Love, Dreams, and Aging

(Note: I originally wrote this on November 17, 2009, but did not post it.  At the time I had a very physically demanding job in which I did a lot of walking.)

When I am working I often think about hiking. I guess it is all the walking I do that puts me in that mind sometimes. I remember when I used to backpack out in the Cascades and Sierra Nevada mountains in California that it used to be said that 20 miles a day average was considered a really hard day for a really in shape hiker with a full pack. I wonder if I do 20 miles a day at my job. Damn it feels like more than that sometimes. In any case I put on a lot of miles every day.

I took my first backpacking trip when I was 13 or 14. It was only a two nighter, not that far from home, and with a church group. I remember that my imagination was immediately fired up. I spent my hard earned and saved paper route money on backpacking books. It was not long before my investigating nature discovered The Pacific Crest Trail. I must have been 14 or 15 by then, but I had a dream of one day through hiking the PCT, all 2, 560 miles of it, starting at the Mexican border in early April, and finishing in October at the Canadian border, hopefully before the snows fell. I read all I could about it. I had all my resupply points planned, etc. Eventually, I learned about the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail and dreamed a dream to through hike all three of them.

And of course, as with so many "dreams" (like the one to be a "great writer" or poet) I have had through the years of my life, it never happened. There is so much, of all descriptions, that...never happened. For so many reasons. One's life takes all kinds of turns, detours, rabbit trails...at least mine has. Life "gets in the way" of dreams. Life even gets in the way of even doing the stuff that one loves and gets energy from.... And it seems that if one does not summon up a determination of steel, that dreams never happen. Some dreams seem childish at times. Many seem selfish, irresponsible...like a "grown up" should leave such foolishness behind. Yet, some dreams have never left me...not entirely. They still appear at times, though I thought they were dead. They were only laying dormant...buried.

One of the things about growing older is that dreams start to fade. When the above mentioned dreams return after a dormancy, stirred to life again by some circumstance, they are weaker than before...each time. One begins to realize that many things will never come to pass. They are not to be. They will remain a wistful memory of a kind of passion that the young possess in such great measure. A passion that one hopes is replaced with wisdom as one ages. One hopes. No guarantees. And then, there is also time...it begins to work against you, against "dreams" as you age. There is the lessening of physical ability to do the things of youth....

I hear of some people making "bucket lists." All the things they want to do before they die ("kick the bucket," hence "bucket list"). Mountains to climb, etc. I knew that I had fundamentally changed (or is it just growing...up? old? just growing?) when I sat down to write a bucket list and what I most wanted before I died...was simply to love and be loved...by a few dear friends...by a family (not my own, unfortunately)...and by someone...to take me completely as I am, understand me...with passion, desire...love...beyond words and description. That was the first thing on the "bucket list." The second was " to arrive at peace.

Peace. To me the word evokes images, and these images come with feelings. An image of a canoe on a still northern lake at dawn. An image of sitting alone along the rocky shore of Lake Superior. But also...two souls lounging silently on a couch...and one falls asleep in the other's arms...in my arms. These are peace...These and all that they represent, all the sundry things that can be unpacked from them.

Happiness is a fleeting phantom, and try as one might...it slips through the fingers that grasp it. And grasp it we always do. This is our nature: we cling to that which we cannot keep...and run from what we cannot avoid. The Buddhists have taught me that one should learn how to simply be present with all things, both "good" and "bad," One teacher said something to me and it struck a chord. He said "It's all just stuff happening, phenomena being known."

There is a "dark side" to that...one that I don't know if the teacher intended. But knowing him, I bet he was including this nuance as well. Sometimes when the soul is weary from living...sometimes I feel like everything is just stuff happening. Like there is really no good or bad, right or wrong, it's all just stuff happening, phenomena being known, and our brains assign meaning to it....

And then I experience love, a smile, a laugh, a tender kiss or embrace, a passionate desire, a sacrifice of one's self...and so much more that love can be.... And then I experience love, and I think that if there is anything that is right in the world...love is right. It is the only God, the only meaning, the only thing worth even staying alive for. The rest is just stuff happening, phenomena being known...until we die.... Details. Details will differ. But love. Love is worth giving one's life for.

These are things I think about, at 50, as I contemplate what to do with the rest of my life (Less is left than I have already lived.)...and what is left of all those "dreams"...and what really matters....