Discussions about faith have become more and more a part of my life over the last decade. I think this is due to several things:

• My own generation reaching middle age and beyond. People begin to survey their lives, to take the measure of things, and to reflect on the state of their legacy. We are far enough along that there have been divorces, and cases of ruin, and the loss of grandparents and increasingly even parents. There is a moment in life at which you look around and know, viscerally, that the end is coming for you, and that most of your life is behind you, and that time is running short to achieve a satisfactory “totality” when the end arrives.

• Our children reaching a certain age. With the characteristic delayed fertility of advanced industrial societies, it’s in our forties and fifties that Generation X (a certain socioeconomic slice of Generation X in particular that seems to be mine) find their children at that age—namely the early and middle teens—at which questions of religion begin to emerge with substance, and we are confronted with some “tough questions” about the meaning of life and the foundations of morality and being.

• Our particular shared present. The culture wars, the return of international relations and global warfare as forces in history, the pursuit of artificial intelligence, and a budding but highly sought after transhumanism all sponsor, just underneath the surface, a larger civilizational debate on moral commitments and, lurking even deeper, the metaphysics that underwrite them. We don’t tend to admit it, and in fact even try to suppress and deny it, but our epoch is an epoch of grand debate and reflection about this frame.

So it is that I find myself consuming all sides of this debate. As a professionally trained social scientist with multiple degrees in anthropology and sociology, up to and including the doctoral level, religion has always been of interest to me. I have for decades owned multiple translations of the Bible, the Koran, the foundational Taoist texts, the Bhagavad Gita, translations of the Egyptian burial scrolls, and so on, as well as all the usual suspects, i.e. Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religions Life to play off against the works of Marx and the maudlin corners of the Frankfurt School and so on.

It has, in some very strange ways, been uncomfortable to situate myself, however, in this landscape of religious practice and thought, both because it’s long been an unsettled question for me by now, and because as someone with both this kind of training and with the social roles that I inhabit (father of children becoming teenagers, son of parents reaching the ends of their lives, the “educated in this topic” friend of people struggling to meet the challenges of the same stage of life, and so on).

But—I just stumbled onto two formulations that I very much appreciate, whose language and sensibility appeals to me. I wish I had the courage to attribute them to their source, but for the moment I do not. (You’ll all find that I become much more courageous once my children reach adulthood and are no longer potentially impacted as significantly by the things I do and say in public, even if “in public” means on an obscure blog that nobody reads anyway).

Note that in particular, the third bullet above draws tight circles on just how forthcoming we can be in public about the things that we consume; it is bold enough to say these days that one consumes “everything from all corners” and leave it at that. To go farther isn’t, at the moment, a good idea.

— § —

The first formulation that I have fallen in love with is an inversion of the phrase that one hears everywhere around our society, and I can’t believe that I never really came to it before. It doesn’t fit me precisely, but I am taken with the notion of calling myself “religious but not spiritual.” Like I said, that doesn’t quite fit, in that I don’t go to any church and don’t belong any denomination, either within Judeo-Christianity or beyond it, but at the same time it is in keeping with the way in which I’ve tended to address these questions with my kids.

I tell them: that in my experience, there are moral adherents and immoral adherents in every belief system, but that what’s also true is that the religious texts and bodies of tradition, across all cultures, are in some sense the collected wisdom of the ages, and are amongst the greatest literary and philosophical treasures of humanity; that for this reason it is a deep disservice and also the height of error to approach them facilely or with literal or tribal smugness, as to approach them this way is to surely get them wrong; that any person who truly plans to become culturally literate should have some reasoned, reflective, and critical engagement with them all in the end, not least because the substantial majority of the people on the planet are adherents to one tradition or the other; and that in a great many ways they are strikingly similar in their ultimate content, though this is not at all immediately evident in many cases and relies on an understanding that is hard-won, requiring wisdom and discrimination.

I also tell them that I don’t practice any particular faith in the practical sense—I don’t attend, I don’t belong-to, etc.—and that it is not my place to either encourage or discourage anyone’s adherence to any of them.

