I am older than Debra, so if she is in her “third third,” I’m in my fourth quarter. I still have some game left to play, but the clock is ticking, and there are no time outs. At this point in my life, many of the people I have known have died. That includes both older relatives and acquaintances and high school friends. Some of those I knew in high school died in auto accidents at a relatively early age. Others died of disease, including cancer, and some died in Vietnam.
Escaping death—the Grim Reaper—has long been a fervent desire. You may know the story about the Appointment in Samarra, in which a merchant attempts to flee death only to discover that in fleeing he ended up meeting death at the appointed time and place. Most people are also familiar with the lines from John Donne’s “Devotion” about not asking for whom the bell tolls. As Donne said, we don’t ask because the bell tolls for all of us.
As best I can tell from my decidedly limited perspective, it seems as though our only option is to play the hand we have been dealt as well as we can. The metaphor may have shifted from sports to cards, but the concept is the same: Do the best you can with the resources you have available. Anger may provide some extra energy and might help in hand-to-hand combat, but it doesn’t help with strategy, nor does it improve chances for success, in the kinds of situations modern people tend to encounter. Even in medieval combat, the generals with the best strategies won most of the battles. Errors in strategy typically led to defeat—just ask the members of the Light Brigade or the members of the Seventh Cavalry as commanded by
You may be thinking that you are not likely to be in a position where the stakes are so high. But as the merchant discovered in Samarra, you—and all of us—will keep our appointment with death. We just don’t know the time or place—yet. The important thing, it seems to me is to be fully alive while we are alive. The author Henry James has the protagonist of The Ambassadors tell another to Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. The message is that we need to be engaged with life and fully participate in it. This is probably most important in the “fourth quarter” of life. When we are young, we are enthusiastically involved in our daily lives. We are “fully engaged” in the act of living, with every day being a “new adventure.”
As we age, the natural tendency is to become more contemplative, thinking about our lives rather than actively living them. It seems that the most important thing, at the fourth quarter of life, is to be aware, to make contemplation “active” rather than “passive.” Tennyson concludes his poem, “Ulysses,” with the following lines spoken by the aging Ulysses:
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
To read the whole poem, see Ulysses.
I agree with Tennyson’s Ulysses that getting older requires a “heroic heart.” An associated proverb is When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The going can get tough, of course, long before the fourth quarter. Most of us have periods in our lives when the going is tougher than it is at other times. Challenges come in many shapes and forms, including accidents and illnesses.
A roller coaster starts with a long climb, which is followed by a number of ups and downs and twists and turns. The main thing, it seems to me, is to recognize how much fun you have had on the ride. When the ride is over, most of us turn to those we rode with, and say, “Wow! That was fun. Let’s do it again!”