Susan Moon - Alive Until Youre Dead : Notes on the Home Stretch

You dont know how long youre going to live. You know youre going to die, but it doesnt seem real. Then, as you get older, people you love die. You ache for them. Your mortality impresses itself upon you. You notice the impermanence of all living things, maybe even of the human species, and you realize how amazing it is to be alive. You notice the joy of feeling connected to something beyond yourself. You catch a glimpse of what Zen Master Dogen meant when he said nine hundred years ago, The entire universe is the true human body.

Im not nearly as worried about getting old as I used to be, because worrying is what you do about something that hasnt happened yet, and I already am old, with a history of getting old behind me. Ive already gotten my titanium knees and my silicone lens implants, and now, in defiance of nature, I can walk and see better than I could when I was ten years younger. The rest of me, however, the organic part, has not improved in the last decade, and the general downward trend is likely to continue. I see now that doing battle against aging is not a good use of my time and so letting go of that fight is a big relief. I have a wider view, and its not because of my lens implants. Although there are fewer and fewer moments left in front of me, and the days flip by faster than ever, something strange is happening. Each moment, when I come to it, has more time in it than the moments of years gone by.

One day when I was about eight, I persuaded my best friend that it would be fun to get lost on purpose, to see what it feels like to be lost. I was curious. Children were always getting lost in books and fairy tales and entering enchanted territory. I wanted to make a border crossing, too. My friend agreed. In those days, my parents let me have the run of the neighborhood-a quiet residential part of town where I knew the neighbors and they knew me. So we told my parents we were going out to play and we slipped away. It was a sunny morning and the streets were quiet, with hardly any cars. We walked to the end of my block, turned, zigzagged, circled, taking unfamiliar streets, lanes, alleys, deliberately not looking back, not keeping track, though I was aware that we were mostly going down. In one spot, broken bundles of shiny election flyers were strewn on the sidewalk and we pocketed some, thinking they might be special. We passed from a neighborhood of single-family houses into a neighborhood of duplexes and triplexes. We were together, and we were excited. After a while we stopped and looked around, and we didnt know which way was home. We had accomplished our missionwe were lost! I felt a rush of adrenaline that sharpened my senses. I smelled the toasty smell of dry maple leaves in the gutter. I saw how the sky wheeled above us, between the unfamiliar roofs on either side of the street. I was lost, but there I was! Really there, in that place.

We were explorers, just the right amount scared or maybe a little beyond just right. We followed our noses and headed uphill. It began to feel like a long time that wed been gone, and our thoughts turned to our parents. Would they have noticed we were gone? We walked and walked and came at last to a street I recognized; after that we found our way easily. As we approached my house, we saw on the front porch all four of our parents, standing shoulder to shoulder, peering out. They were worried, they were mad, they had called the police. My parents told me I must never ever again go off like that without telling them. As punishment, I wasnt allowed to go to the dog show in Madison Square Garden that afternoon with the rest of the family.

Getting lost on purpose seems like a strange way to try to find yourself, but I think thats what an explorer does. Im a seeking old person, as I was a seeking child (now I sometimes get lost without even trying) and I report on my explorations here. These essays are about my ongoing discovery that I am alive. Though I make references to Zen, you certainly dont have to be a Buddhist to read this book. Many of my dearest friends and relatives are not Buddhists. I was a human being long before I was a Buddhist, and Im still more human than Buddhist. Im curious by nature, and all my life Ive been wondering, What does it mean to be a human being? Now I ask, What does it mean to be an old human who is going to die? Whats the point of life if youre going to die anyway?

The question sounds dreary, but its not. Its a question born of a bright curiosity. Ive always been curious about this world, about how a spider can spin from its own body the very thread it hangs by, or what it would be like to live in a house on stilts. Ive learned to be curious about difficult things, too. Years ago, when I was in a period of acute anxiety, a therapist asked me, Can you get curious about this? Thats a good mantra. I now take it with me through thick and thin: