When at last one has ploddingly attained the dizzying pinnacle of one’s career there is recognizably only one way to go – down! Eventually even the most accomplished of us is overwhelmed by the perpetual furtherance of knowledge and advancements of technology. It becomes both undesirable and impossible to keep up with the unrelenting pace of change. We begin to lose our footing, freshness and vigor, and the prospect of vanishing and disappearing altogether becomes all too real.

Technology is perhaps the readiest barometer of change and of our exponential dissolution. As much as I flatter myself that I have kept abreast of technology I admit that my aversion to so-called social media like Twitter, Facebook and Linked In works against me. I have for example even read in certain job descriptions that facility with social media is a necessity though I am strained to know why. The closest I have got to text messaging is to have an airline send me a note that my flight is delayed. Apart from that I have no idea how to “follow” somebody or “like” or “tweet” or “endorse” them nor do I wish to accumulate a meaningless collection of “friends”. The only occasion on which I acknowledged any possible utility to social media was during the initial stages of the Arab Spring and that was hardly a commotion I pined to attend.

It is of course perfectly natural that one should fall into decay and decline with age. Whether however the process is more of a deterioration than a degeneration is a matter of some speculation. Graceful fading would for example be far more preferable though ascendancy of one’s atrophy requires both skill and dedication. The essential elements of diet, personal hygiene and exercise spring to mind. To forego those concerns amounts to double-dyed capitulation not to mention the lubrication of that very slippery slope. I am assuming that the wallpaper of one’s life – intellectual capacity, professional skills and emotional fervency – remain constant (at least during the initial stages of diminishment). In fact it is at the very moment when one has reached the peak of this spiraling descent that life affords an entirely unique though admittedly probationary opportunity of indulgence and expression. I know of many people who rejoice in the liberation which aging furnishes, everything from the freedom to say precisely what they think to the smug satisfaction of sharing with gusto their hard-earned wisdom.

Having reached one’s peculiar elevation in life is also the chance to resile from the more difficult and complex undertakings and instead to dwell upon that which comes most easily and efficiently. Such luxury it is to do exclusively what one likes! By this time the idea that you must “prove” yourself is utterly preposterous. The unalloyed commitment must rather be to the delectation of life. Any derailment of that absorption smacks of carelessness and downright error! I am even tempted to suggest it amounts to some kind of moral deficiency.

The conclusion therefore is not that we accede abjectly to the sere and yellow leaf of old age but rather that we should savour the view from the top of the withering heights and hang onto our hat for the gripping ride down the other side!

There is little that contends with the chore of admitting you’re wrong. Such an oily exercise to be sure! So thoroughly unbecoming!

Or is it? We’re all familiar with the fable of the wolf who, when clearly overpowered by his adversary, humbly resigned himself to his fate and threw up his head, exposing his neck to the jaws of the other. Of course, the dominant party did the respectable thing and withdrew from the contest. The fight was over in an instant.

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It is difficult to escape the constant urging to “live in the moment”. The popular adage – while promoting such laudable projects as “dancing like nobody’s watching” – paradoxically warns against the seeming ability to live otherwise than in the moment, though in my opinion the capacity to do so defies logic and is therefore counterfeit. The only way to attribute any sense to the admonition is to suppose there is indeed a dichotomy between the mind and the body, that our head can somehow be in one space while our feet are in another. For those who are inclined to flirt with such philosophical conundrums the question is perhaps open to investigation; however, for those who are less theoretical and who haven’t the need to accommodate the ideological gap between the ethereal and the terrestrial, I am guessing we’re willing to accept that living in the present while pining for the ambitions of the future is not so great an inductive leap. Matters spiritual after all travel considerably faster and more fluidly than one’s corpus normally affords. Let’s just put it down to anticipation, that emotion characteristically involving pleasure (and sometimes anxiety) in considering some expected or longed-for good event. In its most general terms anticipation is excitement, waiting eagerly for something you know is going to happen. The agreeable attribute of anticipation is that one of its most common ingredients is delectation, imaginative and propitious speculation about the future. In spite of all that has transpired in our lives and in the world we are remarkably capable of supplying ourselves a delicious view of what is to come.

