“We get wiser, don’t we?” Or Weighty Considerations

We get wiser as we get older, don't we? More tolerant? More patient? More aware that our immediate world is not the world? More aware of how intimately connected each of us is to the next, all of us are to one another, and to the global village in its joy and sorrow, the latter at this moment seeming to by far outweigh the former? Aren’t we more mindful as we age of our intimate connection to the physical world, Gaia, Mother Earth, and more conscious of our responsibility for tending and sustaining her? Given all these queries, it occurred to me that, as Rastafari bredren and sistren say – for I was born and grew up in the world of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff – we might share a groundation, might together respond to the invitation “Come let us reason together...” which ultimately comes, as any good Rasta knows, from the Book of Isaiah. 

Still, so many persons have already mused upon the subject, offering glowing pearls of prudence. Maya Angelou, wise woman: “We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias.” Confucius, sage: “Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator!” George Bernard Shaw, lover of words and word play: “You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing…” 

I find Gloria Steinem’s “I loved, I seriously loved – aging” provoking – who is she kidding? – while at the same time, perhaps because we are big in the same places, I smile broadly and utterly believe Dolly Parton’s “I ain’t never gonna be old because I ain’t got time to be old.” 

While some of these bon mots may be somewhat funny, they cannot compete with the insights of serious humourists. Bob Hope, man of the trade: “You know you’re getting old when the candles cost more than the cake.” Mark Twain: “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” George Burns, harsh and hilarious: “You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there...” and, Burns again, reminding me of my late husband: “People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.” 

And then the cynics: Bette Davis, famously succinct: "Old age is no place for sissies." Philip Roth, unsparingly: “Old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre…” And sadly, me myself, in a poem called “Blessed Assurance”: “The wages of sin is old age.” I wonder whether to include Ogden Nash and Helen Mirren with us sneering lot. When he says, “You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely,” I am not sure whether he is joking or being coldly incisive, and I remain uncertain never mind how long I think about it. However, when Helen Mirren says, “...you only have two options in life: die young or get old...” I wonder, but not long. I am pretty sure it’s a woman commenting in the “if-you-don’t-laugh-you-cry” way that we have in my native Jamaica.

All this leads me to conclude that the wheel of astute-observations-on-old-age has tolerated reinventing very well, and to be confident that in future there will be far better inventors than me, with my sly promise of age as transgression’s reward. I will therefore eschew further philosophising. Instead, I will begin with an item, made for the purpose, from my poem toolbox, that place I started filling with rhyme and metre in 1951 when I was nine years old and Hurricane Charlie came by. (You can be satisfied that I qualify to speak on the matter of seniority!) These versical implements have saved me, time and again.

Weighty considerations...

Can you reach to your toes?     
Put on your clothes? Undress? 
Make yourself a cup of cocoa?
Did you pass your recent MoCA 
with flying colours? Do you get
the best weed gummies? Have you met
the ninety-year-old of your dreams?
Does life seem like endless streams
of bright consultants born when you 
were sixty clad in nifty sneakers 
and cool specs wearing their know-how 
not so lightly? And here you were 
convinced of being pretty sprightly 
at almost eighty – 
All of these 
considerations are too weighty by far
for this 
well plucked 
and seasoned chicken...

So much of being old (a bold word that needs recapturing like queer and crazy) consists of what has gone before, and so little of that is of our choosing. We are born with DNA that disposes us in crucial, and on occasion, cruel ways. We are raised in circumstances we do not select. We come to the world in random places on earth, some salubrious, some quite otherwise. We grow as others dictate. We mate and have children who “wring...every ache from [our] heart,” to quote from another poem of mine. War, natural catastrophe, economic ruin and plagues descend without warning and sickness or accident or random act of God snatches a parent or child or relative or companion. We lose a beloved mate or friend by disagreement or mishap – someone who spoke a word of promise once and then forgot, or took it back. Economies collapse and livelihoods, homes, plans for the future vanish into air. A limb collapses. Memories crumble. A mind dissipates. Years pass that seem in bad times, interminable, in old age as if they have flown! This is not philosophy – it’s fact. My father said it was a matter of “playing your hand...” Words I fathomed but did not understand, or maybe understood but did not fathom, until now.

So how up-to-now 
have we managed 
fate’s malevolence, 
benevolence, 
mere violence? 

