Quantity of life, or quality?

By motomynd [aka Paul Clark]

[I published “the timely communique below” 11 years ago, on March 15, 2011 – before “Moristotle” became “Moristotle & Co.” It’s published again today to celebrate the author’s answer to his opening question, and to recognize again the part he played in “& Co.” being added.]

Original note: [The timely communique below comes from a mystery friend who calls himself “motomynd.” Anyone who can write this well and significantly can find a receptive editorial staff here any time.]

Your intriguing posts about the conundrum of leap-year birthdates, and your follow-up about tiredness, motivated me to question why we even bother to measure life in years.
    What matters in life, quantity or quality? For that matter, when do we actually die? Is it when we quit breathing, or when we become afraid to do things we really want to do?
    This is not an updated take on some Twilight Zone episode or the “die young, stay pretty” slogan that folks my age grew up with. Nor is it a call to mass suicide at age 50, 60, or 70. But what is the obsession about thinking of people as living “long and happy” lives versus being “cheated” out of life by an early death? Look objectively at people who live long compared to those who die younger. Some who die young do have very untimely misfortune, but you often find that the people who lived to be older got there not by living great lives but by playing it safe and hardly ever living at all—much as many executives move up the ladder by excelling at office politics rather than contributing innovative ideas.

In recent years two acquaintances of mine died while still in their 40s.
    One climbed all the major peaks of the world, wrote books and was featured in books, helped film movies, had a beautiful wife and two wonderful children. He died buried beneath a freak avalanche in a place where avalanches hardly ever occurred. If he had run left he would have survived, as did his climbing partner. But he ran right.
    The other acquaintance was, frankly, a slob. He wouldn’t control his eating or drinking. He over-compensated with arrogance and bravado, and most of us did our best to avoid him. He died because his heart just couldn’t take the load. He couldn’t run at all.
    At both funeral services the same basic things were said. What a shame it was for lives to be cut so short, what a shame for them not to have the years to reach their full potential. Yadda, yadda. You know the drill.
    So are we supposed to believe that since both lives ended in basically the same number of years they are somehow similar in value? If the slob had taken enough medication to survive until 80, would he be perceived as having lived twice the life as our mountain climber friend? Really?
    If any of us could live to 150 it is doubtful we could build a life that would come close to the one constructed by the climber. And many of us lived more by age 20 than the slob did by age 40.
    If our climber friend had given up doing expeditions such as the one that killed him, yes, he might still be alive. Or would he? He might be eating, drinking, and breathing, but would the person spending time with his wife and children really be him, or would he be as much of a stranger to himself and his family and friends as the stepfather who now fills his void?
    It is similar with tiredness. Morris, you are of what we shall politely call advancing years. You have had some injuries, you work, you keep up with your blog—how could you not be tired? But what of the 20, 30, and 40-somethings who sit at a desk all day then tailgate manically on I-40 as they rush home to plop down in a recliner in front of a TV with a bag of chips? They’re tired too. But from what? Your clock will wind down someday, but is their clock really still ticking even now?
    Again, do years even matter in life?

I started thinking seriously about all this last year when I hit the “double nickel” and my friends—and my two decades younger wife—began encouraging me to start shopping for a recliner and a good cable package. This was a strange concept on two fronts. I never sit down unless I’m in a car. I never replaced the TV one of my burly rescue cats smashed fatally face down as it launched from atop a BBC broadcast to the top of a nearby wardrobe.
    Since their advice seemed pointless, I bought a motorcycle instead.
    And I set a goal of retracing the most important (to me at least) trips of my life. This was no small decision because I should have been killed at age 24 on a wonderfully cold and starry night, with the moon glowing full and low on the horizon, when a motorcycle dumped me on the interstate at something well upwards of 70 miles per hour. Change any variable a pittance and I was most likely broken into pieces. Instead, I found myself curled in a fetal position under a guard rail realizing that 1) I was not only miraculously alive but was mostly unhurt and 2) I had a lot of other things I wanted to do before I got back on a bike.
    In the next three decades I pursued adventure sports, traveled four continents, raced mountain bikes (the kind you have to pedal), incurred six concussions, and barely avoided being killed by: 1) an allergic reaction to an allergy medication, which was the least spectacular but closest call, since it did stop my heart for a few moments; 2) shots fired at us by drug traffickers while we were on a fly-fishing trip in the Florida Keys; 3) a hardened spike of ancient desert yucca that sliced into a lung during a mountain biking mishap; and 4) a charging lion that fell for a head fake as I ran for a Land Rover.
    It isn’t exactly a couch potato resume, yet during all those years I gazed wistfully at every motorcycle I saw and felt like a failed coward because I wasn’t riding one.

So was I really alive and living an exciting life those three decades, or did I die the night I survived that motorcycle accident but didn’t get right back on a bike? Am I trying to live fully now, or am I tired and bored and trying to get myself killed by endeavoring to ride a bike everywhere I have been by car, SUV, or van? Or is it just the Viking DNA, long subdued by its Norman and Scot dilutions, finally bubbling to the surface like Scandinavian lava cutting through a glacier?
    Is the fire winning, or the ice?
    It is impossible to know the answers to those questions in this realm, but the thought here is, if you’re tired and bored, do something different. And ponder more the quality of life and less the quantity.
    That thought of “quality over quantity” is the one I hope to carry into that great beyond if I am taken out by an avalanche while crossing Alaska’s Brooks Range on a road-weary moto. Much better to believe that than to bemoan the years I possibly could have had, if only I had bought another TV and a bag of potato chips.

Copyright © 2011, 2022 by motomynd, Paul Clark, Moristotle