Another Day, Another Chance

We were on the 8:30 commuter train from Baltimore to see the sights of Washington, DC on a typical June morning in Maryland.  I honed in my attention momentarily to the burly train conductor, with greying beard, looking like he was less than five years from retirement, who was very chatty as he was checking for tickets, asking everyone how he or she was doing.  One responsive passenger asked back how he was doing, to which the conductor replied, “Well, another day, another chance.”

Not everyone may have paid attention to what he said; I did.  How and what did he mean by it?  I certainly could have asked him that and removed all the mystery and be done with my inquisitive thoughts.  But there was an hour and a half of travel time to go, so introspection and an opportunity to muse over it was the thing to do.

I was sure he had a personal attachment to the phrase with a funnel-effect-focus towards his own life but to me it tended to scatter my thoughts as to where it applied best.  It would have applied to anyone of every age, I thought.  From a growing infant to a 90 year old, from street vendors to high finance brokers but also from mole hills to mountains. For the baby, another day is another chance to grow stronger; for the 90 year old, getting out of bed for another day is a gift; a street vendor may have earned enough to feed his/her family, the financier could save a company or offer a portion of his money for under-privileged city kids during a fund raising.  

Another day is another chance for glaciers to move an inch or two; for rivers to flow; for the sun to rise once more. For the non-romantic it is another day for the sun and every star in the universe to fuse billions of tons of hydrogen into helium, releasing energy radiating to everywhere that can be reached.  One tiny blue planet turns one face for a day to absorb its daily dose of life-giving, life-sustaining sunlight.

Another day is for some of the iron to turn into rust but it is also another day for grapes to turn into wine; for bacteria to spoil food but also for yeast to make dough rise or for barley to make beer.  It is another day for schoolchildren to learn another new thing, for the sick to heal and for broken hearts to mend.  I can go on and on.  As I looked out the window of the speeding train that simple phrase continued to scatter my thoughts as old buildings and new structures blur by, like the daily pages on a desk calendar on fast forward.

As the train stopped at the various stations passengers got off as others came on board.  My wife and I were tourists so we knew what kind of day we wanted to have although we may not get to do or see everything we set out to do.  On excursions like this our expectations were not set too high, so disappointments will be low.  But, what about those folks coming and leaving at each stop?  Will some of them have a productive day, or at a minimum, a good day?  A well-dressed gentleman in a suit boarded with a diet soda in one hand and a briefcase in the other.  He had to find a seat quickly before the train started moving.  Was he a lawyer, or a mid-level staff at a lobbying firm?  An old lady was slow to get up from her seat to get to the exit door.  She did make it in time before the train closed its door.  I watched her moved slowly through the elevated platform.  I did not get to see her walked down the stairs as the train started to move. Her stop was miles away from Washington D.C. and she didn’t have a brief case, a laptop or smart phone so a high power job may not have been what she was commuting to.  No, my preferential thought was that she was just visiting a friend or better still she was going to see her grand kids. The gentleman and the old lady each had another day.  What was it going to be for them?

Actually, we need to ask that of each of us.  What kind of day does every person have as each sunrise draws open the curtain for another scene at the stage of our daily lives?  Should we account for it at each sunset?  More than that, we need to make each day count.  The train conductor was right - if there is another day, we all get another chance, to do just that – let’s make it count.

 

Twilight

“The soft, diffused light from the sky when the sun is below the horizon from daybreak to sunrise or from sunset to nightfall”, known as twilight, comes from “time of two lights” - the open and closed parenthesis of life, all lives, yours and mine, without exception.  

My apologies to Stephenie Meyer because this is not about her Twilight novels, later turned into a TV series. Her books and the shows became a hit with teenagers and vampirologists (if there is no such word, there should be one).  This is certainly not about civil, geographical or legal twilight either.  But if the reader must know, yes, there is such a thing as legal and civil and geographical twilights. The erstwhile “The Twilight Zone” series aside, this is neither about that as well - sorry, Rod Serling - although truth be told when I was growing up I was a big reader of the comic books version of it, which meant we didn’t own a television then.  It is actually a more intriguing subject to ponder but I’ll stay with, “the time of two lights”.

Sunrise and sunset are essentially the same phenomenon that bookends the illusion of the sun’s movement in the sky.  It is an illusion because it is not the sun that is moving but the earth’s rotation on its axis that is giving us sunrises and sunsets.  The soft diffusion of light on the sky just over the horizon whether sunrise or sunset are similar “special effects” from nature on an IMAX screen of cosmic proportion. There is just one difference between them - cooler mornings usher in sunrises while sunsets signal the end of a warmer afternoon. Either one paints the sky from light gray to a mix of orange and yellow and purple and red and indigo. The direction of the color change depends on whether it is sunrise or sunset.

Here it comes - the metaphor of the sunrise and sunset of our lives.  We sense the world for the first time at the sunrise of our life, with everything already in its place and everyone that matters, especially the mother who brought us out of the darkened womb.  Although we’ve heard her well before we came out, followed soon after birth by a cacophony of sounds and other noises, it will be awhile before we could even see gray.  It will be another while when flashes of color will begin to stimulate and the blobs and blotches take shape.  The familiar voice, the warmth and comfort we associated it with is now a face, a smiling face when we looked content and uncomplaining to her.  The voice is even more soothing and comforting at the slightest sign of a grimace in our face.  A hum, a song, a whisper helped to calm us.  Such is the sunrise of our lives although we will not remember any of it. Not the first walk, the first word – even the first “no”, the potty training, and almost every detail before pre-K.  But it was a twilight that preceded it all.