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There are some for whom the daily habit of counting and weighing one’s wealth is highly desirable, right up there with the morning constitutional and cold showers. For others the accumulation of wealth holds less precise attraction, among them the spendthrifts who view the primary purpose of money as its expenditure. The impulsive urge to throw some serious money at the current object of one’s craving is however not exceptional. Nor is it solely the fixation of those who have the money to throw (notable historical spendthrifts include Karl Marx, George IV of Great Britain, King Ludwig of Bavaria and Marie Antoinette). In that respect impetuous spending is both egalitarian and universally indiscriminate irrespective of the means one has to accomplish the goal of one`s enterprise, cash or credit, it matters not. Like any other appetite disbursement is merely a hunger we need to satisfy, some would say even a manifestation of our need to substantiate ourselves. Commingled with that vulgar desire is the complementary passion for the article of purchase, the worth and charm of which in our mind at least normally trumps any ignobility of the engagement. Whatever it is to which you have so intensely attached yourself it is branded as some kind of compulsion, both a necessity and even an obligation. More often than not the enthusiasm has matured over time. It is a yearning which has blossomed from innocuous incubation, at first a frivolous and passing temptation but one which latterly becomes pure inevitability. There will of course be the tiresome echoes of those who abhor covetousness and who shrewdly counsel restraint in matters of financial soundness. Such worrywarts! If on the other hand you have once tasted the exhilaration of a spree, you know well its spiritual unassailability. Like it or not, in spite of the economic persuasiveness of control of one’s capital resources, the unadorned fact is that from time to time a bit of luxury goes a long way to alleviate the throbbing of life’s trials. We end by effortlessly persuading ourselves of the respectability of being mollycoddled. The more inclined you are to accomplishment, the more prone you are to rewarding its burdens. Compensation is not a dirty word; it is the elevation of life’s successes.

Like so many other magnetisms and hungers, the experience of the longing is a good deal of the allure. Even with the speed of on-line purchases, there is always a wait, a fact all the more prolonged if the product is made-to-measure. This only achieves heightened pining. Rationality about parsimoniousness by degrees dissolves in the contemplation of what we seek to acquire. We view the thing in a clinical light, detached from the rough and tumble of our daily familiarity, conveniently forgetting that in the past there wasn`t once a purchase which did anything to lift us above the squalor of our being. As bright and shiny as it may appear to be, there is not a thing which will ever epitomize the perfection we initially harbour of it in our thoughts. Yet we persist. While we acknowledge there is no ship to take us away from ourselves, we invariably convince ourselves that at least there is some hopefulness of diverting our sensibilities howsoever briefly. It is that rush of trading our cerebral aptitudes for the visceral pleasures which energizes us. The product for which we ache may be a gentle incentive to keep on keeping on, the fuel of our dreams and the titivation of our home or person. Unless one chooses to live like a hermit, exercise of the bargaining tools is very much a part of the colloquial dialect. People enjoy their stuff. There is in fairness considerable personal pleasure to be wrought from material objects. Besides which the shopkeepers depend upon us to nurture their own survival, though frankly I doubt whether any materialist has ever considered his proclivity as altruistic.

Acquisition is for some a horrid illness – consider the notorious hoarders. For the most part however accumulation can be a pleasant undertaking especially if it is unique and not merely repetitive as with so many stashers who excuse their compulsiveness as the career of a collector. If instead one takes the time to deliberate upon the meaning of the article which one desires, and if one is at last convinced of its utility (for whatever reason), getting it is acceptable. While its procurement may not sanitize our existence, it may nonetheless provide moments of gratification.

