Popping Noises

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. "

Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good night

Dylan Thomas died at age 39 after living a boisterous life that not all would envy, but the poetry he produced was magic of the highest quality. How, at the age of 37 as he was when he wrote Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, he could have caught the essence of the emotions of those of us of a more "mature" age is beyond me, but catch them he did.

I find myself raging against the simple things that used to be so easy and are now made difficult by time, arthritis, and other forms of personal degradation not worthy of polite mention in a public forum. I often ask myself how these conditions came to be, only to discover that the answer is simply the irreversible passage of time.

For the most part, time has been good to me - I have seen interesting and wonderful things; I have experienced life changing events, and either enjoyed them or learned from them if their essence was not joyous; I have met some simply remarkable people, many of whom have become good friends and all of whom have enriched my life in some way; I have enjoyed the rich closeness of family, both as a child and as a grown-up; and I have always tried to give of myself to others, not always with success but mostly with the best of intentions.

I seem to be growing more cantankerous with age in the same way in which my mother and grandmother did. I hope I will differ from my mother in having the courage to focus my cantankerousness on things that matter, rather than upon real or imagined personal slights. I want to rage against the things that need to change for the betterment of many, rather than at matters which are personal and therefore of no great consequence to anyone other than myself. I want to rage against the dying of the light in a positive way that will put all of that energy to good, rather than selfish, use.

In many ways I am probably more like my mother than father, even though it is my father that I physically resemble. While it was she who taught me that fair play should be the norm and not the exception, in her later years she focused more on fair play with respect to her own person rather than upon fair play in general. With the onset of various disabilities and infirmities common to old age, I better understand her selfishness in this regard. I am learning that there is a real human tendency to become more selfish in one's complaints as age settles in because of a reduced capacity to cope in so many ways. It is this instinct to rave about one's own self that I hope to avoid and successfully fight. Forgive me if I am not always successful in doing so, since I am beginning to suspect that it will take a monumental effort to stay focused upon matters other than my own increasing infirmities.

I am not so old as to be incapacitated, but am sufficiently old to comprehend the beginning of the profound changes that reduce all of us with the coming of greater age. There are so many little things that used to come easily and that are now an effort. Things as simple as buttoning my shirt in the morning - the buttons never used to be so small; the buttonholes never used to be so elusive; and once I had fingers that were nimble and compliant. And then there are the various aches and pains in places I didn't know aches and pains could inhabit. I have come to believe that they are a higher power's way of reminding us of important body parts that we sadly neglected in our misspent youth.

But part of raging against the dying of the light is (to quote Curtis Mayfield) to keep on keeping on. It is my strong belief that you must keep on fighting the good fight in as many ways as you can for as long as you can. This is as true for matters of personal enjoyment and hobbies (in my case, playing racquetball well into my 60's or, as in the case of a good friend, into his 70's) as it is in matters for the general betterment of others. The trick is to learn to take the frustration with your reduced capacity to do the many things that you once did competently and easily and turn that frustration into positive mental energy for the benefit of the many that never had the capacity to help themselves in some significant way in the first instance. In other words, get even with the damned buttons by rendering them inconsequential and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

Each of us has to find our own good cause about which to rage, but each of us should find something positive to rage about. I have lived my life believing that there has to be a positive side to everything, and, at least so far, using your mental faculties and personal resources in the manner proposed is the most important thing I can imagine as a positive benefit of old age. The wisdom and learning that was achieved during the years when our bodies were sound and healthy should be used to keep our mind healthy and strong and to keep us in the game as our bodies begin their inevitable slide downhill.

There are many times during which I have wished I were into the mellower side of life, but, alas, such does not seem to be my fate. To me, "mellow" implies a selfish retreat into one's self, and the joy of life comes from interaction with others. Raging seems to me the better alternative if one wants to keep effectively involved and "alive" in the fullest sense of the word.

In the second stanza of the poem, Thomas appears to be in agreement with my belief:

"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night."

I trust that I am in keeping with his sentiments, since this poem has long meant a great deal to me and, for me, best expresses the need to keep my will bent toward the doing of the right things and the constant need to fight against senility and ineffectiveness.

In the meantime, those damned buttons just keep getting in the way. But, if you push, pull and prod them in just the right way, they will sometimes exude the kind of magic envisioned by Tom Paxton in "The Marvelous Toy":

"The first time that I picked it up
I had a big surprise
'Cause right on the bottom were two big buttons
That looked like big green eyes.
I first pushed one and then the other,
Then I twisted its lid
And when I set it down again, here is what it did:

It went zip when it moved and pop when it stopped,
Whirr when it stood still
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will."

So my advice is to keep on keeping on and to continue pushing those buttons to ensure that the zipping, popping and whirring never ceases. My apologies to you in advance if I push too many of your buttons while engaged in following my own advice.

