Running out of time
Here is one of my own dreams:
I am at an event listening to a big speech about climate change. Afterward, I made my way to the front to talk to the speaker, a man I didn’t know. I told him it was the most impressive speech I’d heard in my life. I was at this event with a companion, a woman who hadn’t made it up to the speaker. I had a message from her to give to him, something she’d written and signed. But it was signed not by her name but just a series of X’s. The speaker asked me about this, but I couldn’t explain it.
My companion finally arrived, and we were supposed to go to a restaurant afterward. She brought a child with her. The restaurant was too far, so we went to one right across the street. I said it was getting late, and we were running out of time that evening. I was worried because from where we were, it would be hard to drive to my house in the time we had left.
Every character, every image in this dream, is me. And also, it’s you. We’re all running out of time. We’re trying to bring the message to people who might hear us. But we may not fully understand the message we’re trying to offer: “I couldn’t explain it.” As in my dream, the hour is late, and we’re running out of time. From where we are now, it will be hard to solve the climate challenge in the time we have left. But we have no alternative except to try.
From Climate Change in an Aging Society, Chapt. 11, “Fear and Hope in Climate Crisis”)
Read more about climate change in GRAND
Climate Change: Will your grandkids be there to see it?
BY RICK MOODY
I’m 78 years old, and I’ve been working in the “aging business” since 1971. I have spent more than half a century, most of my life in senior centers, higher education (Hunter College), AARP, and Fielding Graduate University. As we say in gerontology, I’ve been “aging in place.” Eventually, I became a specimen for what I was studying. Trained first as a philosopher, not a gerontologist, I see I’ve had only one purpose: positive aging.
“No, you will live to see it. You have lived to see it. It’s already here, all around us.”
Now, I’ve turned most of my attention to climate, and for good reason. Unless we can fix the platform where we’re living—Planet Earth—we have no hope for a good old age. For our successors, things could be worse.
