Still Standing or Standing Still
I am constantly in awe of the natural world. There are plenty of times in life when we go about our business of the moment and don’t give our immediate or broader surroundings a moment’s thought. I suppose that is the normal state of affairs for life forms that must struggle to keep the spark of existence alive. The Protozoa does not spend much time contemplating its existence or worrying about things that are beyond its immediate vicinity. It has enough to do just to get through the day. But protozoan have two states of being apparently. They have a proliferation state and a resting state and the two are quite a bit different. When we proliferate we consciously expend resources to go beyond ourselves for some presumably greater good. In the natural world that is most often an act of procreation such that the species goes on despite us being left by the side of the road, so to speak. I see it in my agaves in the garden. They prosper nicely for long periods of time, which one might liken to a state of rest, and then, suddenly, decide that its time to proliferate and they thrust all of their energy and resources into doing what agaves do to create the next generation of agaves. They shoot forth a seed stalk that often dwarfs the scale of the mother plant. Right now I have fifty such arching seed stalks all around my garden. They reach 8-10 feet and bend over as they thrust all of their vigor into seed production at the expense of their older leaves. They put forth their all into their seemingly selfless efforts to create a new generation of agaves. They do that all the while that they also are forcing out pups along their root lines such that in addition to giving their seeds wing for the winds and birds to scatter at a distance, they are also replacing their memory with a bevy of smaller versions of themselves within feet of their initial location. Its quite a dramatic show and lies somewhere between totally selfless and totally self-absorbed.
But the proliferation state is just one of the two possibilities of most life forms. It is clearly the more noticeable, by design, but then there is also the resting state. In the protozoan world, those little buggers form cysts that sit idly by, biding their time doing whatever protozoan things do at rest. In the natural world, sleep and rest are recuperative and restorative acts. They are also done with the least amount of fanfare and attention-getting. Bears hibernate in the winter because the environment is too harsh for them otherwise and there is no point since they cannot easily forage for food and it would be a net sum loss of energy to do so. Slipping into a seasonal slumber is nature’s way of saving the bears for a better day and thereby improving their survival odds. It seems that they hibernate in hiding to stay out of the way. There is no question that they are still in hibernation.
That more fundamental question that this represents is one of whether there is perceived value in the state of rest. The answer probably lies mostly in the reasons for being at rest. No one begrudges you for resting regularly and daily to replenish yourself and prepare for your more active moments. In fact, it is so well understood that we are regularly admonished to get enough sleep to be at our best. But do we feel the same way about bears and their hibernation? It’s a very different cycle, but ultimately it is not so very different. Bears need to hibernate to be at their best for their active foraging seasons. But for humans there is the rest that comes at the later stages of life, when there is no best to be given thereafter.
Unlike the agave that puts forth its most effusive efforts just before it dies, humans work on a different cycle. We are at our proliferation best in our youth. In fact, it is legendary as to how much people (particularly men) seek to relive or never relinquish their proliferation stage as they get older. We generally jokingly admire the man that has children later in life. An Australian man supposedly sired a child at age 92. The genetic truth is that older men that procreate do so at risk to their child. It is a genetic reality that older fathers give their offspring more genetic mutations, some harmless, but some also harmful. It is nature’s way of telling us that for us humans, there is a time to stop proliferating. Women have less problem with this vagueness. The oldest natural mother (as opposed to via IVF) is said to have been age 66 (versus 74 via IVF) and the advent of menopause makes that binding constraint something that is hard to ignore. But those late bloomers are the exception rather than the norm. The average age of first time mothers in the U.S. has risen in recent years, but it is still only 30 years old. Therefore, it is fair to say that unlike the agave, humans go through a very different proliferation/rest cycle.
I have three children, which I had when I was 29, 33 and 41. That seems like a fairly typical American profile for my generation. I think it is fair to say that I am now at rest in a lifecycle sense. I am not hibernating and I am not sleeping (at least never enough), but I am in a resting state nonetheless. I try to adhere to the notion that motion is the best lotion, but that is less an attempt to deny that I’m mostly at rest and more my attempt to extend my ability to stay comfortably at rest. The question I find myself pondering this morning is whether it is OK to stand still and simply exist or if that is irresponsible in a world filled with problems and needs.
I spent many years serving on boards for not-for-profit organizations. I was very engaged and did lots of good work on the theory that it is important to give back. I have done it in the global relief and development arena (with CARE) and in the higher education arena (with both Cornell and College of Staten Island). I feel good about my contributions and while I’m sure many have done more than me, I know I have done more than most in terms of giving back freely. I am far less inclined to engage in that sort of activity now for some reason. Maybe I have done my bit and run my course, but for whatever reason I am no longer driven to engage further. I suppose that, if asked, I would do some random task, but I would shy away from a bigger commitment. As it is, teaching for a salary that is probably close to minimum wage when one figures in all the hours involved, is a form of giving back and I do enjoy the involvement with students and the subject matter (finance and ethics), but there will come a time soon when I have had enough of even that and I will move on to an even less engaged existence.
Unlike a friend of mine who declined to give a guest lecture in my class and claimed that he preferred to be irrelevant, I do not seek that for myself, but I do seek a certain stillness that only comes from having few if any obligations. I have always considered myself a man of obligations and I feel that I have now done enough. It is unclear if the universe operates on a backward-looking reward system, so who knows what anyone deserves, per se. I can’t defend that in any meaningful way, but I can rationalize it sufficiently to myself to feel that I have earned the right to be still if I choose. I have gone through my proliferation stage in life. I have procreated and I have produced. I would not be so bold as to say that my gifts to mankind are earthshaking, but I am proud of my accomplishments nonetheless. I am both still standing and standing still at this moment and enjoying every bit of it.