Time’s River: Age and Authenticity
The philosophical concept of “eudaemonia” (variously translated as flourishing, contentment, or fullness), is one that I have done my best to keep it at the forefront of my mind over the last few years.
It is a bit different than conventional forms of positive emotion like the fleeting happiness one may feel sharing a coffee with a friend, or from buying a new phone or computer. For Aristotle, it was something like the satisfaction that comes from doing things well. If you’ve ever done carpentry of any sort then you know the adage that my near-century old Grandfather Mac taught me as a teen while building a patio for my parents, “measure twice, cut once.” Although I barely registered that lesson at the time, I still remember it here and there when doing precision data-science work or while tinkering with this and that around the house. The sort of certainty and sureness-of-self that my Grandfather demonstrated at such times always evokes in me a clear sense of what eudaemonia means.
It is the experience of being on that fine edge where attention and action meet while also being able to maintain the flow of the process one is engaged in.
The concept is never far from my mind as it seems to be the surest approach toward the Buddhist “Middle Way” that we have within the western canon of philosophy. It is a target to be aimed at whether I am doing big things like pulling up stakes and moving across the world or small things like counting the Carpenter Spiders climbing about the monument in a nearby park with my little girl. To me, it has always meant a sort of fullness of purpose, but it is a fullness that is not easy to achieve.
It requires a certain sort of practice and effort to turn one’s mind to that end when facing difficulty or boredom. Instead of getting lost in the emotion of the moment, it is possible to take Eihei Dogen’s “Backward Step” and engage in that experience as it is, without positive or negative judgment, and to see how it is a part of the whole process of a life in motion.
The very American value of Authenticity has also been one of the guiding principles that have helped me steer my life’s course. My Grandfather was likely one of the best examples of rugged American individualism and authenticity that I have had the good fortune of meeting in this life.
As far as I saw, even in his final moments, he demonstrated nothing but the truth of his own life. However, as I age I often find myself wondering what exactly that word means. I used to be a man of rabid opinions who was always ready to fight over a principle and to evangelize my life’s philosophy. I would get a Fire in my Belly when I bumped into people who were not willing to think life through or to sit back and reflect on their actions, the consequences of said actions, and the responsibilities owed on account of those actions. Of course, I was in my early twenties then and had only the faintest of ideas about what life entailed even though I was incredibly certain that I had it all figured out.
Looking back, I guess that it is easiest to be certain when one has not been faced with alternatives. I had spent the first two decades of my life within a 50-mile radius of the town in which I was born, had no cross-cultural experience, and believed that my life would continue on much as it had been up until that point. It was easy to be certain when “The World” only extended as far as a full tank of gas and when everywhere I went people were familiar because we shared an over-culture. So even people who were “different” were predictable because of their familiarity.
Then, probably ten or fifteen years ago, I heard Jack Kornfield give a Dharma talk wherein he passed on a lesson he had received, a teaching that has become a mantra in my life — most often used in those moments of Stepping Back from the situation. With his usual levity and mirth, Jack gave the simplest but deepest of teachings: “Don’t be a Buddhist, Be a Buddha.”
Of course, he went on to humorously soften the blow that may come along with the statement for some of us by telling an anecdote of a kid who came home from college after taking a course in Buddhism and began lecturing everyone they could about mindfulness and such.
That really hit me hard because if I was being anything, it was not a Buddha. Over the years since then, I have let that Fire in my Belly burn down to seldom fanned coals instead of the roaring blaze they once were and I have tried to embody my authentic self in the world rather than proselytize about it.
The thing is, in doing so, I may have lost track of who or what that authentic self is. I have become less and less certain of whether one even exists. I am nearing forty years of age now and sadly a number of health problems have seen much of my physical ability taken away from me so even though I once would have identified myself as a life-long martial artist, now I risk a tumble, stumble, or fall each time I lift a foot off of the ground.
Apparently I am even wrestling this question in my sleep as I dreamed last night of a Being who came to me and brought me back to see the Keith of my late-twenties. He insisted something went wrong with who I have become, he pointed to my youthful body and compared it to the aged one I wear around from day-to-day now, saying that I am as soft as a grandmother and that I could not protect my family as weak as I am now.
He told me that I wreaked havoc on my own life and lost the thread of potency, uniqueness, and dynamism. There and then in that liminal space of dream, I felt that he was right and asked to go back so I could correct whatever it was that went wrong — to change the river’s flow. But he laughed at me and told me with great amusement “that you only get one shot, and you missed!”
Like Jacob wrestling his angel but having lost my own fight, I awoke as if from a nightmare, still feeling the scorn of myself against myself — that disappointed gaze of the 28-year-old-Thai-Boxer-Keith stretching across the dream-tunnel of time toward the 38-year-old Keith, clearly seeing his flaws and failures in the dim light of early dawn.
I have made mistakes and missteps over the course of my life, ones that have probably contributed to my skepticism of the reality of an ‘authentic self’, I suppose there would be things I would change if I could, but the truth of it is captured in a Chinese proverb: “The best day to plant a tree was twenty years ago, but the second-best day to plant a tree is today.” There is nothing to be done about the past, and sure, life might be better in some ways if things were carried out differently, but the only moment wherein things can be done is this one.
Should the Angel return again I will recite the Song of the Earth as held and embodied in the immortal words of Walt Whitman, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” I will tell it that this is now and that was then, never the two shall meet again. Heraclitus’ River has been forced, there is no going back.
There is only intention and action taken with each step into the everpresent moment of this very word. And that. And so on. Ever onward.
So, in order to make sense of things, I return to that ancient idea of eudaemonia, of flourishing and of fullness, and ask where that dwells within my life today. I find that I am very full, but that fullness is almost completely disconnected from what may have filled me up a decade ago. In his 2019 book, “The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell them Better,” Will Storr quotes classics professor, Helen Morales, who said of eudaemonia, ‘It’s flourishing. Aristotle was saying, “Stop hoping for happiness tomorrow. Happiness is being engaged in the process”’ (p. 188).
So, I am no longer sure that ‘authenticity’ can be my guide because even after an estimated-half of a lifetime I have no true sense of who I am anymore.
I am only myself in relation to others, to my family, and to those exceedingly rare occasions when I see an old friend. Now I am Father. I am Husband. I am no longer the fighter physically, mentally, or spiritually that I once was. I am one of many wading through the Great River of Life, although I may be luckier than some because of the company I keep in my travels.
Of course, I will never tell my daughter that I am unsure and even skeptical of authenticity. I will encourage her growth and the blossoming, teach her of Jung’s Individuation and Hillman’s Acorn Theory. I will embrace her rising up and help the process along whenever and wherever I can. Lacking belief in that critical concept could potentially have negative effects, stunting a person’s growth or preventing them from being whatever it is that they can be.
We are all Constant but Ever-Changing Potentialities. Fulfilling those potentials may be what authenticity is all about. Now, as I enter the third act of my life’s-stage-play, I will embrace the flow and the flourishing of my Little Rowan Tree. Watering her roots and exposing her to new lights from each and every angle I can manage will be my flourishing in the world. I have planted a tree in the World. I will tend it and watch it grow.
