassuring to know he was out there and was someone I could turn to if I ever needed him, and I hope and think he felt the same about me.

His sudden and mystifying departure has left a hole in my life. I will miss not only our phone conversations, occasional visits, Facebook messagings, and so much else, but I will miss the warm reassurance that the potential for sharing a reminiscence or other simple pleasures of our abiding friendship exists even when it resides in the background. For now it exists no longer.

Craig told me that after his parents died years ago, he became acquainted with a psychic who could communicate with his parents and enable him to communicate with them through her. I’m very skeptical of this but not completely convinced it wasn’t true; he told me some amazing things about what he learned from that communication that gave me pause. And so I wish that if my friend does consciously survive in a different or alternate realm in which he retains awareness of what’s going on here and an emotional connection with family and friends still inhabiting this plane of existence, he will find a way to reach out to that psychic so that she can reach out to me and tell me what really happened to him and why, and so that I’ll really know there’s life beyond death.

And now I look toward another year with plans and goals to fulfill, new friendships to forge and old ones to strengthen, new challenges to face, and all without the reassuring constant in my life that was Craig.

My Happy Birthday

I turned 68 today. Who woulda thunk I'd make it this far?

When I was a kid, the year 2000 seemed impossibly remote and the thought of being 47 years old almost inconceivable. But I'm now 21 years into the twenty-first century, and my body and mind are still relatively intact.

Not only that, but the Covid threat I worried about a year ago seems markedly diminished by the fact that my wife has had both of her Moderna shots and I'll be getting my second in six days. I'm not looking forward to the potential side-effects of that infamous booster, but I am looking forward to the immunity from serious illness I'll very likely soon enjoy.

This is not to say that I don't still harbor ample concerns that I won't detail here and now. But I feel plenty grateful and happy today, and I'm just going to embrace that happiness and get on with getting on. Maybe I'll still be here next year to post again, and maybe I won't. But I'm glad I'm here today, and if anyone else ever reads this, I hope you are too, whether it's your birthday or not.

Not Just Another Birthday Post

For years, I’ve published birthday blog posts where I’ve said I don’t know if I’ll be alive for my next birthday. Well, that’s never been truer than today.

This is not only because I’m a year older and closer to my end whenever that will be, but also because a deadly viral pandemic called Covid-19 is raging around the globe sickening people and claiming lives at exponential rates of increase, and older people are especially prone to die from it with respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.

I am now closer to 70 than I am to 60, placing me squarely and ominously in the “older people” camp, and I may even have one or more co-morbidities of an, as yet, undiagnosed nature that render me even more vulnerable to the virus’ death grip than does my age alone. I’ve never lived through such a time of overt existential threat, discounting, perhaps, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and I’m far from certain that I’m going to come out the other side of this one.

So, this could be my last birthday blog post. Perhaps even my last blog post of any kind. Or maybe there will be many, many more if I not only come through this plague intact, but also renew my desire to write and publish after having passed through an extended dry spell of disillusionment with trying to write anything worth saying and sharing.

It’s not that I have something profound to say here today. I just want to indelibly mark this occasion rather than let it pass unrecognized. I want to express my deep gratitude for the life I’ve been fortunate to live. I say “fortunate” because I don’t begin to deserve the comforts I’ve enjoyed or the pleasures and joys I’ve experienced. I’ve wasted my life and burdened others unconscionably and let them down and worse over the decades.

But if I can make it through this pandemic with my modest passions and abilities intact, maybe I can accomplish something before the end finally comes. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive to greet another day, and I go to bed each night reciting the following prayer of my own composition:

“Lord, please forgive me and everyone else for all the unjustifiable harm we’ve caused ourselves and others and for all the times we could and should have helped ourselves or others but didn’t. And, Lord, please help all of us to do and be our very best from now on and to mindfully shine as bright beacons of wisdom, strength, equanimity, compassion, and lovingkindness lighting the path of goodness, truth, and beauty.”

If I have appreciably longer to live than I think I might, my greatest hope is that I can become a fuller and more radiant embodiment of my nightly prayer for everyone in my life.

Happy Birthday to me in the Time of Covid-19, and thanks to everyone living and long passed who’ve made it possible for me to sit here this evening writing this post in gratitude for my bountiful blessings, remorse for my failings, and deep desire to do better with the time and opportunities that remain.

Another Year Around the Sun

Yesterday was my 66th birthday. And I once again find myself wondering whether I'll be here a year from now to reflect on yet another birthday.

For the longest time, I've had reasons to think that the birthday I was writing about then could very well be my last. Maybe they weren't such good reasons. Or maybe they were. The fact that I'm still here and seemingly in decent health would seem to suggest the former. But what do I know for sure about such matters?

The fact is, I'm still here and grateful to be here without being in misery. And I still have a headful of dreams and goals that, even if I make no significant effort to achieve them and no significant progress toward achieving them, still give me more reason to want to go on living than to die. I have eternity, maybe, to be dead, but only a few short more years at most to live and, perhaps, to leave this world feeling like my life wasn't a complete waste or worse.

And that's really about all there is to say on the matter of my birthdays and of longevity. Despite the fact that writing is probably what I do best, I'm increasingly disinclined to do it because, in the final analysis, I believe I have so little to say that's worth saying or that would sufficiently interest anyone including myself.

Time to Shine

I used to post here every year on my birthday. Then I missed a year or maybe more. This year, I missed again. Or I decided not to post. I decided it would be better if I waited until the day after to write about the day before.

I enjoyed my birthday yesterday. Maybe more than usual. It's not that I did anything special. There was no party and cake or romantic dinner with my wife in some fancy restaurant.

Instead, I drove to my wife's Thai Buddhist temple and presented gifts to the temple in return for receiving good karma that will help me enjoy a better life in my next incarnation, or something like that. I don't believe that stuff, but I like to give and to help out the temple even if I receive nothing more from it than the pleasure of giving. And I like to please my wife who wants me to give to help out the temple and earn good karma for myself and for her.

After the presentation and the usual morning round of chanting, which I always sit back with eyes closed and listen to respectfully while the others carry on, I piled delicious potluck Asian food on my plate and savored every bite until I was uncommonly full by recent standards. And many people, including some of the monks, wished me a Happy Birthday.

After all that, I drove home while my wife remained behind, and I took a nap and then rose and started thanking people on Facebook for their birthday wishes. I really enjoyed reading their wishes and replying to them. Yes, I harbor no illusions that my birthday means anything special to them, unless they happen to share it, which some of my Facebook friends and acquaintances do. I know they're just being nice in what is probably an obligatory sort of way. After all, there's always someone we know on Facebook who's having a birthday no matter what date it is, especially if we know a lot of people on Facebook. Yet, I still appreciate, more than I ever have before, that they took a few seconds to write to me.

As I wrote on Facebook today, the older I get, and I'm well into my 60's now, the more I appreciate the simpler things in life. Yesterday I was and today I am still filled with gratitude that I was able to experience yet another birthday and that I am still alive and still in abundant possession of my modest faculties.

Is this because I know my time is running out? That's surely part of it. My time IS running out. And given what may loom in my near future, it might be better if it runs out sooner than later. But I think it's also the case that when we've been around long enough, we come to realize, if we're lucky, that many of the so-called "big" things in life--i.e., buying costly or prestigious items,  accomplishing ballyhooed goals and reaping extravagant rewards for it--is often not as fulfilling as stroking my dying cat on my lap, seeing my wife off to work in the morning, reading a wonderful essay on philosophy or science, listening to a beautiful Hiromi solo, or thanking someone for their birthday message.

I don't know if I'll be around next year to write on or soon after my birthday. I never know from year to year, and I know even less this year than ever before. Yet, from this point on, I'm going to write more and do more and be better for as long as I can. Not because I expect external rewards for it. But because it's my inner calling. To do my best and be my best.