A Request for Your Money and Time

Well I don't mean to be complainin' Lord
You've always seen me through
And I know you got your reasons
For each and every thing you do
But tonight outside my window
There's a lonesome mournful sound
And I just can't keep from thinkin'
'Bout the ones the wolves pull down

Stephanie Davis, Wolves, as heard on Gretchen Peters and Tom Russell, One to the Heart, One to the Head

This is a tough time for charities that serve those in need, with the demand for their services substantially increasing while their funding sources significantly dwindle. This double whammy leaves many charities breathless from worry about how to serve the increased population of clients with fewer resources. There is nothing worse for such a charity than having to turn away those in need of their services due to insufficient resources. No one wants to have to decide who gets help and who does not, especially when the needs of prospective clients are generally indistinguishable. I know this first hand from my service on our local bar foundation board.

I have long felt that charities have a tendency to go to the same well too often when they seek funding, demonstrating a general inability to think out of the box when it comes to developing new funding sources. While I understand that it is easier to call upon those who have already demonstrated with cash or gifts that they approve of your cause, charities need to continually find new sources or risk poisoning the very well that serves them. I will continue to urge this concept upon any charity to which I give my time or money, since I firmly believe it is a matter of fundamental long term survival that each charity actively pursue such a plan of action.

However, in these times it is also incumbent upon those of us with incomes and financial reserves to consider increased contributions to our favorite charities, even if we have given substantially in the past, even if we are weary from the effort, and even if we are worth less than we used to be on an absolute basis. I base this on the theory that all wealth is relative. Even if, on an absolute basis, I am currently poorer than I was a year ago due to a decline in my stock portfolio, my relative net worth is now greater vis-a-vis the many who have lost jobs and spent their savings trying to survive. As a result, I am ironically now wealthier on a comparative basis than I used to be - even though my net worth has declined.

We all worry about the value of our savings declining. It is axiomatic that the amount of your debt will stay fixed while the value of your assets will fluctuate. In good times, this seems like a good thing to us, while in bad times our sense of insecurity increases as the debt becomes an increasingly large percentage of our net worth. But for those of us with a positive net worth, it is also true that we are now relatively more wealthy than those who have lost jobs and savings. We have to learn to think past our insecurities to come to this realization in order to think about the additional societal obligations we thereby inherit.

Of course such a result isn't universally true, especially for those of us who borrowed lavishly against assets in the booming economy and now find our debt too big to service. But, for many of us, it is true that we are better off now than before when compared to the bulk of the population even though, in an absolute sense, we are poorer.

Those of us in this unusual position need to adjust our thinking and our emotional response quickly if we care about others. The fact is we can - and should - give more to our favorite service charities even as we feel less rich, if for no other reason than it is in our own selfish interest to do what we can to keep others productive, hopeful, and economically viable. This economy will recover more quickly if others remain productive than if the number of those on unemployment continues to skyrocket. Those who can retain the security of their own homes will add far more to the economy as it slowly recovers than those rendered homeless by the recession. And, given the fact that we are starting from a positive, not a negative, position, those of us in this unusual posture will likely only increase the gap between our wealth and that of others as the economy gets stronger.

I offer these thoughts somewhat reluctantly since, in my book, the need to assist others should come from the heart and not from the head. However, if you need this sort of analysis to encourage your giving, please take it to heart and use it to do good.

My experience tells me that many are still giving, albeit more timidly than before. Our local legal foundation's recent breakfast took in less than usual and I am highly suspicious that the average gift among those who gave was down when compared to past years. We do not yet have the necessary analysis to ascertain the truth of my suspicion, so I cannot yet assert it as a truth.

What I can assert, however, is that those of us on the positive side of the ledger need, especially now more than ever, to remember those on the negative side and to do whatever we can to assist them.

It is also a good time for any service charity to take a good, hard look at itself and to shed any unnecessary programs and heft. Because of their nature, many charities try to be all things to all people within the general scope of their area of service and forget to keep their service focus laser tight. Charities are also generally guilty of failing to work in unison so that they can husband scarce resources. I believe that there is a somewhat selfish nature to the doing of good works - the part that says that my program or scheme is better or more effective than yours and I will prove it by raising more funds than you. While not every charity is guilty of this kind of thinking, some are. Even more to the point, most charities are guilty of spending more time trying to figure out how to get a greater share of scarce resources for themselves than trying to figure out how to work cooperatively with those in the same service space to make those same scarce resources go further.

I have learned from experience that you can profit from adversity by learning something new about yourself or others, and that you might as well seek to profit in that manner since adversity is not a fun experience by definition. In other words, seek to learn from adversity or risk suffering a totally worthless experience. On behalf of my own service charity of choice, I pledge to you that I will do everything within my power to learn and implement the appropriate lessons so that we will be leaner, meaner and stronger going forward.

In the meantime, can we please have a little more of your cash as well as a good portion of your time? I promise that we will put it to very good use and that you will feel better for having enjoyed the privilege of giving.