It would be easy, having read that, to say “well that’s not at all ‘religious but not spiritual’ so what are you on about,” but when placed alongside the other formulation that I stumbled across this morning, things take on a different patina.

The other formulation, which was given in reference to someone else, was that the person in question was not becoming stuck in questions about “belief in the metaphysical,” and was instead “noticing that they were already” an adherent to a tradition in many ways—in the values that they hold, in the ways that they interact with the world and the moral positions that they take, and that they have spent recent years “pulling at the threads” of the positions that they already take and the behaviors in which they already engage—quite apart from metaphysical commitments, ritual practice, “personal relationships” with deities, and so on—and “coming to see that there is something foundational” behind them that points back to the religious universe.

More than a few people in life are familiar with some of the formulations I’ve used in the past—for example that if I “look for the people like me, who think what I think and act the ways that I try to act”—that I notice “where most of them are standing,” so to speak, in the demographics of religion and morality, and wonder “if those are actually my people.” I’ve also said that I’ve engaged in serious reflection on whether one can be a Catholic, or a Buddhist, or a Taoist, etc. without actually being “a believer,” a question about both the metaphysics and the practical utility of “belief” and the borders of “practice” that has remained unresolved for me for some years now.

But taken together, these two formulations I think hit home for me very much. I’m functionally unable to engage with “belief in the metaphysical” for whatever reason, but for a decade I have been “noticing that I am already” holding particular values and engaging in a set of moral and ethical habits and commitments that situate me very clearly in some ways, and I continue to “pull at the threads” of what this all means to try to arrive at foundations and first principles, leaving me in some sense in the state of inadvertently being religious in some sense in relation to everyday behavior, without necessarily being someone whose practices are highly spiritual or ritualistic.

— § —

This is a word soup, but these are hard questions, particularly in relation to what Christianity calls a “fallen world.” It is for the very reason that we humans are noisy (in the information theory sense) in both our belief and practice that religion matters to begin with. It is, empirically, a force that functions to constrain this noise, both at the personal level and at the social level—noise that would otherwise grow out of control, exponentially, and to devastating effect in my opinion. But that means in practice that understanding is hard-won; to get there, you have to fight your way through throngs of “merely humans” that all, to one extent or another, betray all of it—and are expected to do so, otherwise they shouldn’t be there (in a state of practicing, in a state of believing, in a church, in a set of stated moral commitments) to begin with, because there would be no need.

It’s a particularly difficult thing to do as a parent. I’m glad I’m not the parent positioned and committed such that I simply tell my children “this is what’s True” so “just go to church,” which is what I experienced as a child. I saw how that went over for me—and it took me decades to find my way back to (and be to able to tolerate) questions like these in the first place. I’d love to have been raised without developing a kind of oppositional defiant disorder about the religious question that colored my thought about the whole pile of it for decades, and I see an awful lot of that in my generation.

In some sense it should be a warning to parents—dogma for dogma’s sake is bad. Understand your commitments and the reasons for them before you try to convey them to others, and never do this by force.

Hopefully my children will be able to tackle this without all of the same baggage, as the questions are fundamental to a meaningful life.

“For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies.”

Older member of my extended family asked whether I was ever going to date again. I was brutally honest and said I don’t know, probably not, and they were troubled by that answer, and then we went a few rounds of whys and wherefores.

Here’s the thing.

I’ve been in a larger number of legitimately long-term relationships than most people have, I think. I started almost right away. I’ve had five relationships in my life that went at least a year. Four of those went at least two years. Two of them went five years or more.

All of them started wonderfully, and ended miserably.

— § —

In my early ’20s, I wasn’t established yet, but for a young twentysomething, I don’t think I was a bad catch. I had done TV interviews about science on the evening news, had entered college early at 15, was technology expert who also studied human culture. Very well read. Had stock options, my own car, a steady job as an editor, and plans to go to grad school. And I was six feet tall, slim and muscular, not bad looking (I wistfully say now, looking back), and not at all a geek. Other young people called me a ‘rock star.’ Not just my professors, my peers.

