D843. Turn Back the Clock!

An old American woman recounts the story of her marriage, which continued for most of her adult life and produced three kids. She learned fairly early that her husband was gay--back before gay marriage. They were nonetheless a devoted couple.

Just before he died, in a hospital, he pointed to the big clock on the wall and said "Turn back the clock!" She says she didn't know what he meant, and did nothing. (Sorry, I'd have turned that clock back! I'm open-minded as to what would have happened.)

The trivial interpretation would be that if she turned it back an hour, he figured he'd live another hour. But there are two other possible meanings--at least. One is that if the clock could be turned back--there are things in his life that he would have decided differently. Like, marrying her? Could he have wanted to treat her even better than she asserts that he had consistently treated her (and everyone else)? He lacked the energy in his dying moments to tell her that? This doesn't seem very plausible.

The last possibility I can think of is that his life (with her) had been so wonderful that he would have liked to live it all over again! If that's what he meant, then pointing to the clock on the wall was a bit irrelevant, distracting. It suggests a question we're sometimes asked to consider: if, after dying, you could simply live your life over again (without knowledge of already having done so)--would "you" want to do this?

This amounts to asking whether the total of what you got out of life--let's say happiness minus unhappiness--was greater than zero, or not? (Put aside "a life worth living," "meaningful," and all that hogwash.) I think most of us would plead ignorance about this. It opens the way to a cascade of perplexing and useless, though well-defined questions. Such as "Would you have been better off dropping dead at the age of 40?" Or, "...before you got sick?"

Natural selection has imbued us with "the will to live." Suicides are rare. Still, "better off not" in hindsight amounts to admitting, after the fact, that at least some part of your life was "worse than nothing." As in "I wish that had never happened to me."

The complexity of this is illustrated by an experience I had today. A chronically overweight friend in China (whom I like very much) told me that he had started a diet, which would entail eating only two days a week. I asked how he felt--maybe very hungry? Very tired? His answer was: "I'm unhappy."

I had to think for a minute to bring this into focus, but of course it matches my own experience--maybe universal experience. What you eat or don't eat does very much affect your outlook on life at the time. Whether you're optimistic or pessimistic--indeed, happy or unhappy.

Certainly, you can eat "unhealthy food" and feel angry that you "slipped," or worried about the future. But more often the arrow runs the other way. If you're healthily well-fed, you are much more iikely to feel content and upbeat than if you're starving--as a result of dieting. For moments, hours, days and more, people are, in their inner thoughts, predominantly happy or unhappy. Is unhappy "better than nothing?" I don't think so. I'd choose to skip it, even though this accorded me fewer moments of life, a shorter life.