Power is such a persuasive word. In spite of its seeming clarity it plainly engenders notions of intrigue, secrecy and even sexuality, the natural though primitive features of life. Power manifests itself in many variants, not always the demonstration of obvious superiority or blunt disregard. Apparently for those in the know, power is preferred to money, though many mistakenly assume they go hand-in-hand. It is however when examining power in other than the realm of politics (the forum with which we are accustomed to associate power) that the nuances of power are more observable. Power for example plays out indiscernibly in the high-school classroom, upon the football field, between lovers and friends and crushes, between complete strangers whose paths cross ever so briefly, between landlords and tenants, bosses and employees, even between neighbours. Its application is no less seductive because of its pedestrian appeal. It can be just as beguiling and alluring in the context of normal mortal interplay.

Technically power is the ability to influence the behaviour of people not necessarily to dominate or to control them, though I believe the truth is more accurately captured in the sense of mastery even if one seeks to dismiss its reward as mere preference or competency. I could I suppose accept that power is nothing more than an appetite for success though that innocuous label instinctively opens the discussion of the means by which power is used, whether legitimate by social structure or evil by force or the threat of force. Power can be seen both as a constraint and as an enabler.

Amidst the delicate interaction of everyday people power is endemic, insinuating itself into our cyclical performance as human beings. For some it is a matter of constant and unyielding attention, the very drug and perquisite of life. It follows its binary nature that power mandates submission as well as authority. There are those who willingly submit, more especially if the application of power results in some palpable reward, though the mere act of submission is for some sufficient (perhaps a deference to leadership if nothing else). Whatever the outcome, the use of power inevitably weaves a complicated dance between its participants sometimes entangling them irrevocably.

It is generally accepted that those who wield power are by most standards entitled to do so, whether by virtue of being highly qualified or particularly robust or intelligent, or indeed by their very nature. Some people simply cannot sit on the sidelines of life as a spectator but must regulate and maybe even predict its course. For such people it can often be a lonely existence not only because power by its character separates one from others but also because so much energy is consumed in the maintenance of power that it estranges one from the more mundane features of living. Power is a jealous lover commanding its entire satisfaction at the expense of all else. Yet for those who crave it power is worth the exertion. To live otherwise is seen as a capitulation to mediocrity, a second-place finish. It must be recalled however that those who seek power do not seek it in all matters. The acquisition of power is always purposeful, with an object in mind. Condescension to the pleasure of others is never an admission of obedience if there is no conflict with the motive of power. Otherwise, watch out!

Who among us at one time or another has not woefully groaned and rolled over in one’s virginal lair attempting to bury one’s face and hopeless heart from the startling dawn in the goose down pillows, only to lament the forceful and unhappy recollection of the previous evening’s folly?

Pointedly this is not the domain solely of the reckless. Neither is it the forum of either the masses or the gentry. Neither will I suggest it is universal. There are admittedly some who are not profligate, who never speak a wounding word, some who do not smoke cigarettes or cigars or insist upon either fortified wine or double strength Cognac at the end of a nourishing meal to reward their own pitiful sense of accomplishment in this sometimes painful existence.

By and large people – at least those who I count among my personal friends – are more pernicious than pure and the inevitable corollary is the trouble to expiate the remorse at having been so.

The subject of regret is as plain and as unacknowledged as any other family secret. We feel the need to hide our shame from both ourselves and others. Acquiescence to failure is never a hot topic. There are few I know who can blissfully snap their fingers at the irresponsibility of such an event even though they may make every pretense to do so. Funnily enough the empowerment of this repentance is that it pushes one to recuperate any loss that one may have suffered. I have found that the succeeding necessity to recover one’s self or to compensate for the perceived inadequacies of prior performance outweighs the desire to sleep (or should I say to wallow unceasingly in the feather chrysalis).

So persuasive is the conviction of one’s errors that it at last stimulates one to split from the comforter and to plant the wearied feet upon the hardwood to commence both the physical and metaphorical ablutions of another day.

