I Will Take and Enjoy My Pilón

 

It is hard to believe that 77 years ago I had my whole life in front of me and I was ready to go out and conquer the world. Well, now I still have my whole life in front of me (minus 77 years of it) and I’m still ready to go out and conquer the world. But now I have to be a little careful, there’s some clogging in the old ticker, there’s some extra cells growing faster where they should not ought to, the joints have lost some lubrication, the muscles don’t stretch as smoothly as they use to, the noggin don’t seem to calculate as fast, my vision hasn’t been 20/20 in a long time and getting worse by the day, the extra “muscle” around my waist don’t let me bend over like it used to, the medication I have to take to keep this fine machine working constraints certain body functions, but I still get up every day and I am impressed by the beauty of nature, I start my day determined to learn something new every day, I try to do something good for somebody and for the environment, I am determined to expand my contact with friends and family and try to document my life and thoughts so it may someday touch someone. In general, I live each day with the hope to make life meaningful and enjoyable.

  

I remember spending time with my father in the years before he died and to some extent, he had the same attitude toward life that I have.  Although he had more physical limitations due to his more advance age, he still had a clear mind when he turned 90, I don't think I will reach my 90s.  Even at his advanced age, he still saw each day with unbounded optimism and a great desire to do good for somebody.  His view of the life, however, was limited and bounded by his religious conviction.  I feel that his religious fever tighten and limited his view and understanding of the world around him and encapsulated him in a small space of existence.  To me, it was a sad state of existence, but he was happy in his limited knowledge – he did not know what he did not know.  His state of being worked for him and he was happy at the end.  He did not feel encapsulated in this bubble of faith since that what he had been taught and drilled into his being since childhood.  At first, I was upset that he never broke the chains of this philosophical enslavement, but I later accepted that his view of life and his limited understanding of the universe worked for him and did not challenge his belief. 

 

I always consider myself a scientist with inherent curiosity and trained in observation and ready to question everything I see and hear until I can explain it.  I know that I will not retreat to a universe of prayer and isolate myself into a never-ending contracting bubble of existence and limited knowledge.  On the contrary, I want to expand my horizons and my knowledge base every day of my life.  I plan to reach out to the world and try to understand it from a physical and philosophical point of view while rejecting the barriers toward knowledge that a faith-based philosophy promotes.  It is easy to reject understanding and explain the world around you with “God’s will” or “God’s creation” when you have been trained to believe in that manner and reject knowledge to explain a natural phenomenon.  Many of my relatives and friends consider my way of thinking as anti-religious, so be it.  However, I will never try to impose my way of thinking, but I will help those who want to open their minds.  I hope those are the values I tried to pass off to my kids, but I left it up to them to accept them or develop their own. 

 

My father got to live fourteen years longer than I am now and he was very active until the last five years of his life.  He was the focal point and glue that held the family together.  When he died, we began to drift apart.  From family cohesive factor, his life was a success as a father figure and family man.  To some extent, if I can assign a fault to my life it is the absence of having a family for whom I am a focus of a family structure.  Where as we all saw my father as the patriarch of the family, I feel I am only a footnote in my family's life.  Could that relationship be a trend of the "modern" family?  I guess I could interpret it as a success, producing offspring that have a strong sense of independence.   After all, my generation will be gone soon just as my father’s generation has passed.

 

I really did not give much consideration to the end of life until my father died.  Now I realize that death, with my ailments, is a high probability at my age.  I will continue to use the products of science and medical advances to prolong my life, at least while I have my physical capabilities to maintain a functional state of being.  I do realize the body is deteriorating slowly and there will be a point I will no longer be able to take care of myself.  I do not know when that time will arrive, but I estimate that I will reach that stage sometime in my mid-eighties.  Many of the Rivera family, my father side of the family, have lived into their 90s.  However, almost all of the Garzas, my mother side of the family, have died between the ages of 42 and 65 years, and most of the deaths, according to death certificates of record going back to the mid 1800s, were attributed to heart decease.  Given modern medicine and some influence of the Rivera genes, my hope of making it to the mid-eighties may not be displaced.

 

I have so many things I want to do, a couple of books to finish, advancing on the family tree and history, organizing and distributing family information and photographs, travel, meet and spend time with family members and documenting their stories, visit historical and archeological sites I want to see, spend more time with family, reconcile family differences, finish family websites, etc.  I also want to keep abreast in the advances in the fields of science, specifically in physics, AI, astronomy.  Based on family history, I can only hope for a remaining lifespan of seven to eight years.  That does not give me much time to finish things I want to do.  I guess I can hope that someone will be interested enough to continue what I started.  But that brings me back to original position on life: I still get up every day impressed by the beauty of nature, determined to learn something new, determined to do something good for somebody and for the environment, and determined to expand and continue my contact with friends and family until I can no longer can.  I will also try to document my life and thoughts so it may someday touch someone.  I will try to live each day with the hope to make life meaningful and enjoyable.  In México, the word “pilón” is used to mean a little extra.  It is akin to the extra piece that makes your purchase a “baker's dozen.”  It is something “extra” that a merchant might give you, in addition to what you bought, to thank you for your preference of buying from them.  Like when you buy 12 oranges, and they give you one more "de pilón."   Well, I think the time after 77 years is a pilón of life and I’m happy to take my “baker’s dozen.”