MULTIPLE LIVES

(Published in the October 2008 edition of the East Bay Psychiatric Association Newsletter)


Despite my ongoing classes in Buddhism, I do not buy the idea of “bad karma” coming from bad things one did in a past life, or “good karma” coming from good deeds one performed in a past life. This concept of “past lives” makes no connection to my rational mind and requires too great a leap of faith to appeal to me. But what I do believe is that in the course of one’s natural life span, one does experience multiple lives in the figurative, if not literal, sense.

Twenty-five years from now, assuming you are still alive, your life will be filled with memories of the next 25 years—events that have not yet happened, so you cannot possibly know them. And your current memories of the things that are now fresh in your mind will have faded. One’s psyche will be extremely different 25 years hence from what it is now, and you may discover that your future self will be somewhat unrecognizable to you. Similarly, think back 25 years, or 50 years, and imagine the child you once were, or the developing young adult you may have been. Surely you see yourself today as someone vastly different.

So regardless of any religious bent, it might be fair to say that in the course of a normal lifetime, one experiences multiple lives—not discreet in nature, but vastly different nonetheless. The youngster, the teenager, the young adult, the mid-lifer, the retiree, and the very aged individual may have existed in the same body and have had the same brain, but all of the molecules in that body have turned over and been renewed many times, and the new experiences one has had during a lifetime have changed that person in many ways.

These multiple lives that we experience blend imperceptively into each other and do not occur in quantum leaps. Hormonal and other physiologic factors play a role in the normal aging process. But as psychiatrists, we know also of the psychological impact of traumas and losses on the one hand, or healthy relationships that provide for corrective emotional experiences on the other—it is not just physical change that is part of growing older.

Healthy aging is the subject for another essay, but the reality of change itself, both good and bad, is inevitable, relentless, and universal. We do what we can to transition from stage to stage successfully, but change will occur no matter what. When one looks back on life from the vantage point of 8 or 9 decades, one will view a life cycle that consisted of multiple lives that you may not have been mindful of while living them. It is then that people opine such things as “I should have had more fun,” or “I should have invested differently.”

I have learned through Buddhist meditative techniques to be as mindful as I can be of the moment I am living in and to take advantage of the present to absorb the wonder of simply being alive. While I do not know what my future will bring, I do know that if I live long enough, I will be very different than I am now. The awareness and wonder of that alone is part of the mystery of life that makes us human beings.