Perfect Endings
(4 June, 2007 )
Jorge (take your pick of “hoar-hey” or “hore-hay”) first cried on Sunday at 4:46 am in the summer. It was the date when at that time, the sun lifts the cloak of night but without showing itself.
Although we should talk about the mother’s experience (her pain, her delivery, and her joy), we’ll describe child Jorge’s first breath here on our world.
Given that birth can offer great achievements, or calamity, and even just average toil, let’s check alternatives Jorge faces with his first inspiration on our fair world.
Take One: Score to “Golgotha of the Hebrides”
Jorge displayed musical talent early.
At age 4 plus some time, one afternoon he found a thirty-two key electronic piano at a friend’s home. He exercised his musical muse with simple notes, then patterns of notable sense. Soon, he even played double notes that pleased his mother and friends in the room.
Such effortless skill gained rapid support from his mother and father. Quickly, they got a similar sized electronic piano and included an alert, engaging tutor. The young lady taught the Suzuki method: a program suited for young minds and small hands and fingers.
Jorge flourished, making his Carnegie debut at age thirteen plus. His composing skills were not mean by any means. His youthful years, up to age thirty-eight, included scoring twenty-eight Hollywood and European films.
At sixty, he contracted an incurable form of tuberculosis from a one-night sortie with an Italian actress. She herself had no knowledge of her own illness.
At sixty-two, debilitated but still cheerful, Jorge finally succumbed to the disease. He died while dreaming of a beautiful score for the unwritten film “Golgotha of theHebrides”.
Take Two: Four Hundred and Thirty Six Pounds
Although a child of handsome features and physical prowess, Jorge found that his emotions distressed his mother. She attempted to correct his feelings about his toys, events, and bodily functions over a seventeen year period.
This seems to have engendered a smoldering sense of resentment—even outright resistance to the voice of any authority.
So, in spite of some musical skill that manifest in his membership as a bass guitarist in the “Nihilist Bloodthrust” group, Jorge died at twenty-five years. He died from over-eating to support his four hundred and thirty-six pounds, give or take a few.
Take Three: Dying Young, the Best of Ends
Unknown to his mother or his father, Jorge’s first ten years entailed recovery from speechless amnesia. The symptoms were similar to those of nursing home residents afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. The disease leaves vegetative functions untouched but debilitates the mental wholeness that constitutes real life.
From age ten to twenty, Jorge now could think. But he experienced that “twilight” realm of the elderly retired, disengaged from the active realm of purposeful engagement. Instead, he puttered here and there, taking friends and family as they may come. He attended to necessity with no plan but to sustain his body and relations with those physically near him.
Beginning at twenty until about age thirty, some insight descended on Jorge. He felt an incipient wisdom grow as he “recovered’ from his prior mental dysfunction. In those years, Jorge first glimpsed that his life may have taken the unusual path of being lived in reverse. Evidence was sparse, but significant.
He noted he lacked occupational relevance or commitment. He felt like a retired worker who had “done it all.” He let those who were younger take up the yoke of worldly affairs. He engaged in long meditations that reinforced these feelings of fulfillment. This fed his somewhat selfish attention to the improvement of his own mental condition.
At thirty, Jorge found unexpected personal reserves of knowledge and experience blossoming. Jorge found that his musical explorations seemed more productive than before. The sense of music rose spontaneously of its own effort. It was certainly not his own. He toyed with the notion of “recollecting” his life instead of “creating” it during these years to the age of forty.
From age forty to age fifty, although physically older, Jorge found himself learning more by the youthful practice of reading instead of through “sage experience”. He sought the companionship and intelligent conversation of books and articles. The written word did not dissolve with the next turn of phrase. He wondered why he hadn’t read, or really read, before this.
At fifty, reading gave way to talking. Words were more spontaneous and inspiring than before. His speech seemed to well up of its own accord from pristine depths. Speech brought nourishment to his family and friends who complemented him on the simple phrases like “mama” and “daddy”. However, these words were hidden in other phrases like “you are wholeness and wholeness is all this”. Jorge also married. It was successful because he took time to listen even as he spoke with love and kindness.
From sixty to seventy years, Jorge found life getting simpler. He even discovered that girls were different than boys. He found that crawling should precede walking. He enjoyed simple food like oatmeal because it need not be chewed so much. It digested with ease. Given these fecund early pleasures, he knew many wonders of the earth remain to be enjoyed
Sometime between eighty and ninety-nine, Jorge found himself beyond all crossroads. No choices remained. His fullness allowed him to breathe a last breath of silent thanks. For there was no choice of how to live his life.
His inspiration was clear and strong. He saw that he could be the vagabond without care. He could live the life of scholarship and mental power. Or should he choose, he could follow on the path of yogic union with the Self. Or he could live his life as lothario, as selfish as a nursing babe.
Here at the end of his life, he breathed the final inspiration that he had, indeed, lived life from back to front. He had lived “in reverse” as others would say, for to die young was the best of ends.
And to be born so old was the best of beginnings.