Our memories begin at the early morning – the formative years of building our personalities, learning early on the things we can and not get away with, knowing right from wrong.  Mid to late morning we will have gone through the rebellious teenage years, high school and college or our first foray into earning a living, skipping college altogether. Between noon and two would be the hottest time of the day.  We would be busy with starting a career or engaging in business, cementing our place in the hierarchy of the workplace, our social status, friendships and the choice of a partner and perhaps the beginning of a family. The busiest time of the day, the most hectic, stressful and fulfilling perhaps would be that time.  Mid-life begins after two and for some the experience will be called a crisis, for others it will be taking stock or doing inventory of what he or she has done so far. For others it could be about what they had amassed in terms of material things, what glory, what accolade they have had already.  By four or late afternoon, many will begin the more serious contemplative moments of their lives. It could for many the ebbing of the internal fire of the driving motivation and ambition, the feeling of vulnerability is a nagging reminder that one could still lose some if not all that he or she has or the things one enjoys the most.

By five o’clock we will have realized that the great novel we wanted to write is shelved farther and farther away from our attention or priority; if we didn’t get to it by now the pinnacle of the corporate totem pole shall remain unreachable; scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro will forever be lived vicariously on the National Geographic Channel; or, the business we started had gone as far as it could, what we’ve saved thus far will determine the quality of our lives after six p.m.  Where our health and physical well-being are concerned, it is now a series of medical bulletins and advisories – the choice topic of everyone our age. Ailments and conditions are treated like badges of honor, or a way to top one another. 

The invincibility and know-it-all era of the teenage years and the fearlessness and adventurism of being twenty one are now memories long gone and the mid-life phenomenon is best fondly remembered as sometimes amusing, embarrassing and even bordered on the ridiculous.  Where once as children we’d gladly say we were six and a half years old, making it sound closer to seven, a longing to grow up and grow older, now we round it all off into the chronologically broader term, “seniors”.

“Middle age is when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work.”

----- Author Unknown

Twilight is inevitable and deemed a destination that everyone may dread. It is the reckoning we’ve been warned about.  The story line on the stage of life is set to conclude, the dimming switches are at the ready and the curtain riggings of pulleys and weights are all in the proper calibration, the epilogue music is on cue...

Wait a minute! Not so fast, we need to say.  Twilight should be the best time of our lives.

“There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”

----- Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

Let us not be fooled by such cliche as the twilight of one’s career, the retirement bell has rang and you’re out, etc.  Bill Watterson was just kidding, I’m sure, because doing nothing after retirement is not a reward or rewarding; in fact, retirement is the freedom to do what we had always wanted to do – “do” is the operative word, an active verb! So let’s break this “twilight of our lives thing” down and distill it to the realization that we now have the power to make Mondays feel like a Saturday or any given Sunday.

“The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.”

----- Abe Lemons

What used to be such a big hoopla in anticipation of a long weekend is one big ho hum, yawn … yawn. A cold, rainy Monday morning that used to be such a struggle to get out of bed to go to work is now merely an ecstatic reminder to stay in bed even longer and cherish the euphoric effect of a tranquilizer prescribed by the Director at the Retirement Activity Center who said, “Sleep in but if you must get out of bed take two cups of coffee and don’t worry about missing ping pong, pool, or the bonsai class today”.

The twilight of life is not such a bad thing after all because the truth is that to get to it is a privilege not everyone may get to have, regardless of financial, social or political status.  Twilight is extra bonus points; it is overtime to an exciting Superbowl; it is a three-song encore of a favorite concert.  Yes, we’d all have to reach a certain age to live long enough to enjoy these extras.  Twilight may not be the most important time but it could be for some, and it should be the best for many if not all because it is the penultimate period to life’s denouement.

One other thought before I conclude is this one metaphor on the time of two lights. Light that comes after dawn, the sunrise that follows immediately, is virtually if not merely the beginning bookend of a day. Often we may turn away from the bright morning sun while we tend to enjoy staring at sunset. At both times, by the way, we would cast long shadows. The shadows we see in early morning, with our face away from the sun, is what we saw ahead of our childhood and youthful days; the shadows we cast behind us as we face the sunset are the memories we have created, the trails of the past days lived and those lived by others  around us, and they're all there for us to cherish, not lament, to be cheerful for and not regretful, to look back to from time to time but never to forget that we still need to move on.  

“Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.”

----- Kitty O'Neill Collins

Again, as another proof to "there is no such thing as a free lunch", the entrance ticket to long life is not one that nature doles out so easily and those who get there are privileged indeed. So, there it is.  Twilight is exciting, albeit soft in a diffused kind of thrill but remember that the ticket to ride is only available for purchase by those of a minimum age of 65 or older. 

Retirement is a mere pit stop, not a final destination.