For 22 years I watched three British men drive in cars.
This is not impressive, though the fact that I don’t even care about automobiles, I’m not a gear-head, not a fan of supercars or sports cars or even care that I’ve only ever driven Subarus in my adult life (with the exception of a short-lived stint in an old 4Runner to carry two giant golden retrievers), does add a bit of wonder to how and why I managed to do this. 22 years of life changes, of growth, of setbacks, joy, sorrow, poetry, photography, travel, and loss, these three men wandered a planet testing cars, taking wild adventures in strange vehicles, and generally causing mayhem wherever they went. 22 years.
I cried when they wrapped up the final moments of their final adventure together. I do not feel shame in admitting tears, not ever, doubly so for ones that fall for things that feel bigger than you expected.
When they finally came to rest, somewhere in the far wilds of Zimbabwe, I knew it then and it wasn’t the finality that caught up to me, it wasn’t the fact that there wouldn’t be more hijinks and silly shenanigans to follow, it was something more. It was the loss of constancy that I knew was coming, that’s been coming into my life for the last few years at a startling regularity.
This is the tragedy of aging, the humbling loss of constancy.
The things we come to expect, the people we rely upon, define as steady, the things that excite, the people that soothe, those we love, trust, adore, and just grow so accustomed to having around—they all will end. They must, as all things will end, but the pill of this loss is a bitter one and my god we turn our lips from the fingers that try so hard to force them into our mouths.
Curious that I lead this essay with the loss of the constancy that was 3 silly British men wandering a silly planet in silly cars then, when we’ve lost friends, we’ve lost family members, we’ve seen such catastrophic loss on such a global scale. Why?
Because, really. Because over the last 22 years, some of which were the most tumultuous and trying of my life, those men, in those cars, on those adventures, were a constant. They showed up when others couldn’t, they were there bringing new hilarity, random bits of touching emotion, and the nagging understanding within me that I too wanted a life like that, filled with those things, and I could have it if I wanted it bad enough.
They were there on lonely nights when I realized I hadn’t used my voice for three straight days, when I forgot to turn on the light in the dining room to eat my dinners alone. They were there, like clockwork, on silent weekends and unshared mornings, over mugs of tea and no one on the other side of the steam that rose. They were there during exercises done with nervous anticipation and no spotter behind me, on nights I couldn’t quite fall asleep and so kept the television on.
They were there, and now they won’t be, and I don’t know how to reconcile that.
There are a million instances of this loss of constancy, and as trivial as it may seem, as it most likely is, this is only one of them. Every step we take further into our own process of aging is another into the full light of this truth.
We live, we lose. There is no other way.
So what then, what can we do to remedy this, to provide salve to the wound it causes? How can we insulate ourselves from the pinpricks of such enduring disappearances? We cannot, but we can prepare, I believe. We can understand.
The Dalai Lama has long posited that the first step in a happier life is learning, is increasing our awareness and understanding. I believe in that wisdom, and I try my best to practice it. Ajahn Chah, a Buddhist monk once said, when handed a beautiful new cup:
To me this cup is already broken. Because I know its fate, I can enjoy it fully here and now.
The cup is already broken. The loss of constancy is already coming, we can learn this, we can focus on this and understand this as hard as it is to do, and we can do it before the loss has occurred. Before the break has happened. It’s taken me many years to work on this, years to focus my present energies on the inevitable future losses, and for many of those years it felt fruitless and futile, it felt morbid and pessimistic. Only after I meditated on it longer, after I fully sought to understand, did I see the truth: There is no way more beautiful to look at anything we care for, anything we call dear.
By seeing the things we cherish as destined, fated, for destruction, for cessation, for death, for cancellation, we can open our eyes to their present presence and truly celebrate it for still being here, still existing, still gracing us. Every moment from this moment until that heartbreaking inevitability, a gift, a rare and splendid blessing that comes without us doing a single thing, that exists as it is, and awaits our celebration.
“Because I know its fate, I can enjoy it fully here and now.” Fully. Here, and now. The things we love, the constancy we wrap ourselves in, we will lose. If we know this, if we focus our gaze upon it, we can enjoy everything more fully, here, and now.
What if we lived this way? What if we loved this way? What if we invested ourselves into every moment of our life this way? What then would become of the tragedy of aging? Would it be so tragic, after all?
It’s work, and I know this. It’s hard, and I understand. Point is, we can do something about it, we can change the ache that comes, transform it into something better, something bigger, and we can do it before it even begins to show its face. We learn, we study the pain that will appear despite all our protestations, and then we see. Then we feel it.
Still though, we will miss. We’ll still feel little pangs when we turn to the things we once felt so very soothed by and find them lacking. I’ll still wish that Jeremy, James, and Richard would get into some outlandish cars in some country I’ve never touched the soil of, and immediately get into some sort of trouble. I’ll still revisit them, from time to time, still rewatch their adventures and call them new, though I know they are not.
All things will end, and this loss of constancy will be bitter. This is how we age, but if we just shift things a bit, if we realign our own views on things, maybe that bitterness doesn’t have to be quite so bad, maybe it doesn’t have to linger quite so long. Maybe we can settle into our wrinkles in a gentler way.
Maybe, along the way, we can find so much more joy. Maybe, all this time, it’s been hiding in plain sight—that all things will end, and that’s precisely what makes them so damned beautiful.
That all things will end,
bitter loss of constancy,
this is how we age.
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