On a recent trip to San Diego, we met up with one set of friends we had not seen in decades and another with whom we had re-established contact after our 50th high school reunion a couple of years ago. In each conversation, one or more of us commented that we did not feel the age indicated by our driver’s licenses but that various aches and pains reminded us that things, physically, were beginning to fall apart.
“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” two phrases from the poem, The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats. The poem has a specific historical context and reflects Yeats’ gloominess over the state of the world. But, since reading the poem in college, these phrases have been worms, persistent residents in the recesses of my mind. As I age, they come into my consciousness more frequently, and not just in reference to my physical condition.
People of a Certain Age, you and I have lived long enough to see many “things fall apart,” and many “centers” that did not hold. Yeats’ lines are a poetic way to say “the only constant in life is change.” We have lived long enough to recognize our own reactions to this dynamism.
How well do you and I cope with change, things falling apart?
One of my friends laughed at herself in San Diego, wondering why she had fretted so much in her life over things that did not seem so important to her now. She had changed. So had the comparative seriousness of the things she had worried about.
You and I grew up in an era with fallout shelters in back yards, when there were no graphic sex scenes in mainstream movies, when most Americans attended church on Sunday. What changed? Besides us? What was falling apart?
That was also an era when women were expected to stay home and raise the kids, homosexuality was in the closet, and non-whites were just beginning to gain traction in their efforts to gain equal rights before the law. What changed? Besides us? What was falling apart?
Much has been written about our living in an Age of Anxiety, where once-established norms are less evident than before. Mistakenly, we think our age of anxiety is unique, usually because we have no sense of history.
Lest you think we are unique, consider this: before the Gutenberg Press, the Roman Catholic Church held a monopoly on Truth because the church controlled who could read what. Once the common man could read, and read more than the Bible… That “center” certainly did not hold. (Anyone thinking internet just now?)
Add into that disruption Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers and voila! You have decades of Catholics and Protestants all over Europe killing each other. A lot of people lived in fear because of what they believed. Things fell apart in a big way. That was an Age of Anxiety for sure!
In response to one of my recent musings, a friend wrote about the scientific assertion that the atoms in our bodies are now integrated into you and me but once were part of something else. Someday those atoms will be part of something else again. This thought is entirely consistent with another scientific assertion that matter is constant; nothing is ever lost or gained.
And, though your Chemistry class was long ago, do you remember entropy?
Years ago, Judy and I visited the home of James Hubbell, the renowned artist. I recall Jim getting very excited about a pile of bricks from a collapsed building. “All of those bricks,” he exclaimed, “just ready to be used again for something else.”
I told him that I admired his optimism. I still do. Jim’s attitude made things falling apart an opportunity.
If you know someone who is troubled by the noises of our daily lives that indicate things are falling apart, try these observations on him.
1) Love is not a thing. Its manifestations, like kindness and generosity of spirit, might dip in and out of our lives, but an act of kindness will forever remain so, a generous spirit will always be welcomed. Love outlasts lives.
2) Good news items outnumber bad ones. We just don’t hear about them because they are so numerous. Their great number might be what leads to bad being news. That, and the fact that bad news sells.
3) Yeats did not end his poem without hope. He wonders, “what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born” after “20 centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.”
4) Perspective helps. More than one act of terrorism occurred every week in the U.S.—in the 1960s! There were over 1000 bombings in the U.S. each year from 1972-74. Remember when we worried about planes being hijacked in the 1970s? Many saw those facts as evidence of things falling apart during those decades? We’re still here.
When centers fall apart, newness emerges. We call this hope.
If our bodies can just fall apart more slowly, maybe we will live to see the new, and it will be good. Meanwhile, we have love and kindness and the countless daily acts of generosity of spirit to hold onto.
Daniel E. White
August 8, 2016