“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. ”
Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good night
Dylan Thomas died at age 39 after living a boisterous life that not all would envy, but the poetry he produced was magic of the highest quality. How, at the age of 37 as he was when he wrote Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, he could have caught the essence of the emotions of those of us of a more “mature” age is beyond me, but catch them he did.
I find myself raging against the simple things that used to be so easy and are now made difficult by time, arthritis, and other forms of personal degradation not worthy of polite mention in a public forum. I often ask myself how these conditions came to be, only to discover that the answer is simply the irreversible passage of time.
For the most part, time has been good to me – I have seen interesting and wonderful things; I have experienced life changing events, and either enjoyed them or learned from them if their essence was not joyous; I have met some simply remarkable people, many of whom have become good friends and all of whom have enriched my life in some way; I have enjoyed the rich closeness of family, both as a child and as a grown-up; and I have always tried to give of myself to others, not always with success but mostly with the best of intentions.
I seem to be growing more cantankerous with age in the same way in which my mother and grandmother did. I hope I will differ from my mother in having the courage to focus my cantankerousness on things that matter, rather than upon real or imagined personal slights. I want to rage against the things that need to change for the betterment of many, rather than at matters which are personal and therefore of no great consequence to anyone other than myself. I want to rage against the dying of the light in a positive way that will put all of that energy to good, rather than selfish, use.
In many ways I am probably more like my mother than father, even though it is my father that I physically resemble. While it was she who taught me that fair play should be the norm and not the exception, in her later years she focused more on fair play with respect to her own person rather than upon fair play in general. With the onset of various disabilities and infirmities common to old age, I better understand her selfishness in this regard. I am learning that there is a real human tendency to become more selfish in one’s complaints as age settles in because of a reduced capacity to cope in so many ways. It is this instinct to rave about one’s own self that I hope to avoid and successfully fight. Forgive me if I am not always successful in doing so, since I am beginning to suspect that it will take a monumental effort to stay focused upon matters other than my own increasing infirmities.
I am not so old as to be incapacitated, but am sufficiently old to comprehend the beginning of the profound changes that reduce all of us with the coming of greater age. There are so many little things that used to come easily and that are now an effort. Things as simple as buttoning my shirt in the morning – the buttons never used to be so small; the buttonholes never used to be so elusive; and once I had fingers that were nimble and compliant. And then there are the various aches and pains in places I didn’t know aches and pains could inhabit. I have come to believe that they are a higher power’s way of reminding us of important body parts that we sadly neglected in our misspent youth.
But part of raging against the dying of the light is (to quote Curtis Mayfield) to keep on keeping on. It is my strong belief that you must keep on fighting the good fight in as many ways as you can for as long as you can. This is as true for matters of personal enjoyment and hobbies (in my case, playing racquetball well into my 60’s or, as in the case of a good friend, into his 70’s) as it is in matters for the general betterment of others. The trick is to learn to take the frustration with your reduced capacity to do the many things that you once did competently and easily and turn that frustration into positive mental energy for the benefit of the many that never had the capacity to help themselves in some significant way in the first instance. In other words, get even with the damned buttons by rendering them inconsequential and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Each of us has to find our own good cause about which to rage, but each of us should find something positive to rage about. I have lived my life believing that there has to be a positive side to everything, and, at least so far, using your mental faculties and personal resources in the manner proposed is the most important thing I can imagine as a positive benefit of old age. The wisdom and learning that was achieved during the years when our bodies were sound and healthy should be used to keep our mind healthy and strong and to keep us in the game as our bodies begin their inevitable slide downhill.
There are many times during which I have wished I were into the mellower side of life, but, alas, such does not seem to be my fate. To me, “mellow” implies a selfish retreat into one’s self, and the joy of life comes from interaction with others. Raging seems to me the better alternative if one wants to keep effectively involved and “alive” in the fullest sense of the word.
In the second stanza of the poem, Thomas appears to be in agreement with my belief:
“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.”
I trust that I am in keeping with his sentiments, since this poem has long meant a great deal to me and, for me, best expresses the need to keep my will bent toward the doing of the right things and the constant need to fight against senility and ineffectiveness.
In the meantime, those damned buttons just keep getting in the way. But, if you push, pull and prod them in just the right way, they will sometimes exude the kind of magic envisioned by Tom Paxton in “The Marvelous Toy”:
“The first time that I picked it up
I had a big surprise
‘Cause right on the bottom were two big buttons
That looked like big green eyes.
I first pushed one and then the other,
Then I twisted its lid
And when I set it down again, here is what it did:
It went zip when it moved and pop when it stopped,
Whirr when it stood still
I never knew just what it was and I guess I never will.”
So my advice is to keep on keeping on and to continue pushing those buttons to ensure that the zipping, popping and whirring never ceases. My apologies to you in advance if I push too many of your buttons while engaged in following my own advice.
