Some time ago, a dear friend responded to one of my blogs by gently chiding me for dwelling upon my age. What she said was very encouraging, but I do feel that I should respond. What better time to respond than on my sixty-first birthday?
I have always enjoyed singing the international students’ song—Gaudeamus Ignitor—three verses of which I quote below (there are ten all together), but I find, with advancing age, that I am increasingly reminded of this song’s chillingly accurate view of life.
Gaudeamus igitur Let us rejoice therefore
Juvenes dum sumus While we are young.
Post jucundum juventutem After a joyous youth
Post molestam senectutem After a troublesome old age
Nos habebit humus. The earth will have us.
Ubi sunt qui ante nos Where are they who before us
In mundo fuere? Were in the world?
Vadite ad superos Go to the heavens
Transite in inferos Go across into the nether regions
Hos si vis videre. If you wish to see them.
Vita nostra brevis est Our life is brief
Brevi finietur. It will be finished shortly.
Venit mors velociter Death comes quickly
Rapit nos atrociter Cruelly, it snatches us away.
Nemini parcetur. No one is spared.
Cheerful, isn’t it? No wonder they sing it in Latin—most people don’t know what they are singing.
When I was in my late teens, I thought that anyone over twenty-five was as good as dead. I couldn’t visualise living to such a great age. Of course, I lived in the wonderful world of denial that didn’t ever entertain thoughts of mortality. I rode a powerful motorcycle, I rock-climbed, I bungee jumped off Table Mountain on an old climbing rope (which we regarded as unsafe for climbing!), I climbed out of windows on the fifth floor of tall buildings and traversed to fire-escapes. When confronted with mortality while on mountain rescues, I reassured myself by focussing on the fact(!) that I was a safer climber than the deceased; after all, I was still alive. Death or disablement was something that happened to others less competent than I.
Then I turned twenty-five, and living beyond the grave didn’t seem as bad as I had anticipated. I did some of my best rock climbing, cycling, and running during this time.
A few years later, we had produced three children, all of whom required to be taught hooliganism by their father. This kept me young at heart and very fit. It seemed absolutely necessary to jump over bushes that were taller than our eldest child, walk up the stairs on my hands, or do a series of push-ups with all three children on my back. And, when I arrived home from work, picking up all three of them at once seemed like a good way to avoiding straining my back by bending down too much. I took all this for granted, assuming—rather naïvely—that I would always be able to do such things.
Then, suddenly, I turned forty, and it still didn’t seem so bad. I could still do the splits, a hand-spring, and a feet-between vault over the garden gate (not at the same time). You need to understand that my teenage mind, trapped in a forty-year-old body still regarded these as worthy pursuits. Actually, so does my sixty-year-old mind, although my sixty-one-year-old body no longer co-operates. I suspect that my sixty-one-year-old mind is, in fact, still my teenage mind, but with a couple of bruises.
I have no intention of growing old gracefully; disgracefully sounds fine to me. I have a suspicion that, as long as I can laugh at the paradox of having the strength to pilot a large motorbike, and the age that allows me to ask merchants for a pensioner’s discount, life will be fun. I shall continue laughing ad mortem.
I’d rather die “young”, doing what I enjoy, than live to a great age and then discover—too late—that I have never lived at all.