At age 10 I used to wonder what life might feel like at 60. I turn 60 today and now wonder what I really felt at age 10.
At 10 looking ahead it could only be speculative and imaginary. At 60 looking back it is a cavalcade of memories, some accurate but many amorphous and perhaps even unintentionally false.
My sister Pallavi told me that yesterday was my father Manharray’s birthday. He would have been 95 today had he lived another 50 years. Strangely until yesterday I did not know when my father was born. I knew precisely when and how he died—on May 4, 1970 of a fourth heart attack at age 45. That means I have outlived my father by 15 years today. If only outliving someone were an accomplishment….
I can say with a fair degree of certainty that in my mind I do not feel any significantly different at 60 than I did at 10. Sure, a whole lot has changed in terms of life’s experiences and physically. You can see the second law thermodynamics at work with advancing years. Entropy increases by the day and disorder becomes the order of the day. For instance, since Saturday, I have been laid low by a horrendous if routine sinus attack. Since the release of sinuses, accompanying headaches and body aches, runny nose and terrible cough all mimic symptoms of the COVID 19 I got myself tested yesterday. The result will be known likely by tomorrow.
Entropy will only get more intense as I deplete whatever number of years I have left in me. I have always considered between 75 and 80 to be the optimal age in terms of their effectiveness. Let’s say for the sake of argument that for an average human being like me it is 75. That means at 60 I have already lived 80 percent of my life. By definition, 80 percent of all my life’s success and failure, joy and grief ought to have been lived and experienced by now. But we all know life does not unfold in percentages. It is possible that a single day or a single hour or a single minute at any age could produce a remarkable accomplishment. For the sake of argument, however, it is fair to say that 80 percent of my effective life is over.
I was told by a friend of mine who believed in birth charts and astrology—for the record, I do not—that the 60th will be an important year for me. He also said it would be a very rewarding year for me. That year has just begun today. I am willing to give that friend, who is no longer alive, my 60th year to test his hypothesis.
I mentioned the second law of thermodynamics and its application to human life. It is true that the availability of my system’s energy that can be converted into mechanical work has diminished over the decades. I do not see my system lasting beyond its 65th year. Let me correct it. I do not want my system to last beyond its 65th year.
One has no delusions about what one brings to the human discourse—nothing. I can safely say that my birth and life have made no material difference to the universe at all. If you cannot make an impact on the universe, what’s the point of your existence?
