Growing Old

"I GROW OLD. I GROW OLD, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled". (T.S. Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")... T.S. Eliot wrote this poem when he was ninteen years old. Prufrock, the poem's protagonist, experiences insecurity as he walks towards the home of a lady, for a tea date. He is deep in personal reflection and self doubt. His years have borught him much less than he had expected. Despite the wisdom of age, our frailties remain. The world, it turns out, has not turned out as we might have hoped and expected. Our lives proceed other than expected. The best laid plans gang aglee. If we are wise, we have few regrets and few complaints. Our salvation is our enduring opportunity to contribute and produce. It is surprising how much we have grown, and how much we have not, and how much growth remains, unfulfilled. "I make friends with people. And I wear a derby on hy head, as others do. I say, they are strangely stinking animals. And I say, no matter, I am too". (Bertolt Brecht: "Concering Poor B.B.)...Man is a social animal, as Aristotle said. I go to my local senior center, seeking a modicum of community. My expectations are rewarded. The rewards are not always what I seek. No matter: I am aware of my unqualification and inability to order the world in which I live, but only my capacity to adjust to the circumstances it affords me. The place,like America, is full of conservative evangelical Christians who love Jesus and Donald Trump, and believe that if you do not share this belief, you are destined to burn eternally in hell. The say they worry about my salvation. What really concerns them is their lack of ability to impose their malignant beliefs on me, and their own unlikely salvation. They suppress the likelihood they will soon turn to dirt, and nothing else. The ninety year old and his wife who hated me at first, then came to know me, and decided they loved me, and began sending me twenty dollar bills at Christmas. Then, disapproving of my expressed utter contempt for conservative Trumper evangelical Christians, returned to their former hatred. It is they who are misguided and confused, not I. The eighty year old illiterate religious fanatic who never attended school, sure that he knows more history than I, despite my Ph.D in history.. The eighty five year old farmer who took one look at me and hated me, until my kindness towards him won him over. The hard core evangelical Republican who despised my politics and lack of religiosity, until he gained respect for me when he watched me volunteer in the senior center kitchen for four years. But damn! That pointy headed intellecual guy is not a Christian! O horror! Of what value is his fancy damned education if he has not been saved? And, ah, the piece de resistance. the old born again confederate who declared Donald J.Trump the most "constitutional" president in 'murican history, and rated Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as the "sorriest" damned presidents in 'murican history. The former had the audacity to free those N-word darkies, the latter, why, he brought damned heathen un-Christian socialism to 'murica, was a damned Democrat, and hell, really had nuthin' to do with winning World War Two. No, I do not like these people. Whether they treat me with the warmth and respect I deserve, which they generally do not, is irrelevent. I do not tolerate racial and religious bigorty and intolerance. Anyone who thinks that non Christians burn in hell deserve to. The only salvation is that the food at the senior center is excellent, and you cannot beat the price.