Nothing Gold Can Stay Sun, 3rd November, 2013
My spiritual life this past week seemed to revolve around the poignant mix of beauty and death I experience every autumn. I watch the trees in St. Louis reach their peak for rich color, and all too soon afterwards release their hold on life and fall to their wintry deaths. I have long been fascinated by this paradox, that the most beautiful day in the trees' annual life is just one moment away from the saddest time.
I have for years been annoyed with the poet Robert Frost for creating the best poem title ever—Nothing Gold Can Stay—accompanied by a poem that I have always felt was inadequate to the topic. You can see the poem below and judge for yourself.
The sentiment is sound: that anything gold in our lives is transient and soon to be lost to us forever just at its most beautiful moment of existence. But where is the mention of golden autumn leaves? I can only think that Frost must have penned his poem in the springtime. And where is the mention of apple pie baked to golden perfection, soon to be devoured? Or the simple joy of a ripe banana that's only perfect for a day before the brown age spots consume it. He mentions the dawn but what about those luminescent sunsets that are my favorite part of the day, but only possible because the day is in the throes of death.
I guess for me, the gold is more about the tragedy of endings, the swan song, the long and lingering goodbye kiss, the denouement, or one of my other favorite words, penultimate. Penultimacy. And ultimately it's a reminder of the fragility of our own existence, of our own imminent mortality. For death happens one day at a time: one more line in the face, a new bump that appears, a new ache or pain that sneaks up on us in the night. We do our best to vanquish these invaders, but they keep coming.
Then other times as we lie in bed sleepless, we experience the deeper, emotional pain that we don't need a mirror to see. It whispers in our ears that we are losing our vitality, our very life force, our physical attractiveness. Who will love us in the golden years, for after all, who buys a ticket to see a play that's already in the third act? Who will want to see us naked when all the golden foliage has fallen away and we're left only with our crooked branches and hard, rough truths?
So, yes, this is the subtle tragedy I now contemplate as I stand on the threshold of the second half of my life. I look with envy on the faces of the young, still in the hopeful spring and vigorous summer of their lives. Do they really know how beautiful they are? Is it true that youth is wasted on the young? It seems inconceivable that their verdant, sun-warmed branches could be longing for the cooler days of golds, reds and browns. Perhaps they do sometimes, for heat and light can be exhausting.
Of course, the lesson is that it's not a tragedy at all but the natural course of the universe. Nothing stands still, for to be frozen in time like a glass-coffined Snow White would be just another form of death. When I speak of the regret of aging, I always note that it beats the alternative, which is to be food for worms.
Taoist writer Deng Ming-Dao reminds us that personal growth takes place in the context of our aging. There are different levels of consciousness, he writes, and each is appropriate to its own age. "What a teenager knows is perfect for being a teenager—anyone else looks stupid doing what a teenager does. What an elderly man does is perfect for an elderly man: anyone else doing it engages in absurd mimicry." His conclusion is that time, and aging, is the greatest gift when we take time to learn the lessons appropriate to each stage of our lives.
So…I will keep reaching upward and outward hoping that all will take pleasure in what remains of my end-of-summer foliage…and only time will tell if, indeed, there will be life after gold.
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
—Robert Frost
My spiritual life this past week seemed to revolve around the poignant mix of beauty and death I experience every autumn. I watch the trees in St. Louis reach their peak for rich color, and all too soon afterwards release their hold on life and fall to their wintry deaths. I have long been fascinated by this paradox, that the most beautiful day in the trees' annual life is just one moment away from the saddest time.
I have for years been annoyed with the poet Robert Frost for creating the best poem title ever—Nothing Gold Can Stay—accompanied by a poem that I have always felt was inadequate to the topic. You can see the poem below and judge for yourself.
The sentiment is sound: that anything gold in our lives is transient and soon to be lost to us forever just at its most beautiful moment of existence. But where is the mention of golden autumn leaves? I can only think that Frost must have penned his poem in the springtime. And where is the mention of apple pie baked to golden perfection, soon to be devoured? Or the simple joy of a ripe banana that's only perfect for a day before the brown age spots consume it. He mentions the dawn but what about those luminescent sunsets that are my favorite part of the day, but only possible because the day is in the throes of death.
I guess for me, the gold is more about the tragedy of endings, the swan song, the long and lingering goodbye kiss, the denouement, or one of my other favorite words, penultimate. Penultimacy. And ultimately it's a reminder of the fragility of our own existence, of our own imminent mortality. For death happens one day at a time: one more line in the face, a new bump that appears, a new ache or pain that sneaks up on us in the night. We do our best to vanquish these invaders, but they keep coming.
Then other times as we lie in bed sleepless, we experience the deeper, emotional pain that we don't need a mirror to see. It whispers in our ears that we are losing our vitality, our very life force, our physical attractiveness. Who will love us in the golden years, for after all, who buys a ticket to see a play that's already in the third act? Who will want to see us naked when all the golden foliage has fallen away and we're left only with our crooked branches and hard, rough truths?
So, yes, this is the subtle tragedy I now contemplate as I stand on the threshold of the second half of my life. I look with envy on the faces of the young, still in the hopeful spring and vigorous summer of their lives. Do they really know how beautiful they are? Is it true that youth is wasted on the young? It seems inconceivable that their verdant, sun-warmed branches could be longing for the cooler days of golds, reds and browns. Perhaps they do sometimes, for heat and light can be exhausting.
Of course, the lesson is that it's not a tragedy at all but the natural course of the universe. Nothing stands still, for to be frozen in time like a glass-coffined Snow White would be just another form of death. When I speak of the regret of aging, I always note that it beats the alternative, which is to be food for worms.
Taoist writer Deng Ming-Dao reminds us that personal growth takes place in the context of our aging. There are different levels of consciousness, he writes, and each is appropriate to its own age. "What a teenager knows is perfect for being a teenager—anyone else looks stupid doing what a teenager does. What an elderly man does is perfect for an elderly man: anyone else doing it engages in absurd mimicry." His conclusion is that time, and aging, is the greatest gift when we take time to learn the lessons appropriate to each stage of our lives.
So…I will keep reaching upward and outward hoping that all will take pleasure in what remains of my end-of-summer foliage…and only time will tell if, indeed, there will be life after gold.
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
—Robert Frost
