Saying goodbye to my old self so I can be my old self

Lessons from the Grateful Dead

This is the year I mark 60 trips around the sun. Maybe it’s some vague awareness of looking forward not up to the mountain peak, but down to the grave, or the daily messages my body sends me that I’m not 25 anymore (thank you to my doctor for reminding me during my last appointment). But the daily grind of the last 10 years has turned from the old style toll booths where you stop and pay, to the new style express lanes that just debit your account while you fly past the traffic. Days are long, weeks are terribly short, and years blink past. My list of “billion dollar ideas” is still living in my head, but the energy to do them seems just below the spout in my motivation watering can. If you’re pushing my age, you may know the feeling, or maybe you’re one of the lucky ones living the dreams you had at thirty. Bless your heart.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

When the grind gets to a certain point where the dreams look out of reach, even small inconveniences in life become giants tearing up your lawn, while I see myself in the mirror shouting like a curmudgeon for them to depart. The old me would join them in their revelry, but this is the old me. This is one of those times when I see the old me and decide he’s a jerk. I don’t want to be the me who laments over the past, and figures the future sucks just as bad. Or the me who feels he deserves something for all the time, treasure, and prayer I have put into God’s world, while the world hands me petty problems which bring me to the verge of cussing out loud.

(I’m going to make a confession here. I used to be a potty mouth. I could profane the Lord, recite George Carlin’s seven dirty words, and sprinkle more F-bombs into daily conversation than a First Sergeant who had to pick up a drunk and broke private at 2:00 a.m. from the local whorehouse. I consider my 20-year abstention from cursing, even to the point of prudery as my ears hear others do it, to be one of the most concrete pieces of evidence that lead me to know I’m “saved.” If that’s all it got me, then it’s still something.)

I’m supposed to be in the golden years, right? To get a discount on converting my family’s cell phones to AT&T, the salesperson recommended I join AARP. And I did. That’s not the old me I want to be. But it’s the me I woke up with this morning. All week I’ve been on the verge of depression about some pretty minor stuff, in the scheme of things. I even posted on Facebook asking for prayer. For those nosey people who ask what’s wrong, no it’s not cancer. It’s not some other sickness. It’s not nothing, either, but the old me would tell the old me to chill the F out and just deal with it.

There’s people who have actual cancer, like Nancy French, wife of David French. She has to put up with people on social media giving her a hard time over her headwear, and her sensitivity about losing her hair. She has to put up with people who actively praise her having cancer because they disagree with her husband’s political opinions. What small people, who desire to crush the smallest spark of humanity wherever they go. There’s Christy Erickson, Erick’s wife, who has to get quarterly cancer scans, basically for life, and endure the Sword of Damocles of whether her expensive pills have kept her congenital lung tumors from growing.

There’s David Thornton, who was recently successfully treated for prostate cancer. During his treatment, the FAA suspended his medical certificate, which meant he could not fly—which happens to be his job. He had to survive for months with no income. I’ve been there—not the cancer, but the income. For two years, after I left my corporate executive job (health was one of the reasons), I basically lived off investor money, while the business I tried to start starved me out. It’s one of the reasons why I do what I do now instead of living the dreams I had at thirty.

I could spend all day every day looking at my life decisions and why I made them, and it won’t change one dang thing about who I am in the mirror right now. It’s absurd to even try. Way back in 1987, The Grateful Dead decided they could make a number one hit, so they published “Touch of Grey,” a tune Jerry Garcia composed to Robert Hunter’s lyrics, which the band first played in concert five years earlier. Nobody rushes The Dead. The lyrics are absurd: “Cows are giving kerosene/ The kid can’t read at seventeen / The words he knows are all obscene / But it’s alright.”

Life gets absurd. Today is absurd “It must be getting early / Clocks are running late.” Yeah, 8:00 a.m. came early today too. I love Daylight Saving Time. I like it when the sun sets late in the day, and low in the sky. I’m one of the weird ones who wish DST was all year. But today I am reminded by the absurdity, of the key to getting by.

As The Dead played, “And try to keep a little grace.” “And try to keep a little love.” Only a little is required. Grace and love, and the knowledge that I have much to be thankful for, and much to be grateful for. It’s not my world—it’s God’s world. The problems I have are temporary, because I won’t live forever and therefore neither will my problems.

What I have is today, and I should celebrate it because regardless of what problems are playing on my lawn, I can join them in revelry like my old self would. I don’t need to be my old self today because it’s my decision. It’s also my decision that I (probably) won’t do something stupid today to physically injure myself, because my body is not 25 years old any more. But why can’t I act like it?

So instead of wallowing in my problems, I am going to practice what The Grateful Dead played: “I will get by.” I do have a touch of grey, only a touch, and my wife says it suits me. The Bible reminds me that I am God’s child, and that Jesus loves me. Romans chapter 8 says that “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If all that stuff can’t get between me and the Lord, then what’s a few problems? Why would I lament over them and worry about all my life choices? Why would I care about getting a little older? I’m going to go out and celebrate. Get to the top of a mountain this afternoon and enjoy the sunshine. Watch the late sunset. Prepare for another week.

My problems won’t magically disappear—I’m sure they’ll be there waiting for me—but dang, it feels good to tell them to chill. I’d rather be too busy celebrating life, keeping a little grace, a little love, then waste my time depressed. I’m going to be my old self today, and tell my old self to chill out (without the F-bomb).

That’s the key to getting by, and not just getting by, but getting better. This planet has too many problems for me to spend days fretting over mine, never mind politics, or liberals, or MAGA. I will love them all today, because we all need to chill out and get by. Until we can get past our old selves and be our old selves to each other, this country can’t get better. So today I’m starting with me.