About 40 years ago my wife and I bought an old school house clock. Dating from the 1890s, it has a pendulum and loud tick-tock, a gong that counts each hour and half-hour, and a requirement that it be wound once a week.
Since its purchase, the clock's tick-tocks have provided the steady beat for each day of my life. Not to take the metaphor too far, but the sound is almost akin to the rhythmic drumming in my chest that marks my stay on this earth.
I am 70 years old this month. With apologies to those who have passed this mile-marker recently or years ago, just to type this sentence sends a frisson of dread mixed with gratitude through my body. Seventy years old. When I was a kid, people of this age were considered ancient. To be 70 in 1945 meant that you were born in 1875 when Grant was president, the West was still being won, and before the invention of the telephone, automobiles, airplanes and radio.
By comparison, I must appear ancient to kids today because I was born while FDR was president, World War II was still being won, and before the widespread availability of TV and the invention of the computer, the Internet and the smart phone.
The funny thing is I don't feel ancient. Sure, I have more aches and pains than I did 10 years ago, and it takes more effort to get off the floor after my morning exercises. And there is also that assortment of pills I'm required to take each day to keep my body in a state of "all systems go," especially since my heart catherization with stent last April. Despite all of this, I really don't think that I feel any differently in my heart and mind than I did when I was 30. (OK, make that 50.)
I enjoy the small delights of a warm spring day and a crisp fall morning, a child's laughter, a smile returned from a lovely woman (no matter what her age), a well-cooked meal paired with the perfect wine, a good movie or book and the embrace of my wife. I am also still bedazzled when I stare into the canopy of a starry winter night and consider my place in all of this. The list could go on, but you get the idea. Nothing is changed there.
I also remain optimistic about the fate of our species. That's an important point to make because I recall the "duck and cover" exercises during my grade school days, when teachers were trying to protect us from incineration by Soviet atomic bombs. This defensive measure was supplemented by a host of post-apocalyptic movies, like 1959's On the Beach, that taught us if the blast doesn't get you the radiation will. The 1950s and then the '60s with the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and a draft that put me in khaki green were certainly dangerous and angst-filled times and cannot compare to our post-9/11 world— at least, thankfully, not yet.
Today climate change, not terrorism, poses the biggest challenge to us, and it makes me fear for the future of my grandchildren. However, I have to believe the species will eventually come to its senses and take measures to combat the rising temperatures and seas. With all of the mounting evidence, how could it not?
I am certainly more cynical than I use to be, especially as I see how easy it is for big money to sway elections, incentivize politicians to work against the best interests of their constituents and encourage corporations to move factories and jobs overseas to avoid their fair share of taxes. I worry about the continuing concentration of media in the hands of a few mega-corporations that decide what our "reality" is by avoiding critical issues which may be to their detriment and skewing others that are to their benefit. To my mind, this poses a more serious threat than so-called big government.
Most importantly, at 70 I am at peace with myself and relishing the sheer and exuberant joy of day-to-day living. To quote St. Paul, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." Don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean I have really finished the race and plan to check out soon. I merely hope I am given sufficient time to bask in the blessings of a life well-lived and appreciated before the last tick of that school house clock.
Frank Batavick writes from Westminster. His column appears every second Friday. Email him at fjbatavick@gmail.com.