At the start of that relationship, she was “so lucky” to be in a relationship with me. And for several years, it was like a match made in heaven. And then it wasn’t. Over time, I was compared to other people, and found to be lacking.

Thing is, no matter how hard you’re working, no matter how ahead of the game you think you are, there is always somebody who’s going to out-play you, out-look you, out-tall you, out-hustle you.

I was out-hustled and eventually, cheated on and left.

— § —

Big interim, let’s skip to me as I entered my 40s. Double bachelor’s degree, master’s degree from the University of Chicago, Ph.D. from a legendary school in Manhattan. Seven books to my name. Ten years as a professor, then a pivot to private industry where I became a technology industry executive with a strong career. Unusually well-read, literate, even, yet down to earth, decent conversationalist. Still six feet tall, still not some awkward geek.

Still getting called a loser who will never amount to anything and routinely compared to other guys who have done more. This guy founded a company that became a hot startup. That guy traveled the world and has lived on multiple continents and speaks five langauges. I just don’t match up, such a mistake to settle for me when men like them were available. When will I earn a quarter of a million? When will I become a CEO? Obviously no ambition. Loser.

— § —

It generally has always gone the same way. Great start, then a pivot somewhere over a middle period to “why did I settle for you?” And then dissatisfaction. Nagging and bitterness. Eventually a period of deep and bristling contempt for me. Then end.

Yet I have never cheated on anyone in my life (though I have been cheated on multiple times). I have never forgotten a birthday, an anniversary, a Valentine’s day. I have taken people on dreamy road-trip dates to restaurants a thousand miles away and to Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall on black tie dates. I do housework. I am thoughtful. I write notes. Not because I think I have to, but because I want to. I have myself actually yelled at a woman maybe twice in my entire life. I’ve never hit one. I don’t call people names and it’s not in my nature to do so. I’m easy to get along with—so long as by “get along” you don’t mean “Aron has to do what I say he does and make the choices I say he must.”

Still, by the end, there is always someone (or someones) that I just don’t measure up to. The grass is always greener somewhere. Well, yes. It is. I’m a solid performer—recall, masters and Ph.D. from significantly brand-name schools, VP in technology, seven books, six feet tall, holiday-rememberer, dishes-doer, romantic dater, reasonably masculine (or, when being lambasted, “so unapologetically guy”)—but still that’s all it is. No, I’m not a founder and CEO. No, I do not earn half a million a year or have 10 million in my 401k. I don’t drive a late model BMW. I don’t have a rolodex that stretches to the halls of political power. I haven’t run for elected office (yes, this comparison has been made in my life, and I have lost out to the guys that have).

And in the end, it’s miserable. Not only because I don’t compete at that level, but because I don’t want to compete at that level. I’m already too posh for my own comfort. I was raised a lower middle-class kid, with TV sitcoms and clutter in the kitchen. I don’t want to stray too far from that because I like it. It feels like home to me. I don’t want to live in an immaculate architect-rendered house with an atrium and a Zen garden and snap photos of us in the sauna for Instagram. I just don’t.

— § —

Older relative says there is someone out there for me, I just have to look, it’s important that I not be alone.

Maybe, but I don’t care. I’ve done the long-term relationship ending in a painful breakup where I’m just a loser by comparison too many times. I’ve been cheated on, yelled at, belittled, even belittled in public while standing next to other high-achieving guys. It’s a whole bunch of no fun.

All of this was too much to try to explain to my older relative. He’s from another time and genteel as they come. But the thing is, I just don’t care to do it again, to keep looking. I don’t care to try to compete again. A Ph.D. and a pile of books is enough for me. I’m done questing and conquering. I’m almost 50 and I’ve been at this life thing for a long time, and been through too many “hell-like final years” during which I was beaten over the head with my “loserdom” relentlessly, while thinking to myself “really, am I such a poor catch?”

I just want to raise my kids now and think about what kind of legacy I can leave.