And how 
to run with 
its present 
benedictions, 
maledictions, 
gross afflictions – 
its curled-tight lip?

Were we ever in control? Are we now in control? If not, what must we do to seize what's left of life and make it work for us so we accomplish meaningful aims and goals in our remaining years? Is it worth the energy of body, heart and mind? Are we really interested in this urgent grabbing? I’m not prescribing, just musing from this place where I’m glad to be, Tkaronto, which means in Mohawk, "the place in the water where the trees are standing.” It’s fortuitous, a residential address fitting for a native of Jamaica – in Arawakan, Xaymaca – meaning" land of wood and water". According to this naming, in being transplanted, I have been re-established in exactly the same natural world. 

Perhaps I should trust it to see me through my grandest, most brilliant blooming?

I am grateful to Indigenous peoples, astute as their cultures are ancient, for how they have lived on the land, how they have respectfully negotiated with forces eternal and elemental, content in the knowledge that we are all only passing, that others are gone before and more will come, and we must treasure what we all are given and hold it safe in common so we can pass it on. Inspired by them and others who love the earth, like Irish poet John O’Donohue, I elect to surrender to what is ineffable, mysterious, far greater than me, to what in its mystery is awesome – and, I admit, sometimes awful in its inscrutability. I try to be mindful, to be present, to be caring, and in so doing, to begin with myself, because if I am not in some measure fit, I cannot be there for family, or friends, or any of my fellow planet dwellers. 

And so, to…

Resolutions (a prayer)

I shall care for earth air water
flora fauna bees and trees – 
therefore I shall ensure that I

am stable on my knees.
I’m getting new ones
in the autumn and that’s not all.

My (two!) new hips will help me dip 
and fall back with aplomb in the ballroom – 
I’m starting classes soon.

They’ll also help me till 
and tend our local plot 
recovered from landfill.

I’m doing yoga for my digits
phelangelical appendages 
extending from my wrists.

To keep them limber I make fists
then stretch them out 
and ball them up again. 

Nimble fingers 
are good for gardening
and growing poems.

Amen. 

So, to end where we began – do we indeed get wiser as we get older? And if we do, what is the nature of this wisdom? It's such a grand word. Who dares aspire to it?  Maybe we can frame the question differently. What things have we learned in our old age that have served us well, about living with one another, on Earth? Have we learned big things, like forgiveness, including forgiving ourselves? Like not judging, since we’d rather not be judged? Like welcoming all kinds of difference for variety makes creation glorious? Like tailor making our wishes as travellers and gourmands with Earth in mind, remembering those who scramble for food, and travel desperately as refugees to save their lives? 

Like simple gratitude?

Have we made a habit of small things – for habit is practised, rhythmic learning – like taking deep breaths when we remember, and drinking lots of water? Like stretching, walking, running more than less? Like doing crosswords and playing Wordle? Like turning off the water as we shower and clean our teeth when it doesn’t need to be on? Like reaching out to one another as we resist an erosive pandemic? 

Have we learned not to flagellate ourselves when we fall short? To accept that we are not in charge and never were and never will be? To just keep on keeping on because we do know how to do that or we’d not have reached where we are?

I try and try again with the learnings, and give myself credit for trying. I find it's a good trick to get started small, say with the deep breaths, the Wordle, the water-consumption – putting lots into my body and being sparing when I shower and do my ablutions. My grandmother always said, “Nothing succeeds like success.” I am off to a good start with them under my belt, as I head out to tackle forgiveness, not judging, letting go and surrendering to the Great Unknown. The truth is, I’ve never been good at being in charge, so I’m glad to relinquish the illusion of control over what I cannot manage, and to exercise it benignly on what I can. I try to be generous to my neighbours, known or unknown, close by and continents away. I try to appreciate their infinite variety. I try to remember Gaia is my mother and sister and lover and to treat her well. I try always to consult with my body and spirit, to listen rather than dictate to them. I do not know that this is wisdom but I find it’s a good way to be getting through these last days.

Pamela Mordecai is a Jamaican-Canadian who writes poetry and long and short fiction. Best known in Canada for her debut novel, Red Jacket, shortlisted for the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Award (2015), and her New Testament trilogy in Patwa (Jamaican Creole), especially the widely performed de Man: a performance poem, she is distinguished abroad for her poetry for children. In May, New Directions published A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems and in June, Mawenzi House published de book of Joseph: a performance poem. Mordecai lives in Toronto.