Hey, so what's new?
Is that a new shirt?
Do you have the new iPhone 6 or the new Apple Watch?
Did you see my new Corvette?
I want you to meet my new boyfriend.
I will be 90 this year, and I am trying to keep up with the onslaught of NEW everything, the latest, the must have, or the I can't live without. Remember Woody Allen's movie Sleeper? It said that in the future "Someday chocolate would be known to be healthy and red meat unhealthy." Well, we're there!
There is new information about what are considered healthy foods. We should sleep no less than six hours, but no more than eight. The proper number for blood pressure as a senior was up to 140 last year--this year is back down to 120. I am drowning in new recommendations about everything under the sun: banking, housing, Medicare, food labeling...? Why is new suddenly so much better than the familiar, tried and true, comfortable? Is it just market driven? The more we are urged to discard the old, the more we need to buy, need to consume, need to try out, be the first to...
Our kids need the newest stuffed toy, the newest video game, amusement parks advertise their newest ride, and of course we all need the latest smart phone. We want continual improvement. I often say that I sit on a learning curve. Indeed our genes push us to seek novelty and adventure, hence the early explorers. I often say that I sit on a learning curve. Mae West once said: "So many men, so little time." I say: "So many books; so little time." A friend of mine recently said he does not read newspapers or listen to the news; he is more concerned about his spiritual life, about his relationships, about the good he can do. I, on the other hand, feel obligated to know about the latest brain research and what is going on internationally. Why? Is it so that I feel informed about my world, not sound stupid at the next dinner conversation? Or maybe both? I am equally intrigued by the cosmic photos sent by the Hubble Space Telescope as by the Large Hadron Collider's pursuit of the smallest particle.
I am not a has been. I am a will be and will probably have an identity crisis on my death bed! What will I be when I grow up? And yet, our past is our richness, our legacy; it is what we are made of. It is the beloved artifact of a long ago trip, the old dress still hanging in our closet, the photos of the friends long gone, the books read and no longer to be re-read, but still on our shelves, the souvenirs, the memories, the old comfort of our place on the planet. I sometimes wonder why I still go to this lecture, see that play or meet that new person--in the hopes of what exactly? I need less exposure to the new and more time at home to sit quietly, read, think, do nothing. This is not as easy a task as it seems, for we are so programmed to keep running away from ourselves and towards that new whatever, which is being dangled in front of us.
Does always seeking and finding the new give us any real pleasure? Does it provide happiness? Do we constantly need to be in the know? Are we worried about being left behind, about being old hat, about missing out, about not keeping up with the Joneses, or being seen as less than?
Zen Buddhists talk about the emptiness of striving, striving being the hallmark of our society. We embrace a forever young credo-what is still in our bucket list! I wonder if by always doing or getting the next new thing, we try to stay forever young? Is it a death denial strategy--if we forego the old, we may be able to give the slip to the consciousness of our own mortality.
Perhaps we should take more time and cover less ground, perhaps we should go from unrest to rest, perhaps...
I would like to end with the first few lines of William Blake's poem Auguries of Innocence:
"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
and Eternity in an hour."