Standing the Test of Time

"Old age" is the time when all the problems one has not solved in life, comes home to haunt them.

Increasingly, it becomes apparent that the problems of "aging," are much more the problems of life, than they are of "time."

Because with that same time, some look and function better, while others do not -- all the way to the extremes, where some seem prematurely old at 20, while a rare few (now) at 80, look "ageless," so the concept of age, is not one's primary quality one would use to describe such a person -- because that would be largely meaningless to do so, and one wants a better description of such an individual, and not one that could mean anything, or nothing at all.

Except that time, can also convey the positive quality of experience and insight -- and not merely doing the same thing for 50 years, before being drained dry of all one's vitality and desire for betterment -- as though one was just a machine that depreciates with each use.  That is the materialistic view of humanity, that totally discounts and dismisses the distinctive evolutionary drive to improve, and change for the better.  When one has given up on that notion, then we observe, that person is getting "old," and usually there is nothing anyone else can do about it, because it is largely the fate that individual has decided (accepted) for themselves.

The most common exceptions to that rule, are those who still go to gyms expressly for the purpose of improving -- which is not a bad social context, although admittedly, some do it better than others, as with all human endeavors and pastimes.  The cultural tendency of the past century, was to divide and fragment experience, knowledge and life -- in the (materialistic) thinking that "more" is always better -- without ever getting to the realization that the least expenditure of time, energy and attention for the greatest result(s), is the far greater objective and meaning and purpose in all one's activities.  So the objective is not just to burn as much energy as possible, or as much time, or give it so much attention it becomes its own obsessive-compulsive disorder -- while those objectives seem to recede farther from one's original clarity of purpose and intent -- and thus one eventually arrives at the point, that one feels, what is the use of any of it -- and just withdraws from every activity and engagement.

That is familiarly, what we witness as the horrors of aging -- that can happen even with a few at younger ages, causing a rupture from the rest of society into antisocial sentiments and actions -- of which they see no other viable alternatives.  In such cases, their previous conditioning has been so "successful" and "thorough," that further growth (life) is not necessary, and would even be too painful to bear -- and so they end it in some melodramatic statement of not caring.

Such developments are usually not foreseen by those close by, choosing to ignore, and even deny -- believing even, that everything is always the opposite of what they seem -- so conditioned (educated) are they, to believe that there is any connection to reality.  And so they must make one final, desperate effort to find out -- if anything really matters.

So that is the advantage of continually, and throughout one's life, of staying in touch with one's own unique physical reality -- rather than just accepting the mass media reality, as one's unquestioned own -- because the truth is always subject to this personal testing and results of independent verifiable reality.  Many are surprised and shocked in doing so, to learn that what "the experts" say, are entirely at variance with the results of their own experiments (experience), and those who have been socialized well, will always distrust their own judgment and good senses, in preference for what they have been taught to believe (as the unequivocal truth).

But that is largely what others "believe" to be true because that's what they were taught and never allowed to question -- rather than the truth they discovered for/by themselves, which is actually the truth of their own lives.  And that truth, always improves, and improves their condition -- and doesn't make them worse, though that's what all the experts say is so.  That's why we honor the great pioneers -- like Columbus, Galileo, Paracelsus, and Job(s).  They challenged what everybody, especially the experts, told them must be true -- and could not even be questioned, because that is what the "gods "themselves, explicitly told them to pass on to all the others -- as the Commandments.

Fortunately, we now live in an age in which discovering the truth for oneself, is what everybody has to do for themselves -- and those who do it well, reap those benefits far beyond whatever generalizations could apply to everyone else -- because they have so custom-designed their world to work marvelously well, and not the one-size-fits-all, that serves everybody so inadequately.  But that is the reason the better get better, while the worse get worse -- because they want to get better, and do those things that make them so -- rather than engage in more random activity, thinking it is the same.  That is why it doesn't work.