Dating feels like this competition that you have to win, and the guys I end up competing with, I frankly already lost to. I don’t have the energy (or at least, want to have the energy) to be a founder and CEO, or to run for political office. I want to tend my own garden and just appreciate the buds and the bees and watch the seasons turn and reflect on life.

Maybe there’s some woman who will ultimately just come and sit beside me as I do it, and not ever actually leave, and that’s fine. But I’m not going out looking.

And if she starts to compare me to other men or tell me I could and should have been so much more, I’m throwing her out earlier, not later. I’ve already earned my terminal degree, been married, had my kids, written my books, traveled internationally. My bucket list is done. Ain’t nobody going to convince me this time around to try to get back into that game.

It’s so much extra, hard work, and now that I have my kids, there’s no reward it can offer that I actually think is worth the investment.

When you’re divorced, sometimes you drive home with your kids and sometimes you drive home alone. When you drive home alone, you think of all the things that you would tell them if you were driving home with them in the car. Then, you get out and you forget all of the stuff you would have said.

— § —

There are a whole segment of bands that I didn’t much like when I was a young guy, or at least that I never got into, that suddenly I find myself listening to. Bands like Pantera and Danzig and Motorhead and even Rammstein. It’s funny, because young guys are supposed to be full of testosterone, but as a young guy I thought all those muscles and posturing were dumb. Maybe I was just threatened by them. I wanted my own physique to be the thing, not some band I was listening to I guess. Also I am listening to a lot of Nightwish, both because it’s amazing music that moves me and also because I am fascinated by Floor Jansen, who is this kind of real-world valkyrie that makes me want to better myself.

— § —

When the holidays happen, everyone drifts out at some point mid-to-late December for at least a week and maybe even two or three weeks. Everyone says “happy holidays” and then promptly forgets about work for a good long time. Afterward, there is no metaphysical rule that says they all have to come back, but they all come back nonetheless because there are multiple physical rules that says they have to come back. Sort of like the reason you bother to wake up every day, and also the reason you don’t light the people you don’t like on fire.

— § —

My current car has gone nearly 208,000 miles. I like it a lot. People ask me why I don’t drive a newer car and I don’t bother to explain that driving a car with fewer miles on it would feel like visiting an escort or selling a date to your sister some how. With an older car, the relationship feels like it’s based on authenticity, even if the car has enough miles on it to have been around the world 20 times.

— § —

I am 47 and I am still sitting here surrounded by clocks. I have a clock on my wall and four clocks on my desk and there are seven wristwatches around me, apart from the one I’m wearing on my wrist. Throughout the day I look at the clock often. I keep wanting to steal a glance at a second or two ticking away, because to see that is also to see my life ticking away, and it feels like there’s this cosmic drama going on and I have a kind of FOMO about not checking in on it regularly.

— § —

I have been selling things off on eBay again because they have started to pile up. I keep taking pictures of them on the floor because I think the floor is probably the nicest surface in the house. The other surfaces all date to 1974 and they have this weird whiff of old ladies, methamphetamine, and poverty about them. Not poverty now, but poverty in 1979, which looked exactly like “everyman” Formica countertops and wood paneling. Of course in the ’70s everyone was poor so it didn’t matter, but now it matters, especially if you’re trying to sell stuff on eBay.

— § —

Sometimes I listen to Wagner, also. That has becoming more and more common. The other day I was listening to Wagner and reading Steppenwolf by Hesse and I stopped and thought to myself, “OMG.” But I only did that for a minute and then I started reading again. The Wagner production was at the Met, which I used to live not so far away from but now live thousands of miles away from.

— § —

The story I tell most in life is still the story about José the tow-truck driver, who picked me up after midnight when I broke down racing uphill at 110mph in death valley in an old Volvo brick, and who drove me into Las Vegas by sunrise where I caught a plane home. I tell people how on the trip he pointed out constellations all over the sky through his windshield and told me about his children, who also liked constellations, with the car being pulled behind us. The story is 100 percent true and many people I’ve known over the years now know about José and that his children once liked to hear him point out constellations to them, but he doesn’t know anything about how many times people have been told about him and the impression he made on some random twenty-something once.

