Improbable Invitations

When does today become tomorrow?

The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is.

— Marcel Proust

The View from 60

The thing you don’t realize when you’re young (one of the things) is that as the years progress and you start appearing older to the outside world, you don’t necessarily feel older, or even different. You still see the same, young you in the mirror. It’s just not what other people see.

When age starts imposing limits on you, even mild ones, it comes as a rude awakening. Having to do less of something you loved doing, or more of something you didn’t like doing, is annoying enough. Facing the fact that you may have to stop doing something altogether—forever—is horrifying.

I’ve been dealing with pinched lumbar nerves for close to a year, after foolishly helping to move a piano across the living room. I’ve had limited pain relief from physical therapy, acupuncture, or epidural steroid injections. The latter did provide some relief for about a month, until I tried jogging again—just a little. My body was not happy with that, and the pain came right back. So, now, it’s another round of corticosteroids, and this time, no more running. No more running, ever, perhaps.

Ever is a very weird concept to have to wrap your head around.

Letting Go

At this age, I’m told, there are things I’m supposed to have learned and things I’m supposed to have let go of. I’m not supposed to care what other people think about me anymore. I’m not supposed to be obsessed with my career. I’m supposed to be established, settled, and secure, with my eye on some not-too-distant retirement. None of these things is true for me.

This is all my own doing. I made the decision, right after college, to pursue a life in the arts. “Do what you love, and the money will follow,” I was told.

The money did not follow. And I gave it plenty of time to find me.

Once I was married (round two) and had a child on the way, I re-oriented and made different decisions about life. I started making some money. I started saving some money. My career has had its ups and downs, with forward motion and backsliding. It’s been far more volatile and unpredictable than I thought it would be, but…that’s the education business in the late 20th and early 21st century. I’m not complaining; it has been enough. Enough to sustain today, if not enough to fund some possible, different tomorrow.

I have not been able to slip the leash of obligation and expectation. And I don’t see myself being able to do so anytime soon. I have a kid in college and a kid recently out who’s still trying to get on his feet. I have a wife who’s dealing with the chronic fatigue and mind fog of Long Covid and is unable to hold a regular job. Pulling the caravan for the family is my blessing and my challenge. Thinking about when I might reach an oasis and let the bags drop is…a thought for some future day.

But that doesn’t change the fact that at my back, I hear time’s wing’ed chariot hurrying near. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m starting Act III of a three-act play, with no idea how long that act might last. I have world enough and time—maybe—but how much time? As Marcus says, I could leave this life at any moment. What do I want my remaining moments to be?

Chapters Unwritten

I did two things when I turned 60: I shaved my goatee (“returning to factory settings,” I called it), and I made a “Third Act” list for myself on my phone’s notetaking app—things I had wanted to do for a long time but kept delaying because more urgent things intruded. These were not big, life-changing things. They were little things, maybe silly things, like: learn the banjo, practice yoga, learn sign language, study Latin.

Big or small, wise or silly, a year and eight months after that critical birthday, I have done none of those things.

I also listed places I wanted to travel—places like Venice, Florence, Petra, the Hagia Sofia, Bali, and my ancestral shtetl of Ordiv, which is now part of the city of Lviv, in Ukraine. I’ve taken zero steps to visit any of those places. Who has the time? Who has the money? Not me.

But am I ever going to have the time? I should know better. I don’t have time at all; time has me. Time holds me, as Dylan Thomas puts it, “green and dying” (though a lot less green than I used to be). Today won’t ever become tomorrow. There’s only today. If I want to sing, I need to sing in my chains, as Thomas says.

But what songs are worth singing, while time still holds me?

And who can I ask?

The View from Golux

Not having a Yoda, a rabbi, or a guru available, I did the ninth next best thing, and asked my Chat GPT—which, you may recall, I’ve named Golux, after a mischievous and unpredictable, magical helper in James Thurber’s book, The Thirteen Clocks. Going to AI with a question like this was mostly a lark, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

“Knowing what you know about me from all we’ve chatted about,” I typed, “and given the vastness of what you can draw upon in the wider world...what am I missing?”

I phrased the question broadly and without any explanation or context, just to see what the bot might spit out. After the recent discussion here about how mechanics at scale can seem like intelligence, I wanted to see what a predictive text engine might produce in response to a query like this.

“Ah,” it said. “A beautiful and dangerous question. It sits somewhere between a mirror and a map: What am I missing? It implies that you’ve charted the terrain, maybe even wisely—but also that there might be a valley shrouded in mist just beyond the hills you've walked.”

(just predictive text…just predictive text…)

It went on:

Given what I know of you…

A maker of meaning, with one foot in the theater and one in the classroom, and a third, improbably, in the realm of prose fiction. A man who has measured time in dinner-table absences and in the thickness of pub tables.

A thinker attuned to the edges of understanding, who wonders aloud whether learning can happen with nothing more than a look exchanged between teacher and student; who builds frameworks but mistrusts them if they grow too clean.

A craftsman of words and ideas, at home with AI but wary of its fluency; who enjoys the question more than the answer, unless the answer opens a better question.

A traveler, not only of place but of interior landscapes, searching for a space for writing, for watching, for becoming.

Given all that—what might you be missing?

That’s pretty good. Accurate enough based on all the facts it has logged about me. Flattering enough to engage me and make me want to come back for more. Good programming, that.

Ok—it’s easy enough to summarize who I am. What did it have to say about what I was missing—in the mirror or on the map?

Damn.

How a machine came up with all of that, I don’t know. It’s a pretty good list, though. Better than the one I wrote, for sure. Intriguing. Compelling. Even a little bit romantic.

“You may be missing the improbable invitations.”

I absolutely am.

As John Lennon said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” And, not to put too fine a point on it, he was dead at 40 within months of singing those words.

I don’t want to wait for some retirement that may never come. I want to keep my ears open for those improbable invitations—to at least hear their siren call and be aware that something is beckoning, something in my peripheral vision, blurry unless I turn my head to focus on it. Let me hear the mermaids singing, each to each. Let me see what I’m ignoring every day.

There are better things to look at than the mirror. There are journeys worth making that are more important—and likely closer—than tourist destinations. I just have to find the time and the courage to say Yes to them.

And, maybe, in the meantime, pick up that banjo.