Life's Task From Here on Out

September 1 has traditionally been the date when I have wrapped up my summer activities and headed back to school, either to study or to teach. The summers from my past, which seemed to stretch so endlessly and effortlessly before me in early May, drew to a close before I completed all that I wanted to do. This year, however, things are different. I have finished my law teaching and now have no more classes to prepare or students to meet. It is far too early for me to "retire," whatever that might mean.

But rather than feeling either disappointed or disjointed, I have welcomed this new situation in life with growing joy. Indeed, in the last few months I have developed a new philosophy of life, of sorts, which I will share with you here. It may not apply completely to you, but I hope that some of it resonates with you. In short, I am now concluding that I have largely paid my "debt to nature" and that now I am free to live life as I think it ought to be lived. The four major priorities of life now for me (in no particular order) are: (1) fun; (2) learning; (3) friendship/intimacy; and (4) service. Let's talk about each.

Paying a Debt to Nature

Life may be a gift of grace in some profound way, but I increasingly see it as a process of nature through which we become indebted to nature for the privilege of living at this time in world history and, generally, in a prosperous and peaceful place. We (and I hope I am not presuming on your experience) have been gifted with so many things. We, in turn, "owe" something. But I want to express this "owing" differently from the traditional statement: "to whom much is given, much is required." I think we are indebted to nature generally to produce at least as many offspring (usually physical--our children, but it can be others) to take our places in the world, but these offspring should be at least as good if not better people than we. That is, we owe it to nature to replicate ourselves and produce a superior "product." In the case of raising children, this takes at least 20 years, and closer to 25. I have had the experience in the past year with both of my children (25 and 20 now), where there were profound moments where I "blessed" them as adults entering into their own worlds. Though this doesn't end my concern for them, my loans/gifts to them, or my hours with them, it does sort of end my debt to nature with respect to them as I have defined it above. Just as we work until early May in order to pay our debt to Uncle Sam each year, so I think we may be lucky enough to have paid our debt to nature by the time we are in our early to mid-50s.

The point of all this is that when we have paid our debt to nature, nature is, as it were, done with us. We have served our purposes, paid our "dues." We are now "free to go" or free to live. Since we don't usually just die, we then have years to figure out the next steps of our life.

How do we do that? Well, each of us is on his/her own journey, but for me there are a number of benchmarks or values that inform my life each day now that I am a free man. To the extent possible, I try to have each activity of life "fit into" one of the following four categories. If my present activities do not do that for an extended period of time, I simply have to get out of doing those things. Life now is about freedom, to the extent that living free is possible.

My Four Categories

I have listed above the four things/categories which now occupy nearly all of my time. Let's take them each briefly. I think if there is one word that characterizes me now it is "learner." To set the record straight--I think this is quite different from the pabalum-like statement we hear all the time, "Well, of course we all learn new things every day..." That isn't at all what I mean. What I mean by learning is that each day, to the extent possible, is taken up with intentional acts of systematic or focused mastery of information which only can be learned by study and effort. It means not simply being "open" to learning from people or situations in life, but of bringing all of one's energy to focus on depth-learning.

If, for example, I study trees, I will learn not only the names of hundreds of varieties, but I will try to master the Latin names, and learn enough about the system of taxonomy to be able to speak cheek-to-jowl with someone who has spend his/her life in horticulture/arboreal studies. If I want to study movies and actors/actresses, there is no reason why I can't have on my lips all of the movies of dozens of actors. Choose your field and learn it well. Learning, now, is central to my life.

Learning must be measured now by the concept of fun. I don't learn now "to pass the test" or primarily to satisfy other people (though when I consult for someone, I definitely am "working" for them), but to bring an element of fun into my life. And, the fun can spread into loads of other areas, too. One of the major tests now in determining what I will do with my time is not whether I should attend something or whether I am expected to be at a place, but whether I want to be there. Perhaps some of you are thinking that this should have been the test all along of human activity, but the pressures of life tend to skew our ability to do what we want in our earlier days. Of course there still are obligatory activities, but in general I now ask the question of whether I want to be someplace or whether I want to be with someone before I commit myself to it. Since I now focus on my learning, I have a clearer and clearer understanding of how I want to spend my time. Fun and learning, then, go hand in hand.

Then, third, I focus on friendship and intimacy. I don't look at friends at this point primarily for the purposes of "leverage"-- to get benefits from therm in other areas. I have friends so that I can enter into their lives and bring the tangles and clarities of my life and learning to them. I will select my friends based on how they increasingly fit into my interest areas, rather than just hanging around with individuals or groups because they are willing to talk with me. I want friendship(s) and possible intimacy to be focused on enhancing learning and fun. I expect to "give" a lot to people in the process, but I will want to hang around with people who think I am a pretty special guy.

Finally, life is about service. I don't know all the forms that this service will take, but again it will be a kind of service that is consistent with my life-aims in learning, fun and friendship/intimacy. Thus, if I am looking for a volunteer opportunity with people who work in gardens, for example, I will not volunteer to clean up weeds if this isn't what I want to do (I would rather label flowers). I will volunteer in ways that I want to volunteer, doing the kinds of things that interest me. I will teach at church or other places when I want to say something to a group of people; my teaching will flow from my life. I will engage in service primarily because the cause attracts me and something very specific about the cause is what I want to do. I don't think, therefore, that I am an "all-purpose" volunteer. I am, in contrast, a "targeted" service person.

Conclusion

With these aims in my life, I scarecely want to go to bed at night and I can hardly wait to get "to it" each morning. Life is a true gift for me in these days, and I think it is because I am now clear on what I want in life that these things are flowing well for me. If your life isn't what you now want, and you are in the 50+ age group, why don't you try to define your life similarly and see where you go? You won't starve to death in ignominy on the side of the road...

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