My approaching death...
A birthday reflection on my ultimate birthday
I will be turning seventy this month, which disquiets me far less than once I might have imagined it would. The thought of it, however, does have the effect of “concentrating the mind,” in something of the sense that Dr. Johnson suggested in his remark regarding the unfortunate William Dodd: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”[1] I’m not implying that I have only a fortnight left to me or that I’m awaiting hanging; but turning seventy puts one in mind of one’s mortality (or, at least, it should): “The years of our life are threescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away” (Psalm 90 (89):10). Hence, being the Psalter-soaked sort that I am, my birthday this year carries with it a significance which, even if I should live another thirty or more years (an oppressive thought), I can’t mentally slough off. It forces me to think in terms of resolutions, something I tend to disregard every New Year, but, where the crucial moment of “flying away” is concerned, it’s something I take much more seriously. I don’t want to depart unprepared. Perhaps fortunately, I belong to that supposedly disillusioned cohort that has been labeled “Generation Jones,” the generation born between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, bridging the “Boomers” and “Gen X.” “Disillusionment,” it must be said, has certain advantages. And although I tend to resist generational generalities, I concede that the article cited below (you can read the entire article here — it’s anything but “deep”) describes many of my generation in fairly accurate terms:
