Not Just a Number

By Peter Clothier

(Excerpted with permission from Mind Work: Shedding Delusions on the Path to the Creative Core by Peter Clothier.)

An idea came to me this morning during the half-hour meditation that is my daily practice. I know I’m not supposed to be thinking while I meditate but sometimes — okay, often! always! — the thoughts do come and my mind goes chasing off after them. So it happened this morning. The idea that came turned out to be a delicious one, and I was unable to let it go.

Here’s the thread: For nearly two years now my writing mind has been preoccupied with the book I published early last year, Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce. For a good few months before the publication I was busy assembling this collection of essays that spans some thirty years of observations about art and artists, writers, and others whose lives are devoted to creative work. In the time since publication I have been almost exclusively engaged in doing what any author is obliged to do with the outcome of his work: making it known to the rest of the world. I have been writing about Persist, speaking about Persist, social-networking about Persist. Persisting is after all what the book is about. All of which has been good and proper, and I have enjoyed the trip. But in the past few weeks I have been feeling that old itch to set off in search of something new.

So this is what came to me this morning: the germ of a new idea. It will be, simply put, an exploration into the world of who I have imagined myself to be, along the way, and who I have become, at this stage of my life; a study, then, of past delusions and present reality, as observed through the eyes of a man approaching his old age, his final years on this planet Earth. It is not, I want to stress, about “aging”, but about ways of seeing things from this new and still evolving perspective. It’s about stripping down to the essentials in order to achieve a greater clarity

I take note of my reluctance to use the word “old.” Instead, I weasel around it, writing of “approaching old age.” Like most people of my age these days, I suppose, I have a resistance to thinking of myself as old. This is in part, surely, culturally conditioned. In today’s America we do not like to think of ourselves as old. We say things like “You’re as young as you feel,” or “Your age is just a number.” And it’s true that we all age differently. The body of an eighty-year old man (I’m not there yet!) may still be relatively youthful, or it may already be decrepit. We are fortunate to live at a time in which we have learned more about such matters as nutrition and the value of healthy habits and physical exercise. Here in Southern California where I live, we enjoy an enviably benign natural environment, where neither climate nor culture makes great demands on the bodies we inhabit.

All of which is useful to bear in mind. But it’s also true that there’s an element of denial in the way we talk and think about our age. In just a couple of months from the moment of this writing, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. That’s not “just a number.” It’s a reality. And that reality is no longer “middle age” by even the most rose-tinted count. Let’s be truthful. It’s the beginning of the last quarter of a human life, at the very best. I have no choice but to embrace that reality with enthusiasm — and, if I’m wise, to celebrate it with clear-sighted honesty.

So this is the new adventure that awaits me. Since I’m a writer, I will write it. It’s an adventure because I have no idea where it will lead me; only the writing will be my guide. I plan to observe the daily life of my mind, along with the daily life of my body and emotions and the daily life that’s happening around me, all with as much authenticity and clear-sightedness as I can muster. I plan, especially, to observe the changes in that part of my life which can best be described as spiritual — though the latter is a word that I have resisted in the same way I have resisted age: with respect, with suspicion, with anxiety and curiosity.

But of this, I’m sure, more later.

Continue to excerpt page 2 »