Turning Seventy, with Confucius and a Love Poem
So I’m seventy now. So what?! Really, so what? How am I supposed to react? Get emotional? Be annoyed that I’m an old fart? I was one last year too, and the year before. Ignore it? That is difficult in a culture that makes so much of round birthdays. Since I don’t celebrate mine, there are no presents. The joke on the right below seems appropriate.
Birthday Present from Confucius
And yet I received a gift, or so I thought: from Confucius. I have always felt closer to Laozi and Zhuangzi, but I remembered a useful saying attributed to Confucius: at seventy, you can do whatever you want. A blessing from above! Looking it up spoiled that interpretation. In Analects 2.4, Confucius describes stages in his own life. At seventy, he says, he could follow his heart’s desires without transgressing what was right (七十而从心所欲，不逾矩). That is rather different from a birthday licence to do as one pleases.
Come on! Am I, a lifelong nonconformist who has made up his own rules, supposed to become obedient in old age? Perhaps the point is that desire and judgment have learned to work together. Still, I preferred my first version.
Self-Reflection
I don’t fit neatly into the art world either. My work hardly fits the boxes the market expects, and neither do my appearance and manner. I used to travel a great deal and was rarely stopped at customs. I look like a primary school teacher, or perhaps a village priest after work. That has its advantages. Should I wear a baseball cap backwards to pass as an artist? The experiments below offer a few other possibilities, though none seems especially practical for everyday life.
Some readers may already suspect me of being a petty-bourgeois moralist. But conformist? No. Confucius or no Confucius.
70
Seventy is a number; what I make of it is another matter. Some people seem old at thirty, others young at eighty. Decades ago, I asked myself when I would consider myself old. My answers have barely changed: when I stop asking questions, accept other people’s opinions without examining them, or lose my curiosity. When I think I already know everything. When I no longer pursue my interests and begin merely killing time.
In this regard, I can be quite satisfied with my “software” and I consider it as a birthday present. The hardware is a different issue and would need more attention. As the old joke goes, if you wake up in the morning at 70 and don’t feel any pain, it’s a pretty sure sign that you’re dead. In any case, I have never aspired to be the healthiest person in the cemetery when the time comes.
Of course, a birthday does prompt a little reflection. Beneath the jokes, the feeling I keep returning to is gratitude.
Status Quo
I am still very active professionally, but art has regained the upper hand in recent years. [1] I would not want to give up my other activities, yet this is the one that matters most to me. Whether the work is good is difficult to judge. What I can ask is whether I am still developing, and from my own perspective, I think I am. I mean less the technical side than the philosophical one, which also changes the person doing the painting.
A recent painting expresses my state of being quite well, even though it wasn’t intended as such when I painted it. Although I don’t bathe in the light of my wisdom – which wouldn’t be unpleasant for me, I feel embedded in the micro and macrocosm, I feel well-balanced, and I’m becoming less and less attached to details. And of course, I’m not so gaga yet as not to know that sunshine is followed by rain. But I feel better equipped for it than before. At least that’s what I tell myself.
A Love Poem as a Birthday Present
For whatever reason, I have been working on love poems for some time. It won’t surprise anyone that my favorites weren’t the ones with heart, pain, and the scent of roses. I was rather interested in the ones that go beyond what one would think of ad hoc for love poems.
If I were to create a top ten of love poems that I know, this one by the Austrian poet Erich Fried would be the absolute long-term favorite.[2]
| What It Is It is nonsense says reason It is what it is says love It is calamity says calculation It is nothing but pain says fear It is hopeless says insight It is what it is says love It is ludicrous says pride It is foolish says caution It is impossible says experience It is what it is says love | Was es ist Es ist Unsinn sagt die Vernunft Es ist was es ist sagt die Liebe Es ist Unglück sagt die Berechnung Es ist nichts als Schmerz sagt die Angst Es ist aussichtslos sagt die Einsicht Es ist was es ist sagt die Liebe Es ist lächerlich sagt der Stolz Es ist leichtsinnig sagt die Vorsicht Es ist unmöglich sagt die Erfahrung Es ist was es ist sagt die Liebe |
Footnotes
[1] I continue to trade in antiques and collectibles and am very active on the stock market – both of which are time-consuming activities. And both of them don’t let me lose my grip on “reality”. Especially through stock trading, I have to deal with topics such as economics and politics and can check my assessments.
[2] Erich Fried (1921 – 1988) was an Austrian-born poet, writer, and translator. He initially became known to a broader public in both Germany and Austria for his political poetry, and later for his love poems.
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