In a few months, I will turn 60.  60 !!  It is already weighing on me.  I breezed through the other life milestones without giving their significance much thought because my mind was elsewhere.  At 40 I was too busy having the mid-life crisis that landed me in a wheelchair to have a proper mid-life crisis and at 50 I had just moved into Stonewall Gardens assisted living, the youngest resident – by 25 years!, so “growing old” was not on my mind even though I’d just taken up residence in a place for growing old.  I could claim that I was here because of disability, and it was true. I’m still the youngest, but I’m closing in on the olds fast!

And that conceit is still true.  For the most part.  I am still disabled, but as the years have passed I have grown old(er) in addition, and that presents new challenges.  I knew instinctively, when I arrived here at Stonewall 10 years ago and the desert almost 20 years ago, that this was my destiny.  I thought then I’ve come home.  Last June’s trip to sever emotional ties to my “hometown” had its first real test last week when I traveled to Glendale for a funeral; the city is still beautiful, filled with fond memories and memories made fond with the passing of time, but I felt like a visitor there – just in for the day – and could not wait to get home… to Stonewall and the desert.  Oh I throw a temper tantrum now and then about moving, usually because someone or something has not met my unrealistically high standards, but once I calm down I realize this is where I belong in the great scheme of things.

Growing old makes you ponder things like “the great scheme of things.”  I don’t believe in a life beyond this one as some great reward for getting things right, nor do I believe in a cosmic balance sheet with some kind of karmic accountant doling out goodies.  But I do have faith… faith that, as Julian of Norwich said, “all will be well.”  Of course, she meant because God would make it so, and I mean it in a much more amor fati way, a Latin phrase meaning “love of one’s fate” popularized by Nietzsche.  By developing an attitude of radical acceptance and embrace of everything that happens, both good and bad, life becomes about how you respond to what happens, rather than what happens itself.

It is rooted in the dichotomy of control proposed by Epictetus, a Greek Stoic philosopher born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia, who lived in Rome until his banishment, after which he spent the rest of his life in Nicopolis, northwestern Greece, in the 2nd century CE.  In his Enchiridion or “handbook” for living, of which I am a disciple and avid student, he proposed that life really is divided into only two things – what we control and what we don’t – and that we really shouldn’t bother with the latter.  Loving one’s fate is accepting you are not in charge of it and making peace with that realization.  It is not blind optimism – ignoring or bottling up negative events and emotions – but rather acknowledging negativity and finding a way to move forward and find meaning in it; as Marcus Aurelius famously said, “The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.”

It would be easy to become embittered by the roadblocks thrown up on my journey.  I mean, HIV and cancer… one incurable, life-threatening disease wasn’t enough, let’s give him two.  Oh, and turn off the left side of his body so he’s stuck in a wheelchair and can’t tie his own shoes.  And make him bald.  The challenge is to find the silver lining.  HIV meant I got to retire, move to the desert, and write about whatever I want whenever I want – I literally have nothing I HAVE to do today (well, except choose a new Medicare Part D prescription drug plan).  And cancer?  Nothing makes you appreciate life, warts and all, more than the threat of having it swept out from under you.  You need to make lemonade out of your lemons.

Awhile back I found myself ruminating on the question “what is the point of me?”  It’s not like I have kids through which I am leaving a legacy.  The three companies which comprise my professional career and to which I gave seventeen years of blood, sweat, and tears aren’t even in business anymore.  And I won’t be writing a great American novel destined to become a literary masterpiece and taught in high schools to a bunch of kids more interested in their “likes” on Instagram.

Then, because my education in philosophy was not wasted on me, I realized that the question itself betrayed a kind of existential utilitarianism, and while I find much to agree with Jeremy Bentham on in terms of morality, the good or bad of existence is not based on its utility.  And so, I am the point of me, which can sound solipsistic and egotistical until you realize it applies to everyone, and from that realization comes compassion for the human race, billions of people being themselves for no other reason than they understand the best thing you can do is get really good at being you.

So I’m facing my seventh decade with a mixture of gratitude for all, and I do mean all, that has come before and a childlike wonder and excitement for what will come next.  This does not mean I’m not concerned about the state of the nation or that I won’t speak out (or write) when I see injustice.  What I won’t do is worry, because I think that worry creates the illusion of action and control.  When what is needed is commitment and intention.

To be.  Me.