Musings of a reluctant Superannuated Man
A few stray thoughts on my birthday
It is that day of the year for me when the clock turns and makes me older by another year. One awaits this day the whole year round. It is a pleasant feeling to celebrate one’s birthday with loved ones. One’s birthday can as well be a beginning and an end. A new beginning can only happen when something else ends. We need to leave something behind to have a fresh start.
It is customary to celebrate a birthday with wishes for the forthcoming period. It is also crucial to take some time out, to look back into the past for an insight into ourselves, to introspect from where we have come, and to gauge where we might be going. And what could be a better time than one’s birthday?
While we don't know our future and can only wish it turns out to be what we expect, gazing at our past is difficult. Whatever we remember of our past life is shrouded by the veil of our imagination. And most often, that image of our past life remains blurred. Our memories play tricks on us.
Scientists say when we try to remember our past lives, we encounter two kinds of Selves - Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self. What we experience and we recollect in our lives are two different things. Our Experiencing Self endures all the moments of our lives equally, pleasurable or painful. But our Remembering self put all the weight of judgement, much later, to two single points in time, the worst/best moment (the Pick) and the last moment (the End). Our memory seems to follow what economist and noble laureate Daniel Kahneman calls the Pick-End-Rule.
In his seminal book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman discussed this phenomenon in detail. He had done a series of experiments which showed that while we go about in our lives enduring each moment, we do not remember all the moments equally. We only recall the high point, good or bad, and how we feel at the end. This is true for both pleasurable experiences as well as painful experiences.
The recently concluded T20 India and Pakistan match is a case in point. It was a roller-coaster ride for cricket lovers. Whichever team a person may support, his experience of the whole match was pleasurable. The match had all the elements that cricket lovers look for. Yet, the supporters of Pakistan, the defeated team, would remember the defeat more than the enjoyable experience of watching a great match played spanning the whole afternoon. The same would have been the case for Indian supporters had India lost the match. The Experiencing Self enjoyed long hours of pleasure while the play was on. The Remembering Self, however, does not consider it pleasure at all for the losing team and highly pleasurable for the winning team.
The same holds for painful experiences in our lives as well. When a patient undergoes a painful medical process, maybe for a prolonged period, she does not remember the average pain experienced during the procedure. If the ending is less hurtful, she would remember the process to be not as painful. At the same time, if the end of the procedure is more painful, the process may be recalled as very painful.
So which Self do we listen to when, for the same experience, our Remembering Self and Experiencing Self have different opinions?
We do not view our lives as the average of all the moments that include pleasure and pain. Our lives are more than the sum of every moment of our lives. For us, life is meaningful because it narrates a story. It is a story that is not fragmented but a continuous whole. Our Experiencing Self is fully absorbed at the moment. But our Remembering Self, in addition to acknowledging the picks of joys and valleys of misery, also appreciates how the story ends.
Why would a cricket fan throw away a few hours of pleasure that a good game offers and feel miserable because his team lost at the end? Why would a person remember the bitter ending of a relationship, despite experiencing plenty of blissful moments the relationship gave till it lasted? Why would a person recall a painful medical process as more painful or less painful depending on what he felt in the last few minutes of the procedure, ignoring the rest of the pain he endured during the process?
This is because a game is a story. Our lives tell a story. And in stories, as in life, endings matter. Our lives consist of a series of events, and they might be unconnected events, but it is a story unfolding as we live.
I am in that phase of my life where I can safely say that my past is longer than the length of my future. But unless I am careful, there is the pitfall of lingering too much in the past.
I have always wondered, in a society that pays a premium to youthfulness, why celebrate birthdays that remind one that another year has been added to his age? And that he has taken another step towards being a Superannuated Man?
All the intellectualizing and scientific experimenting have their place. But that should not stop us from enjoying life. Like most other occasions in our lives, our birthdays are unique, as they allow us to renew our connections with our loved family members and friends as they come together to greet us. We all are busy living our lives, fighting our own battles. Despite that, we strive to connect with those loved ones with whom we might not be in touch regularly. And that makes our birthdays so exceptional in our lives. Our birthdays rekindle our hope and rejuvenate us for the future. A sense of being loved ensues. This is irrespective of the number that denotes our age.
Like the Superannuated Man of Charles Lamb, I still do not crave retirement. Lamb's Superannuated Man was in his fifties when he felt drained out and sought respite from the daily grind of his livelihood. His sensitive soul begged for freedom from the daily ordeal. He coveted those days when he would be free of the daily grind and enjoy his life in pursuit of his favourite things.
Lamb wrote his essay during the middle of the nineteenth century, during the hey-days of the industrial age. Daily lives for most of us ordinary men have not changed much from those days. Now that we claim to be in the information age, the grinding to keep our ends meet is more or less the same as in the industrial age.
The same monotonous daily life of waking up in the morning for one's livelihood. Same hobnobbing with co-workers who are too busy to live their own lives to care about others and too busy seeking their own goals.
But I am lucky in this sense. Despite all these, I find solace, sustenance, and strength in the small rays of joy that a birthday celebration brings. The feeling of belonging and being loved that I feel when I am remembered during my birthday through numerous birthday greetings from family, relatives, friends, and not to forget my colleagues is heartening, at the very least.
The positive gain of various social media platforms is the connectivity we have achieved with those of our family members and friends who are far away from us but can reach us just with a click of a button. Social media and the world wide web have shrunk the world around us and enabled us to be together, despite the physical distance.
Before I end this article, I thank all my family members, relatives, friends, and colleagues, present and ex., who wished me today. All these wishes made me feel loved and gave me a fresh impetus to carry on.
Despite my age, I feel that I am still in the Arrival Lounge.