I will focus much of my effort, wherever I am and whatever my circumstances, on producing a podcast and writing a book on free will and on becoming a professional writer and podcaster. Nobody would hire me for anything else because I'm old and have nothing to offer them. But I can speak and I can write and I can deliver something to this world that nobody else can exactly like me, especially if I stop trying to be different or better than anyone else. And I've hidden my light under a bushel for far, far too long.

Time to shine.

As My Birthday Approaches

I'll soon be having another milestone birthday, and I'm worried. Scared actually. I didn't think I'd live this long, but now that I have, I'm concerned about the future. I have good reason to be. I'm concerned about my health. I'm concerned about my finances. I'm concerned about my marriage. You name it, I'm concerned about it.

I've lived a very unconventional life. A wasted life. A life the world won't miss when it's over and would have been better off without. No wonder I never attend my high school reunions.

I don't feel depressed as I say these things. Sad, but not depressed. I know the difference.

Yet, I'm also hopeful there's a way for me to do more with the time I have left, no matter the circumstances, than I have yet. A way to accomplish something, with my few and modest gifts, that I haven't yet. I want to, I need to.

The clock is ticking.

Meryl Streep's Incredibly Beautiful Photo

I’m much more of a verbal person than a visual one. So, I tend to get much more excited about beautiful words than about beautiful photographs.

But today is Meryl Streep’s 68th birthday, and when I saw the photograph above of her on a Facebook friend’s page, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I don’t know who took that photo or when they took it, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as struck by a photograph of anyone as I am of this one. I think it’s absolutely stunning. Meryl looks so incredibly beautiful and alive in it. It’s almost too much to bear. But in the best of ways.

Happy Birthday, Meryl. Your amazing photo has certainly made my day a happy one. And I suspect that it's brightened the day of virtually everyone who's seen it. Everyone, except, perhaps, Donald Trump or his supporters.

An Old Song Becomes My Reality, Sort Of

Fifty years ago, the Beatles released a song that has special relevance to today. Back when I first heard it, I was amused but emotionally detached from the distant scenario it wittily described. Today, not so much.

I've been keeping this blog for thirteen years or more. And though I haven't checked to confirm it, I think last year may have been my first birthday where I didn't publish something here.

I couldn't let myself stretch it to two, even though I don't have that much to say about anything at the moment other than the fact that I'm mostly glad to still be here, unequivocally glad I'm still able to post these entries, and very hopeful that I'll be back next year with lot more to say that's worth saying.

It's That Time Again

Another year has flown by and another "special day" greets me this morning.

I don't know how I've made it this far or how much further I'll be able to go. I say "I'll be able" rather than "have to" because I still want to keep going. You might wonder why considering that all my dreams now seem to end with the morning sun and my goals entail little more than getting through the day.

Gone are my hopes of writing my magnum opus on religion, free will, or anything else. I've come to the provisional conclusion that I have nothing to say that's worth saying and that people these days won't even read the words of those who do. Gone are my hopes of becoming the person I want to be. There's just too large a gulf between that person and the person I am and have always been.

No, today I live to love my wife, my cats, my family, and my friends. I live to enjoy the things I still can and to contribute what little I can to the enjoyment of others. That's it.

Do I sound depressed? I don't feel depressed. In fact, when I got up this morning and started seeing and replying to all the nice people wishing me Happy Birthday on Facebook, I felt happy. I still do. I'm blessed to have so many friends and acquaintances who care enough to send me birthday wishes. I've known some of them for over fifty years, and I feel a special sense of warmth and connection when I hear from one of them.

So, no, I'm not depressed. Just being realistic about who I am and what is left for me to do with a wasted life that's running out of time.

Yet, having said that, my mind is filled with things I could write even if nobody wants to read them. So maybe I was wrong to suggest that I don't even care to try. And if I were to try, just try, regardless of the result, maybe that would go a long way to bridging the aforementioned "gulf" between who I am and who I want to be.

Let's see what happens this year.

