The Secret of Life

"The Secret of Life is enjoying the passage of time..." I suppose I'd heard James Taylor sing his lyrics many times before, but when, on a PBS special to honor JT, India.Arie sang them..., well, I began to believe.

As a person, India.Arie appears way too young to know very much about "the passage of time." Looking at her, hearing her sing words that should maybe be coming out of the mouth of someone who had more obviously lived, reminded me of the old story about the young preacher in his first congregation whose sermons just didn't seem to be moving his congregation. So, maybe with Jonathon Edwards in mind, he decided he'd preach against sin, figuring maybe that was what folks always wanted to hear, and he'd have a winner. He gave it all he had, but still his congregation didn't seem to respond as well as he'd hoped. He asked a trusted elder why. And the elder said, "Son, you ain't lived long enough to preach about sin!" Well, in a way, that's what I'd thought about India.Arie.

Then I bought a cd of hers, and I've been thoroughly enjoying it! But she hooked me right away on the first tune, "Intro: Loving," which starts out with the Serenity Prayer set to music, and ends with the prayerful plea to "love with an open heart." I began to think that maybe she had lived more than I'd thought. In fact, I know nothing about her life, but her songs, at least on that cd, had many themes of someone in recovery. So maybe she knows something about the passage of time after all.

And then there was that article recently in the LA Times about how old age-- or at least, an older age than I am yet!-- is the "most satisfying" time in life for many. Indeed the folks in the article seemed to be enjoying the passing of time! I was happy for them, and in fact, I think we as a society need to hear more stories that have as their moral the point that getting older does not mean becoming less vital. I mean, we may never reach the point of some other cultures in which simply having amassed a certain number of years brings with it a veneration and respect. But since none of us are getting any younger, it is good to hear that we can fear less getting older.

Of course, the engine driving this possible transformation in our social thinking is the "pig in the python" demographically speaking, the Baby Boom Generation, of which I are one. When we were young, it was good to be young. As we got to be middle-aged, it was still good to be "younger," even if one had to achieve that surgically. Now that we are getting toward our sixties, it is all the more difficult to achieve youth at any price, and maybe we are wanting to hear that age has benefits besides getting into movies more cheaply.

Even on what has become one of my favorite shows on TV, besides sports, "Tell Me You Love Me," the sex life of a sex therapist is portrayed in a manner just as, shall we say, "candidly," as the sex lives of those younger persons in her practice. Of course, all of us should age as gracefully as Jane Alexander, but nonetheless, this is clearly not our parents' TV show, and maybe we can rejoice in our own quiet ways that someone more or less our ages is shown to have a sex life! Makes me feel better about aging already...

I guess my point is that if, or maybe since, the "secret of life is enjoying the passage of time," change is what happens as time passes. Very little actually remains the same. And time does not merely "pass," it changes us as it goes by. Time adds, and time subtracts. Time presents its own challenges, some of them anticipated perhaps, but I suspect many more of them not anticipated at all.

And one of those challenges does very much seem to be that of truly enjoying the passage of time. As we become grizzled and wizened, whence our sizzle? It seems to me that we ourselves have something to do with whether the cup that aging gives us to drink is bitter or sweet.

I hope for all of us happy hearts, an enduring capacity to laugh at ourselves and at life, and spirits of effervescent joy!