After finishing the run, ran into our old running buddy, Bill. After a quick catchup, I suggested to Bill that we should put in a run together. Bill warned me that the run will be slow since he is just getting started this year. I reassured him that slow is good for me. In fact, I told him “My left knee is still bothersome”.
The inimitable Bill immediately came back with “My whole body is bothersome!”
Stepping into the first day of being a sexagenarian, I turned the mirror on myself. And the years that somehow, improbably, led me here.
What often felt like a straight line of journey while living it, upon reflection, seems to be nothing short of a very confused, complex zigzag pattern. If I can call it a pattern at all.
It appears that I (perhaps like most?) have mostly bumbled through life. Bouncing from one life decision to another. Sometimes consequential, at other times trivial. But always decided in the context of the immediate moment – rarely with any lofty goals in mind.
And yet, if you squint hard enough, a pattern does begin to emerge.
Confoundingly, that pattern is not of clarity, but of contradiction.
Take a few examples.
For a person who has been accused of being kind and modest at times (yes, I know, my friends have low standards), my memories are mostly of the times I was mean and unkind. And regrettably, there are way too many such memories.
For somebody who has a reputation for knowing no strangers (and admittedly, there is some truth to it), all I really consistently seem to hanker after is solitude and quiet moments by myself.
For a person who stubbornly refuses to give up on a relationship even after trust has been broken (and is often ridiculed for it), my memories are of all the times I broke trust. And it appears I have had more than my share.
For someone who professes the impermanence of it all, I have a suspicious addiction to counting things, measuring outcomes, and keeping track.
For a person health-conscious enough to run and do yoga in the morning, I remarkably lose all my senses thereafter and overeat and drink the rest of the day to make up for it!
Even this reflection is an exercise in contradiction. For someone who swears by the wisdom of Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”, why bother rummaging around in the attic of the past?
It is like life has been nothing but a bundle of inconsistencies, incongruities, and contradictions put together by a regularly beating heart so far. Like the much vaunted Schrodinger’s cat, it matters only when you measure it!
In a nod to Bataille, then, it might just be that contradiction is not a flaw in my life story.
It IS the story.
There is this friend of mine – Garry be his name – he has this intriguing ritual. On his birthday, he goes to the gym and bench presses his body weight!! Inspired by that, I tried a 6.0 mile run on my 60th birthday. Of course, unlike him, I had the presence of mind to bring in a decimal point to my resolution.