They Say It's My Birthday

My calendar says it's my birthday, and the Beatles tell me I'm "gonna have a good time," so I might as well oblige. After all, why not? I can't have too many more birthdays in my future, if any. It seems like every year, someone I knew in grade school or high school passes. One of my best friends from those days died years ago. I even wrote a blogpost about it.

But what kind of "good time" do I want to have? Do I want to spend the day sating myself with hedonistic pleasure by eating, drinking, and being "merry"? Well, I couldn't do that even if I wanted to. I have driving and chores to do, including getting a new passport photo taken for an upcoming trip to Thailand, and bowling league tonight. Besides, hedonism seems overrated to me. I'm more into happiness, which can be almost the antithesis of hedonistic indulgence.

Yes, I know there are philosophers and therapists who say happiness is overrated too, and that the more we pursue it, the faster it recedes from us. But my notion of happiness borrows from Aristotle's "Happiness is an activity of the soul in accord with perfect virtue."

In other words, happiness is doing like they sing in the old U.S. Army commercial: "Be all that you can be," or, at least, working diligently to do this. It's living a life of integrity in fulfillment of one's highest principles and in patient but steadfast pursuit of one's grandest goals. And, to my way of thinking, it's mindfully doing all of this with the love to which Augustine referred when he wrote, "Love and do what you will" and Mother Teresa spoke of when she said, "In this life, we cannot do great things; we can only do small things with great love."

Some people say love is overrated. I say it's not rated highly enough by enough people. Too many make excuses for not loving their fellow humans and animal and plant brethren. I don't make excuses. I just have trouble loving people. I always have. But here, early into my seventh decade of life, I want to love more and to find ways to do it. One way to do it, it seems to me, is to act in a loving way.

Psychologists tell us that if we can't feel the way we want to act, then we can act the way we want to feel and our emotions will tend to follow suit. I believe this. When I smile, I feel happier. When I carry myself with confidence, I feel more confident. When I walk and talk and comport myself in a more calmly deliberate manner, I feel more mindfully contemplative. So, I want to devote today to doing all of those things. To acting loving, confident, and contemplative, and to wearing a persistent smile on my face.

Hey, there are worse ways to spend one's birthday. So, Happy Birthday to me, yeah!

Not Just Another Birthday

I received a birthday card in the mail from my mom on my birthday today, and it said, "At the end of the day, may you look back and say "It was perfect.""

Well, it's not over yet, but I have to say that it's been a pretty nice day so far. I've done nothing spectacular, but I've almost always been someone who enjoys the simple things of life. Good food, good company, my loving wife and beautiful pets, good music, and time online are among those simple but hugely satisfying pleasures. And I've enjoyed all of those things in abundance today.

Beyond this day, when I look back on my entire life, there's a part of me that says, "It was perfect." Then another part of me says, "How can you say your life has been perfect when you've not only wasted so much of it but also done things you deeply regret? What is 'perfect' about THAT?"

Well, what is "perfect" about it is that I don't believe it could have been otherwise. Given my nature, which I believe has always been inseparable from the nature of the whole unified universe, I think I have been and done exactly what I had to be and do.

I realize that this is not the conventional definition of "perfection," which has more to do with meeting some lofty standard of flawless fulfillment, whatever that might be. And goodness knows that I haven't even come close to meeting my or society's standards and fulfilling my personal and human potential.

Yet, unlike past birthdays when I've posted some pretty uninspired if not gloomy entries about what another wasted year I've just suffered through and how desperately I need to, but probably won't, overcome my fearful inertia and jump in the pool and either sink or swim, this year I'm going to say that I believe I can do better with what remains of my life.

I've got rough times ahead of me, without a doubt, but I believe I can rise to heights of  sustained effort and accomplishment that dwarf anything I've exhibited before, and if I'm still around next year, I look forward to writing all about it.

Once Again

Today's my birthday. This evening I'll dine at my favorite Asian buffet, and tonight I'll bowl in my travel league. Beyond that, I have nothing more to say worth saying except that I hope to still be here one year from today to have more and better things to say about the year that was and my well-formed plans and realistic hopes for times to come.