As a matter of pure lucidity, guilt – as clever a device as it may be – does little to advance the progress of mankind. It is rather a tool of ascendancy in the hands of wheeler-dealers. But it observably accomplishes little to alter the past, as if anything can! As a provocation for improvement or remediation I can see no useful purpose in its absorption in any event as it merely shackles what might otherwise be unrestrained dedication to the improving task at hand.
The admission of mischief, the surrender to the current state of affairs does not import the conclusion that alteration of one`s life-style is without merit. There is clearly forever room for enhancement.

But the prejudice against the history of one`s life does not by definition allow for its amendment. It is after all no more than an early morning reflection, a matutinal retrospection.

I won’t say it is exclusively a hazard of aging, certainly not; but for those of us over the age of sixty, it is not unheard of to be rudely jolted by the sight of oneself. “How”, we ask ourselves, “did it come to this?” And I don’t mean simply physical appearance though that alone can be less than cheering. What I’m here talking about is discovering we are at the end of the road so to speak. With few exceptions, by the sixth decade most of us have about reached the pinnacle of our maturity. Even though thanks to modern medicine and organic foods we can objectively count on several more years of active living, chances are we won’t be improving upon the picture significantly.

As a youth there was a certain freedom in knowing one could irreverently follow one’s nose in most matters without fear of losing the trail to those higher destinations we greedily anticipated in the unfolding of our career. Oddly however, by indiscernible displacement of time and space, we migrated from the bloom of youth to the sere and yellow leaf of old age. This is perhaps a bit severe but I employ the device of exaggeration to illustrate the point.

What intrigues me in this process is what, if anything, have we lost along the way; and is it in a nutshell too late to do anything about it? In a nutshell, yes. All the concoction in the world isn’t going to polish the tarnished shell of our existence. And what’s gone is more than the mere bloom; it’s the lack of energy. If one combines this withering vigour with the commensurate decline in expenditure of any other resource, you have the makings of a mess.

This is all a reminder to relish the day as it is. Recently I heard of a trick to keep us smiling. The woman said that when she was thirty, she looked back fondly on the days of her twenties; and when she was fifty, she looked back fondly on the days of her forties; and when – well, you get the picture. The point is that what we are today will hopefully be seen in retrospect as pretty good, so why not enjoy it when it’s here?

Often we stew about life and its problems. Some of us – myself included I regret to add – are perpetual worriers. Given a free rein and even a modest impetus most of us can gallop fairly liberally in the direction of disconsolateness. But these blue devils need to be checked. Otherwise we do nothing but add to the heap of misery under the weight of which we shall eventually collapse.

As in the resolution of most matters, the dissection of its constituent elements is the first step in handling the situation. It isn’t for example sufficient merely to observe “I’m upset!”. Rather one must analyze the cause of the depression, for there is little point in searching for the answer before one knows the question. As simple as that prescription may sound it is nonetheless fraught with pitfalls on the way to understanding. One must for example avoid the inaccuracy of attributing the problem to the symptom. In its broadest terms the symptom is always disfavour, being out of sorts or in the dog house, but that could encompass everything from a headache to a broken heart. One must resist the temptation to vapourize upon the symptom and attempt instead to locate the cause. Neither is this an idle undertaking. By allowing ourselves to become distracted by the symptom we risk heading down a dead-end trail because in effect the symptom is the same as the problem so it does nothing to advance our cause by calling the same thing a different name. Instead we need to unravel the layers which envelope the problem. While I am of course tempted to portray my own technique for doing so, the fact is that each of us must cultivate his or her own method of scrutiny.

What is universal about the process is that it leads to resolution. One person whom I know characterized the discovery as “the truth”, adding that she despises any camouflage of the truth even where it may be designed to cushion to blow of it. The other thing to keep in mind is that just as we do in so many other ways, we frequently compound our problems by persevering in the inertia of one course of action. It is human nature to repeat, and our minds are no different from our bodies in that respect; we continue to feed ourselves the same fodder day after day.

