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I spent the day preparing for studio podcasts on Monday, reading books about growing older, life philosophy and death. All very enjoyable and thought provoking.
I am going to be talking to Cally Beaton about her book Namaste Mother Fuckers which I suppose is mainly aimed at middle-aged women , but which resonated with me too. Our challenges may be slightly different, but I think most men become invisible as they get older and certainly have to cope with changes in their biology and status. So the book is for everyone.
Because really the book is about reinvention and finding your own place of happiness, whilst life throws its crap at you and settling into the positive side of being middle-aged and realising that all the stuff that mattered to you in the past is largely nonsense. Though I think it's a tale as old as time - we only start to think what it must be like for people in their fifties and beyond when we're in our fifties and beyond. Of course. When we're young we never think we'll be old and old people look like a different species.
I am enough in denial that I still think that's the case.
I'm also speaking to Tim Minchin about "You Don't Have To Have A Dream" which is a delightful and short book based on three speeches Tim has made at Universities when picking up honorary degrees. I have never received an honorary degree (and didn't bother going to pick up the one I somehow got through doing exams) but I mustn't be jealous, because Tim tells us "comparing yourself to others in any area of your life is poison".
It's a lovely book full of good advice and honesty and love of facts and science and acknowledgment of the ultimate meaningless of life. One day we will be dead so he thinks we should fill our lives with as much as possible, which I basically agree with, but also enjoy doing fuck all.
Life may seem bleak and terrifying and bad at the moment, but if you're reading this you have such a cushy life compared to pretty much any humanoid who ever lived. Some of us live in utterly disgusting luxury, but most of us live in just disgusting luxury, compared to the people who had to struggle through almost any other period of history.
The chances of being alive are so small and being alive now even smaller. This is definitely a simulation, but you might as well enjoy it. Even if you're just artificial.
Again, though Tim warns students with stars in their eyes about how their ambitions and dreams may not turn out how they imagined, even if they achieve the success they desire. Once again, as correct as he is, those young people will not listen to a word he says and have to discover it all for themselves.
My third guest is Evie King (if that is her real name) who wrote the brilliant Ashes to Admin and now has a self-help manual for the dead (or at least those people who one day will be) called "Get Ahead of Your Death". It's a terrific and important book about getting your affairs in order before someone tells you to get your affairs in order and thus make Evie's daytime job (of sorting out the funerals for people who die without anyone to help them and then finding relatives and whether there's any bank accounts etc and even down to letting dry cleaners know that no one is coming for that cardy - not sure how much of that is her official job but she's an amazing person and does everything anyway).
Anyway, plenty to think about philosophically from this one too. And as I am much older than I think I am, it will probably be a good idea to fill in all the lists that she helpfully provides. Quite keen to not die quite yet, but can see the positives to not being alive, just in terms of getting some rest and not having to write a blog every day. What do you mean I don't have to do that anyway?
Having felt myself slip away with the anaesthetic during my operation I am no longer scared of dying, but I am hoping the kids will be grown up before I go or at the very least provided for. My body seems pretty keen to get me out of these responsibilities early, but I will not let my body win in its ceaseless attempts to destroy me. I guess it's just paying me back for spending my twenties and thirties doing my best to slowly destroy it. What a tool.
