In my romantic, fatalistic youth, I expected to die by the age of 35, having, as Horace Mann put it, "won some victory for humanity." Now, I've lived twice as long, without that victory. But I have come to the personal attention of the IRS. My first "Required Minimum Distribution" is due. A table tells me how to figure out the taxes I owe on my retirement accounts, and telegraphs the yearly decrease in my life expectancy. The IRS can be brutally efficient.
Seventy, nice nostrums aside, is not the new 50; it's 70. But since I owe the IRS, I figure that I owe myself something too - a bit of stock-taking as it were. What, after all, have I learned in the gift of those extra 35 years? What do I know now that I was clueless about then? A partial cataloging (I'm still learning, I hope) would include the following.
I've learned that life's fullness is calculated not in years but in gifts to others. The meaning of my days is the measure of my substance - moral, mental, physical, emotional, financial, artistic - given away, freely and joyously. "Our days are scrolls," the medieval ethicist Bahya ibn Pakuda said, "write on them only what you want remembered." My legacy is what I have written, even minutely, in the lives of others.
I know now that life is savored not in grand gestures but in small moments. I can count on one hand the things I have done that would merit even a small article in a newspaper. I cannot possibly count the opportunities I've had - and at least sometimes fulfilled - to relish a sunrise, a baby's laugh, a spring bud, a clap of thunder, a transcendent painting, or a single violin note soaring toward the heavens.
I've learned that planning may be important but that the things that have most shaped my life were surprises. The news of a pregnancy, the fateful diagnosis of a parent's illness, the blind date that has turned into 52 years of happiness - have created the profound memories, heartbreaking as well as happy, that make me feel most alive and most grateful for life.
I know that the more I learn, the more ignorant I feel. "The culmination of a liberal arts education," the physician and essayist Lewis Thomas said, "ought to include, among other things, the news that we do not understand a flea." When I have accepted this, I have become awestruck at the wonder of the world and learning has become a source of joy. I have realized that questions are often more valuable than answers, and that when our questioning stops, our lives in some important measure end, even though we are still breathing.
I've learned that the meek may not inherit the earth, but that the arrogant destroy it. Humility may not always be called for, but hubris is rarely healthy. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in The Lonely Man of Faith, reminds us that there are two Adam stories in the Book of Genesis. Adam the first was created to subdue and exercise dominion over the earth, but Adam the second was created to cultivate and protect the garden. Adam the first tries to master; Adam the second seeks to understand. Both are necessary, yet, too often we celebrate the first Adam and ignore the second. The earth and our societies suffer from this imbalance.
I know that passion is not the enemy of reason but its handmaiden. Listening to my heart is as important as listening to my head, because ignoring either leads to dangerous decision making. When I fail to try, it is often because I allow the calculus of caution to subdue the passionate intensity that drives creative endeavor. When I fail to succeed, it is often because I ignore thinking and succumb to the faulty assumption that caring is enough. Whatever I have achieved has come from being fully human.
I have learned that there are two things you can never say enough: "I love you" and "I'm sorry." You don't have to always say them in words, and you don't have to always say them to people. But you have to say them in acts. Whenever I have forgotten or held back from the first, I've been in danger of taking for granted the very people and the very world that have given my life meaning and hope. Whenever I have forgotten the second, I've acted as if self-righteousness is more important than asking forgiveness, which is a prescription whose chief products are anger and isolation.
No doubt I've learned more than this. At least I hope so. But, being a lover of words, I've also learned to aim for brevity. Ben Franklin wrote Thomas Jefferson a letter once, including an apology. "I'm sorry for this long letter," he is reported to have said. "If I had more time, I'd have written a shorter one." Franklin knew that distilling the essence of what we think takes time. At 70, it seems important to take some of that time. It may give me less for the tasks of daily living, but it just may enrich the days that are left.