Jonathan Dodd: Good nights and dying lights

Jonathan Dodd’s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed

Some days just go better than others. It’s a fact. You might know when you wake up how the day will go, and you might be right, but every day can turn on a sixpence. Nowadays they would have to turn on a 2p coin, but it doesn’t sound so romantic. And it’s a lot larger. As any writer will know, metaphors are the rocks our ships usually founder on.

I have a modest exercise routine, which mainly involves getting up three times a week to go for a run in the local gym before work. I don’t always manage three sessions, and sometimes I have a week or more away from it, because I’m on holiday. But I do my best.

The whole thing’s a bad idea
There are days when I seem to fly through the 25 minutes plus five minutes to calm down, and occasionally I have a real struggle to get to the end. And, rarely, I just know that the whole thing’s a bad idea, so I stop before I’ve completed it. I used to feel bad about this, back when every outing to the gym was sheer torture, but I don’t any more.

treadmill

This week Tom Hanks, one of my great heroes and role models (and yes, he might not be like that at all in his private life, but I suspect he’s nicer than most), announced that he now has diabetes. Luckily it’s Type 2 diabetes, so it’s a self-imposed health hazard, and he has stated that his doctors have told him he’ll no longer be diabetic once he loses enough weight and creates a healthier lifestyle.

This is a high-profile declaration
I have no fear that Tom won’t achieve precisely this. Partly because I’ve seen him put on a whole load of weight for the first part of Cast Away (one of my favourite films), and then lose a dangerous amount of weight before resuming the film for the second part (go and see it, it’s wonderful). He’s no stranger to the lifestyle requirements of a role. The other reason I think he’ll manage it, is because he has told everyone.

forest gump waxwork

So it’s out there, in the most public way. He hasn’t said he’ll actually lose the weight and get fit, but he’s saying he’ll not have diabetes any more if he does. In the history of self-imposed health issues, this is a high-profile declaration.

So-called ‘lifestyle’ maladies
We’re in a strange place, civilisation-wise. Never have we had so much knowledge about how to live better and safer, and never have so many opportunities to do so been so available, and never have these butted up so completely against the enormous incidence of obesity and other so-called ‘lifestyle’ maladies and conditions. Never has so much common sense been ignored so comprehensively by so many.

Little and large sitting on a bench

We can say many things about the past, and how much longer we live now, and how terrible living conditions were and how many died of ignorance and disease. We can cite the bravery and stupidity of so many going off to slaughter in war when bid by their so-called betters. We can see that their loyalty, their blind faith and childlike trust resulted from a lack of education and information.

We choose to remain ignorant and uncaring
We applaud all those pioneers of medical research and communications and mass education who have worked tirelessly to improve the lot of so many millions. We have the opportunity to know everything that’s happening, everywhere on the planet, more or less, and yet we choose to remain ignorant and uncaring. Maybe not all of us. But those of us who do care have no real weapon that we can deploy against apathy and laziness.

mummified face

I’m sitting here writing at my desk, wondering where I fit in to all this. I’m one of the billions here alive, on this planet at this particular moment in time. I know I think about things, and I expect myself to be reasonably informed about as much as possible, and I try to have a healthy lifestyle so my body and mind will work reasonably well for as long as possible.

Is it actually achieving anything?
I will not go gentle into that good night. I will rage against the dying of the light. But that’s not good enough. I don’t know what it involves, this dying of the light, and not going gently is a lot of effort. It feels like the right thing to do, but is it actually achieving anything?

Screen print

Sometimes I think we might have well and truly upset the balance of nature, just by sticking our heels in and demanding to live longer, eat better and drive all over the place in expensive and polluting vehicles. There would still be a lot of space for endangered species and habitats if we didn’t, and people wouldn’t have the excessive leisure time to eat themselves stupid.

Prophets of the future
Our insistence on human rights and ever-more expensive medicine and larger TV screens is quite possibly what will be seen in the future (if there is one) as being the very thing that caused all the trouble. Those who strived to give themselves an early demise might turn out to be prophets of the future, pathfinding the very need for fewer humans living shorter lives.

Sarai is taken

People do generally bemoan their lack of purpose once the children have grown and gone away, and there’s the general downhilledness of things going south, and the terror of those things that possibly await us up ahead, lurking in the shadows. Every time I can’t remember a name or a word I wonder whether my memory is going. If I drop something I try to work out if this is happening more often than before. And so on.

The same instincts that make us human
And yet I know that these things are inevitable, in one form or another. Anyone who’s ever cracked the secret of immortality has kept very quiet about it, most likely for very good reasons. I’ve read several books and watched various films that describe those dangers very clearly. There’s a reason why we cling on so tenaciously. These are the same instincts that make us human.

Hue Eight Immortals

The desire to grow, to reproduce, to bring up children, or amass riches, or create empires, or write great novels or music comes from the same source. Each of us wants to be alive, and stay alive. We don’t want not to be here any more, no matter how miserable we are. This driving force continues as life goes on, and it changes its aim as we get older.

How anyone’s life can be measured
I don’t know whether I have a purpose or whether it’s all random. I don’t know how anyone’s life can be measured, and if so I don’t know what actions or achievements give a person more heft. Some people nail the flags of their ambition to masts that they cling to for their whole life. Writing a great novel, winning a prize. Being popular or powerful or rich, or appearing on TV or in gossip columns. Or worse.

trump cartoon

I don’t know whether any of these outweigh any other achievements, or even whether any achievements actually count. Perhaps living a quiet life and looking after cats is just as important, if you shift the values. Perhaps it doesn’t matter, and it’s all equal in the end. Perhaps there is no end.

Until I can’t do it any more
The thing I do know, though, is that there are things I know to be right, deep inside me, and I have a strong incentive to keep up whatever it is I do to strive towards those things. And I know I’ll never stop, despite obstacles and interruptions, until I can’t do it any more.

do not block driveway

In this way I feel a great kinship with most of the human race, because we each have exactly that thing inside us. We may not recognise it, or we may not even know about it, or we may know about it but we’re running full-pelt away from it. But it’s always there.

Our own judgement on ourselves
No matter how others judge us, the only judgement that actually counts is our own judgement on ourselves. I don’t want to run marathons or mr natural cartoon achieve world records, but I do want to keep running, as long as I can still move my legs.