February 4 Forum

Jeremy

Yeah, and there’s also perhaps some transformation.  For example, I love to snorkel with my wife in the Caribbean. There may come a time in the future when traveling to the Caribbean is no longer feasible.  So maybe my wife and I will snorkel in the bathtub or we’ll watch snorkeling movies. I’m not quite sure. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about? Is there a sort of a frame shift of how to continue to create joyful, memorable, shared experiences as one of the aspects of the third act?

Bill B

Or you have your snorkel on your bookshelf. I used to do a lot of scuba diving way back when it was just starting. So, for many years, I kept my regulator from the scuba. It reminded me of those extraordinary times that I had.

Jack

I love that image, Bill.  And I think you’re right about possessions being potentially about memories. Ten years after you’ve done something, having something tangible that stimulates that memory is very cool.  I like that idea. And that’s why I keep all those things around.

Bill B

By the way, there’s an extraordinary book out by an anthropologist and a psychologist where they talk about the altar.  That in our homes, each of us has an altar and it’s usually fit a vertical, something, a bookshelf or something. And when you go into people’s homes, you look at their altar and you’re going to find out a whole lot about what they value.  Mark, do you have an altar?

Mark

Yeah, mostly I have musical instruments and books. And there are things I can give to generations. I found that I’ve been giving up electronic stuff that will be obsolete, but a violin or a cello won’t be obsolete in even two hundred years if it’s taken care of.

I want to say one thing about the memory aspect. I have sung to my five sisters (now four) since I was eighteen.  I’ve sung happy birthday to them with few exceptions. I think I had a little break when I was traveling in the South Pacific.  I didn’t even know what was going on in 1974 because I was sailing around the world. Other than that, my sister turned 75 today and I sang her happy birthday.  She’s quite isolated. She lost her husband about five years ago and she’s got a high maintenance Down child who’s 24 and morbidly obese. She is isolated in part because she lives “in the sticks” – the Antelope Valley which is twenty miles from Lancaster.