Literati!
People who continue to see beauty never grow old.
– Franz Kafka
Merlin was on to something. At a certain age, King Arthur’s sorcerer decided that with each passing year he would grow one year younger.
I am an American baby-boomer, born in the era of crewcuts and McCarthyism, and I reject the notion that on June 27th I will become 75—that’s fake news propagated by the Grim Reaper, who is happy to pop open a Bud and fight over the remote sitting beside a couch potato watching Andy of Mayberry reruns.
Is aging is an inevitable linear progression, an incontrovertable reality? Do you buy into it? What if buying into it is a choice, and not acquiesence?
When Apple introduced iPhone 17, it retired iPhone 16, which itself made version iPhone 15 obsolete and so on. As Buckminster Fuller said, “You never change anything by fighting the existing reality. To change something, create a new model that makes the old model obsolete.”
And so it is with my perception of aging. My new model is the mindset that each passing year is about regeneration rather than degeneration.
So, on June 27th I will retire Thorn 7.4 and offer the world a new and improved version: Thorn 7.5, progressing my way up (not down!) to Thorn 10.0, better every year. Choose your own reality; mine works for me.
Suddenly, Freud makes a lot sense: “Immortality is being loved by many anonymous people.”
And, recalling the words of the philosopher Sappho, “Though they are only breath, the words that I command are immortal.”
(My thanks to editing client Buddy Thomas–buddy@superplan.com–for sharing this insight several years ago.)
“May you stay forever young.”
Bob Dylan
And another quote from an author I have forgotten: “We have all the time in the world…just not enough life in it.”
PS. Kafka was right.