— § —

In some ways I feel wrong for listening to things that aren’t Christmas music around Christmastime, but the thing is that all of the Christmas music that you can get in the streaming era seems mostly to be pop music anyway. It’s hard to find a way to listen to all those recordings from the early 20th century that really go with Christmas unless you have vinyl and a turntable. I do have the vinyl through accident of fate, but I definitely don’t have a turntable.

— § —

I need a fucking renaissance, that’s what.

There’s a kind of a cognitive malaise that can creep in as you get older. Not everyone experiences it—I am always reminded of my dissertation chair, and the day that this aging, already silver man who was clearly increasing in frailty, told me he still had so much to do, and so many ideas, and so much “energy” and so on—but I think I’ve seen it in most people, and I see it in myself.

— § —

I think for most people, “so many ideas” is a condition of youth. This is often put down to cognitive decline, or preoccupation with family and bills. I think both play a part, but I also think physical decline plays a part in ways that often don’t get their due.

For example, at 47 things tire me more than they used to. When it’s 6:05 and I’m wrapping up a long workday, I now feel physically spent. Things are sore. Muscles don’t want to comply. It is legitimate effort to then step away and start a new project or attend to a new task or thought, in a way that wasn’t at all true when I was 17, or even 27. Then, at 6:05 pm, the real work was just about to begin. Whatever had occupied me all day, it was now time to dive into books and letters, or writing, or soldering, or coding, or driving, or whatever it is I was on about. I remember occasions when in the summertime darkness fell and I decided on a whim to drive to visit relatives in San Francisco, arriving at Golden Gate Park long after the sun had come up and feeling exhilarated.

Darkness falls now and I think to myself, “I really should go and buy dish soap,” but I don’t do it because having just worked all day, I feel on some days as though if I try I might faint or have a heart attack, and really I need to just rest and collect myself and gather some oxygen and maybe a few calories.

Similarly, there are sensory faculties. I have recently started to use reading glasses on the recommendation of an optometrist because, quite simply, I was getting to the point at which I had to not just hold text at arm’s length, but set it down and step backward in order to be able to read it. Upon starting to use reading glasses, I have been shocked by just how much the world is actually constant input when you can, in fact, see it as you go about your business. Everywhere around us is text, and everywhere around us are little details of life, and both of these tend to launch trains of thought and suggest associations. Only if you can’t actually make any of these out unless you explicitly set out to do so, your world is fundamentally less full of stimuli, and this can’t help but have an impact on ideation and cognition.

The urge to exclaim “problem solved” in this instance is misplaced, because the problem with reading glasses is that they’re inconvenient and you don’t really want to leave them on all the time. You can see near by wearing them, yes, but now you can’t see far, and sight across the room is actually more important for life than you would think. They also want to stay perpetually dirty and have a tendency to make your nose feel either uncomfortable or sore. So leaving them on at all times is not really an option.

I was previously aware of research correlating cognitive decline to gradual loss in hearing, and had worried about this because I know that my hearing isn’t what it used to be. But marry this to the eyesight thing, and to the faster-fatigue thing, and it’s easy to see how for many people, productivity and initiative fall off as you age.

— § —

The role that seems to emerge to replace this is that of a kind of oracle.

You’re not quite as engaged with the world now as you once were, and you no longer start (or, frankly, finish) as many things as you used to, but during your time involved with such things, you accumulated a body of experience that young people don’t yet have.

So as you lose your ability to really be the go-getter, you instead seem to sit in one place and become a receiver-of-questions for which you more often than not, and quite shockingly to young people, have ready and often not-bad responses. You’re not gaining or doing much that’s new, but you are now a stationary quantity that can be consulted for nuggets of actionable insight and prediction.

— § —

I mean, all of this is just conventional life cycle wisdom, but I guess when you live it and really reflect on your experience of living it, it’s different from just knowing about it.