One of the values of tradition--rituals we re-enact, places we return to--is the sense of timelessness it evokes. This is an illusion, of course, but it can be a useful one.
For the last week my evening entertainment has been watching the sun set from a hill a few miles north of the small town of Gualala on the Mendocino coast. Amy and I have spent a lot of time in this area in recent years, in part because of its spectacular beauty, but also because our attachment to tradition has come to outweigh our interest in novelty. I know there's an immense world out there that I haven't seen--many of my clients and students are inveterate globetrotters, I'm glad they take such pleasure in discovery, and I enjoy hearing about their adventures. But I find myself repeatedly choosing to deepen my investments in ongoing traditions--to repeat familiar experiences and return to familiar places--rather than seeking out the unknown.
This is in part a function of my professional identity. After the health and happiness of Amy and my family, the most important thing in my life is the experience of being a coach. I find it immeasurably fulfilling to sit down with a client or student and hold a conversation that will be useful to them, and I've learned over time that I do my best work when there's as little variation as possible in my routines and surroundings.
But it's also a function of my stage of life. My friend and colleague Joe Dunn recently remarked that in our 40s we become "old young people," but in our 50s we're suddenly "young old people," and I feel that acutely. I have a heightened awareness of mortality not as some abstract state of future nonexistence, but as the palpable, tangible, immediate experience of decline. And I'm deeply ambivalent about this state of affairs. I miss much about my younger self and am startled when he fails to appear in the mirror, replaced by a stranger who merely approximates him. But he was also impossibly foolish, egotistical, callous, scared. Today I'm weaker, more frail, slower to heal. I'm also wiser, kinder, braver. It's not lost on me that as my animal self has deteriorated I've become a much better human being.
A perhaps inevitable consequence of this awareness of mortality is a richer appreciation for life--a feeling of gratitude for all that experience has to offer. I don't feel the need to try to hang on to it indefinitely--in contrast, I believe that acknowledging life's impermanence is what makes it meaningful. But I do want to savor it fully, as long as it lasts. And for me that comes through tradition--the repetition of simple, familiar experiences.
The sense of timelessness this evokes isn't really an illusion--I'm clear-eyed about the relentlessness of time's march. But it is a respite--a chance to pause and be present while maintaining that clear-eyed view. It brings to mind a line from Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death: "The fear of death must be present behind all our normal functioning, in order for the organism to be armed toward self-preservation. But the fear of death cannot be present constantly in in one's mental functioning, else the organism could not function." [1] Tradition helps me maintain that balance--to savor a moment, while also acknowledging its passing.
It's no accident that I'm writing this on our last full day in Gualala. I'm not ready to leave, not ready for this journey to end. But as I wrote just a few weeks ago,
Every community of which we're presently a member will someday become a "lost world"—lost to us as we depart and move on, or lost to everyone as the community as a whole comes to an end. We tend to resist acknowledging this reality. It reminds us of mortality and can evoke feelings of sadness at the impending loss or a sense of frantic urgency as we try to stave it off.
But as a result we miss unique opportunities to appreciate these communities while they're in existence and to fully grasp what it means to inhabit them with a particular group of fellow human beings. [2]
I'm reminded of traditions I experienced as a younger person, never dreaming that they would come to an end and those communities would become lost worlds as well: Vacations at the beach with my parents and brothers, holiday dinners at my grandparents, summer camp in the mountains with friends, track practice with teammates after high school, classmates in college who turned in our papers and then convened over pitchers of beer, familiar faces at the raucous dinner parties that Amy and I hosted in our first apartment. I wouldn't have wanted that boy, that young man, to be concerned with thoughts of mortality. What purpose could it have served? But as a "young old person" I value going through life eyes open, fully aware of all the endings yet to come.
Amy and I have had a favorite restaurant for years--we loved the people, the food, the whole feeling of the place. We went so often we even found a favorite table, and the host was gracious enough to reserve it for us. A few months ago we learned that it was closing--a sad experience we've lived through before. [3] But this time we had enough advance notice that we could make a number of reservations, visiting three times in the final weeks. And our awareness that this tradition was ending, that this too would become a lost world, allowed us to soak up the moment, fully appreciating that it was ending.
So today is our last full day here, and although I expect to return in the future, this particular trip will become yet another lost world. And knowing it's ending will only heighten my appreciation for the traditions we've established in this little community we've built: the short hike to the beach and the steep climb back, ping pong matches in which no one keeps score, a call with a client while deer creep from the trees, one final sunset.
Thanks to Joe Dunn.
Footnotes
[1] The Denial of Death, page 16 (Ernest Becker, 1973)
[2] Lost Worlds
