One of my best friends, Woody Kaplan, died recently. I miss him. He was my age when he died.
I turned eighty-two on June 14, 2024. I’m in pretty good shape for my age, partly because most people my age are dead. The other parts are having a happy marriage and regular physical exercise. I suppose I can no longer consider myself middle-aged, unless I expect to live to 164.
Understandably, I think more about death now than when I was much younger. Lately I’ve been looking back at my life, what I accomplished and what I failed to accomplish. Also, what I want to accomplish in the limited time I have left, which I hope will not be too limited.
When I was in high school in Philadelphia, I took an aptitude test that showed I was good at math and the counselor told me I should become an accountant. So, I went to Temple University with that intention. Fortunately for me, two wrongs made a right. I didn’t have an advisor in my first year at Temple to help me plan a course schedule for accounting. Instead, I took liberal arts courses I liked and no business courses. By the time I found out I wasn’t on track for accounting, I learned that accounting was not for me. I might have become the only accountant who couldn’t balance a checkbook. (I still can’t.)
I liked mathematics a lot and became a college math professor. I enjoyed teaching, and was rewarded with raises and tenure for publishing math research papers, which I took pleasure in writing. My research papers in a theoretical math field, geometric function theory, have been read mainly by other researchers looking for ideas to publish their own research papers. Since my math papers have no practical applications, I think they were mostly a waste of time. But I played the academic game. On the other hand, even though I’ve been retired since 2009, I’m surprised and pleased when former students tell me how much they liked my courses.
To me, the most important criterion in choosing a career is to do what you enjoy. I’m sorry people usually feel they need to be more concerned with making money, even though they might not like what they spend most of their lives doing. A good education can provide many options, besides just making money.
Also, experience has taught me that people should spend far less time complaining or worrying, which is never productive. If you can do something about a problem, then do it. If not, don’t worry about it. Usually, the potentially bad things we worry about don’t come to pass.
This philosophy reminds me of the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept things I can’t change, courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” If I were a theist, I’d probably say amen.
Along these same lines, it’s a waste of time to worry about what others might think of you. Most people don’t think about you as much as you imagine they do. In conversations, they are often more concerned with how they come across than with what you are saying. It’s a plus when you can have real conversations with people you don’t know very well.
Now that I’m retired, I generally do only what I consider to be fun, which often involves actions in the secular movement. A bonus is that people have told me that my secular work has been helpful to them. I don’t think of myself as retired because I put a lot of work into my current activities, which includes learning about new ideas as well as writing freethought articles. I guess being retired means we no longer get paid for the work we do, even if we continue to work just as hard. That’s fine with me because my retirement benefits from the College of Charleston, my social security, and my investments provide me with enough money to live comfortably. I can also contribute financially to some worthwhile causes.
We are born, we live a little, and then we die. As the saying goes, life is a sexually transmitted disease with a 100 percent mortality rate. We are small specks in one small corner of one solar system of one galaxy. If the universe has a purpose, then that purpose must be to create stars. We are all made of stardust. It is stars, not Jesus, that died so we could live.
We hope to live a long and healthy life. Good genes and a good lifestyle can be essential. My genes aren’t so great, with a lot of heart problems for males in my family. But for most of my life and to this day, I have never smoked, eat a good diet, exercise a lot, try to avoid stress, read good books, have friends and fun, and laugh a lot. This last item is often overlooked. We need to laugh at ourselves and laugh away most of our problems. My wife Sharon and I find things to laugh about that others might consider problematic.
Since there is no afterlife and our lives are infinitesimally short, it should inspire everyone to plan their life carefully. How should we use our limited time and brain power?
To live well, one possibility comes from a song performed by Guy Lombardo in 1949: “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think. Enjoy yourself while you’re still in the pink. The years go by as quickly as a wink.” But simple pleasures alone, when we know how brief and precious this one life can be, feels like insufficient use of our total time.
Another song with a wonderful philosophy says, “Make someone happy, make just one someone happy, and you will be happy too.”
As we get older, we begin to think about how we want to be remembered, and whether we will be remembered at all. It would be nice to live a life in a way that your obituary will be a pleasure to read, not because you died, but because of what people learn about your accomplishments.
Everyone, regardless of age, should have an end-of-life plan that can later be modified. When I die, I’ve made plans to go to medical school, just like my Jewish mother always wanted me to do. I expect to use my body parts to their fullest while I’m alive, but I hope others will make good use of them when I’m dead.
As I write this, I’m still healthy with no major disabilities, and I want to continue to live independently for as long as I can. But I know one day I might have to be institutionalized in what is euphemistically called a continuing care retirement community. This requires careful planning, like checking out different facilities before you need one. Do they have activities besides bingo? Are there programs with interesting guest speakers? Or do residents mainly sit around and stare at the ceiling? I’ve seen all these kinds of institutions.
When we are nearing the end of our lives, we sometimes have more choices to make, including how and when to let go. Signing a Do Not Resuscitate document works to avoid extraordinary and useless care just to prolong a fading life. The organizations Final Exit, and Compassion & Choices, can both supply information about dealing with end-of-life care, and medical aid in dying. Unfortunately, medical aid in dying is illegal in many states, but there can be ways to get around this. One problem is that laws in most states require a person to be mentally competent at the time he or she wants to die. The only legal option when faced with serious dementia might be to voluntarily stop eating and drinking.
Hospice can kick in when we are estimated by doctors to have at most six months to live. People in hospice try to live the end of their lives as fully as possible, but no longer seek a cure or take treatment (other than palliative) for a terminal disease. Many in hospice still live at home, receiving support from doctors, nurses, and other caregivers. Some in hospice wind up living relatively peaceful lives for longer than the projected six months.
I regret that there are so many things I will never know or do because I won’t live long enough. I wish I could participate and learn about new discoveries later in this century and beyond. Death is natural, but that does not make it good. Arsenic is also natural (part of nature).
After death, our future comes not from an afterlife, but from the good deeds, ideas, and creativity we passed on—through friends, family, work, and people we never knew. While alive, we should challenge ourselves to contribute in a positive way worth remembering.
And have fun. Plenty of fun. As long as possible.
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