Birthday of human

You've got to move around in your life the way you want to, the way you have to, that's all there is to it.

Yes, you'll make mistakes, you'll hurt others sometimes, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or acting in a way that's in the upper echelon of self-interest but is detrimental to the other's sense of self. It can't be helped, you just have to go on.

I was asked the other night, "how much longer are you going to live"? The question was asked on a night that happened to be my birthday. I answered, "ten more years, and then all bets are off." I thought later that maybe that wasn't a good answer, that it wasn't my best, my best too often being what others want to hear, and then after thinking about it some more I saw how honest I'd been and became proud of myself in the answer. The person who'd asked wasn't trying to save me, and anyway I can't be saved, I'm committed to my undoing, limb by limb, organ by organ. It's kind of beautiful, speculating on one's demise, to have it completely under control to the degree that you'll have withdrawals from it if you don't speculate.

It's a very hard thing to be human; most people would rather you weren't. Not that they wish you to be inhuman, not at all, being inhuman is the worst of all, even people who don't know how difficult it is to be human, who have no conception of what it means, or no interest at all in obtaining humanity, would much rather you were human than not. Their lives depend on your humanity, even when they don't know what it means, especially when they don't know. Being human, you're more important to these people--those who don't know what it means to be human--than you can ever imagine.

The most pleasant aspect of aging is the increased instinct of caring more about yourself than ever--about being human--and less about what other people think of the self you care so much about, the self you've made after so many years of contact with the world. This kind of being in the world requires paramount humanity; if not so much to accept another's pain i.e. their always off-kilter vision of the world, but to regard them as if they're begging forgiveness just like you.