It is equally imperative to be perfectly candid with oneself. If you are searching for a solution it only clouds the procedure to avoid the petrified certainties, the scummy details of the matter. The acknowledgement of this sometimes disagreeable minutiae has the effect of enhancing the ennui in the sense that it enables you to see it in a larger scope rather than imagining that it is but a bland blight. By virtue of enhancing the detail of the problem it has the added advantage of slowing the momentum of one’s sour determination. Too often there is a tendency to lubricate the already slippery road down by failing to discover the many twists and turns which have evolved over time. Adding a few more bumps in the road to perdition will at least slow things down somewhat.

Most of us will admit that things are seldom as bad as they seem. Something as simple as not having a good night’s sleep can add immeasurably to an already bleak condition. The point here is that breaking the stride of disappointment can assist in getting back to good health.

Whether it is the Canadian vernacular or merely the absence of intelligence, casual conversation among locals is generally considered to be sorrowfully insipid. At the root of it may be nothing more than a lack of genuine concern for the well-being of others, though I am inclined to doubt the proposition since the indisputable feature of the masses is an appetite for gossip, the introduction to which must always be made to appear disinterested.

It has been said of polite conversation that it should be confined to a discussion of one’s health and the weather. Both curiosities regrettably invite little more than glib answers, none of which enlarge particularly meaningfully upon the subject at hand; viz., “Fine!” or “Yeah, hot as Hell!” The further difficulty with such dead-end precursors is that they seldom lead to the development of more expansive thinking or discussion. I mean, unless you’ve recently undergone surgery or you’re a farmer, the matters of health and weather are fairly finite. As a result the introductory comments inevitably bring the encounter to a screeching and uncomfortable end; that is, unless you are learned in the art of trite conversation.

To label such conversation as “trite” is of course an enormous disservice to what is actually an art form of the most sophisticated genre. The gathering of intelligence through this seemingly bland device is akin to refined hunting methodologies. The first tactic, for example, is the distraction of the prey. It is in this respect that featureless opening enquiries (so often mistakenly construed as the indicia of lack of capacity) are de rigueur. For some, wishy-washy explorations of global weather patterns are more than off-putting; but be aware of the treacherous and clever employment of such characterless initiatives. The hardened gossip or socialite will know how to capitalize upon what is perceived as the innocuous apparatus of the dilettante. Just as you are about to quit this retreat of friendship and brotherly love, out of nowhere follows a pointed request for information. Having been disarmed already by the unexciting preliminaries, you are perfectly incapable of avoiding the stunning velocity of the deeper investigation. What ensues is likely to be a candid revelation by you, totally unexpected and unanticipated. This engagement naturally heightens the level of discourse. Almost at once the trivialities of common language are displaced by the pressing elements of immediate social concern. The conversation is catapulted from colourless chitchat to incisive biography, frequently animated and flavoured by the most delicate observations. So much for the weather!

To sustain the momentum of casual conversation one must be certain to balance the need to know with the appearance of light-heartedness. One is after all not at the board table. It is at this juncture that the elevation of communication transpires; and it is here frankly that one must indeed display one’s colours. No longer is it acceptable to dwell in the murky depths of hackneyed dialogue. It is, however, quite tolerable to deliver a quip borrowed from a mentor or a celebrated author, in either case as a means of establishing a literary threshold, itself a gateway to more dynamic parlance. Whatever the technique, the key is to transform idle remarks into forceful scrutiny. The idiom of colloquial speech commands succinctness if for no other reason than that the circumstances do not usually admit to wandering subjunctive phraseology. You are after all likely standing on the street, perhaps even in the rain. But like ships passing in the night, the thrust of the encounter is no less significant and the brevity of it should not in the least diminish its noteworthiness. As such it is imperative to impart as deftly as possible at least a tit-bit of intelligence which may perhaps be currently beyond the domain of your auditor, for it is the novelty of information which more than anything strikes the chord of success. All the while one must preserve the exterior of breeziness, for it wouldn’t do at all to obstruct the inertia of productivity with overwhelming news. These exchanges are meant to be untailored and ephemeral, imparting little more than the hint of the perfume that is one’s spirit.