Until the Bitter End

 

Nature is a lender; its ledgers are precise. The loan always comes due, sooner or later. 

                                                                     * * *

A couple weeks ago the sports sections set on fire the course of nature. Tom Brady, the celebrated NFL quarterback, is back. Mass hysteria ensued. The fans were delirious, the bookies recalculated their algorithms, and the Bucs increased their credit line. 

It took a 41-day vacation for him to realize, It ain’t over till it’s over. He quipped, “Never say never.” Equivocation leaves doors open. The Sunday afternoon NFL Church of Perpetual Football will be packed.

Look at it this way: Brady’s six-week hiatus begs us question, “Why quit?” Right. Why quit until it’s time, football or anything else?

And when is it time to say enough, to closet the clubs, retire the racket, jettison the jogging and take up bridge and bird watching? Or that matter, just generally hang it all up? 

Nobody wants to look back at life with regret and lament with Brando, “I coulda had class, Charlie. I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody.” No, we want to keep on until nature has called its loan due, until the bitter end.

It’s the devil’s pixie dust that spikes our delusional perseverance. It’s a witch’s brew we swill that swells the coffers of orthopedic surgeons, crams cardiac waiting rooms and fills the sofas of psychiatrists.  

We’re die-hard Americans, we endure until the bitter end, renewing our loans with nature’s palliatives that promise the fountain of youth. Nature is happy to oblige. It’ll collect full payment sooner or later. Saying ‘enough is enough’ is defeat.     

But the pressure of perpetual youth and relevance is real. They’re shadows with substance. We feel their pressure, their desire pulsates from behind. We look over our shoulder, they’re there, ever smiling, ever young, ever pertinent. We can’t quit. Not now. Not ever.

Why? Because we’re hounded by the relentless bloodhounds of the Culture of Achievement, or worse, the nagging fear of irrelevance. We dance around the ‘has-been’ dust bin of obsolescence as though it were leprosy.

We need more trophies, more bragging rights, more business accolades. But we don’t have wall space for that stuff now. Our past exploits are old news. They draw no audience. So, what drive us then, this insatiable urge to achieve, to ‘stay in the game’ at any cost?  

Short answer…the brevity of time and the world-beating lust for life. Thoughts of capitulation constantly assail us as they slide across the threshold of the mind’s psyche. When we throw in the towel, it’s game-over.

Maybe we’re not cut out of the same cloth as Tom Brady. Yet there’s one common thread we share, whether you give a rip about football or not. It’s his ‘fire-in-the-belly’ attitude, the burning passion of squeezing out everything life has to offer with utter disregard of shelf-life or expiration dates.

But sadly, sooner or later we must face the cold casino of life’s realities. Prosthetic joints and pharmaceutical remedies run their course. It’s ‘take a number,’ find your slot in the cycle of shutdown. The days of handicap improvement are over. Tennis is morphing into pickleball, and jogging is becoming a spectator sport. Worse, you’re finding it harder to remember your own name.

And, so we ask, “Now what? When is it time to hang it up?” I pose these questions to my friend, Arnold, a retired shade-tree mechanic who analogizes all conundrums to a car engine.

“Arnold, what’s Brady’s secret to relevance?”

“Maintenance and luck,” he says.

“That simple?”

“Yeah. Keep a spark in the plugs, oil in the engine and gas in the tank.”  

“Is there an end to the illusions of longevity we enshrine?”

“Not as long as there’s a heartbeat. Has Willie quit singing, or Clint quit acting? Heck, Jimmy Carter might live forever. Never quit. It’s in the blood, my boy, in the blood.”

“How will we know when it’s time to quit?”

“Nature will send you a friendly reminder. Meanwhile, keep on trucking.”   

Pretty simple. No second guessing necessary. Just keep on trucking.

* * *

Brady has just renewed his loan with Nature…how about you?

 

Bud Hearn

March 28, 2022