You don’t really understand the adage “you are your own worst enemy” until you hit your mid-sixties. A dark voice inside you grows louder, casts its shadow over the proceedings, and begins offering unsolicited commentary on your future. You can “stay active,” “think good thoughts,” exercise, and hit your daily nutrient macros, but the voice remains unimpressed.
In my case, the voice sounds disturbingly like Glum, the slump-shouldered, pessimistic Lilliputian sad sack from the childhood cartoon The Adventures of Gulliver. Glum was famous for expecting catastrophe. His entire philosophy could be reduced to one sentence: “We’ll never make it.”
My Glum has updated the script.
“Handwriting’s on the wall.”
I can be minding my own business, driving across town to run an errand, swinging kettlebells in my garage, preparing overnight buckwheat groats while NPR murmurs from the kitchen radio, or reading the amino-acid profile on the back of a five-pound tub of protein powder when the voice crawls out of some dark crevice in my soul.
“Handwriting’s on the wall.”
I’ve heard the expression all my life but never paid much attention to it. Now I understand its appeal. It is an efficient little package of doom. Bad days ahead. Imminent disaster. Catastrophe. Loneliness. Helplessness. Hopelessness. Futility.
Thank you, Glum. I was just trying to make breakfast.
You have to take this voice seriously, not because its predictions contain great wisdom, but because the voice can make the genuine difficulties of aging worse than they need to be.
Challenges are baked into the human condition. They should be accepted, perhaps even embraced, rather than rehearsed in advance. Suppose you buy a brand-new car. There is much to enjoy: the pride of ownership, the satisfaction of having researched every model within your budget, the latest safety technology, the quiet cabin, the sleek contours announcing to the neighbors that you remain a person of impeccable judgment.
You just spent forty thousand dollars. You would like twenty minutes to enjoy yourself.
Glum appears in the passenger seat.
“Handwriting’s on the wall.”
There will be repairs. Recalls. Door dings. Insurance increases. Next year’s model will look better and get four more miles per gallon. Eventually the transmission will fail, and one day the entire magnificent machine will be crushed into a metallic cube.
Enjoy your new car.
Glum doesn’t help you prepare for life’s difficulties. He simply makes you suffer from them twice: once before they happen and again when they actually arrive. He is your inner buzzkill.
Some people have a louder inner buzzkill than others. The source could be biology, culture, trauma, temperament, or some cocktail of all four. What matters is developing a strategy for dealing with him.
First, identify the voice.
In my case, Glum is a cognitive distortion—a mental event generated by fear and masquerading as prophecy. To understand him, I have to recognize that he is rooted in the primal fear of loss and death. The fear itself is real. Loss is real. Death is real. But Glum’s prognosis of my remaining life is not reality. It is fear pretending to be an oracle.
Second, recognize the self-fulfilling prophecy.
If I allow fear to curdle my ability to participate in the present, I will squander the very life I’m frightened of losing. I will have surrendered my power to Glum, and the resulting misery will appear to vindicate him.
“See?” Glum will say. “Told you.”
Of course he told me. He helped cause it.
Third, recognize that Glum is the master of pre-suffering.
Aging guarantees losses, frustrations, illness, uncertainty, and eventually death. Glum’s trick is making you experience these events before they happen. A future car repair becomes today’s anxiety. Future physical decline contaminates today’s workout. Eventual death ruins today’s oatmeal.
You don’t need to deny future suffering. You need to refuse advance billing.
When something bad happens, deal with the actual problem. Don’t pay interest on misery that hasn’t arrived. Otherwise you won’t be able to play the piano, work out, write, enjoy your breakfast, or do much of anything except rehearse catastrophes.
Fourth, answer Glum by living.
Glum says, “Handwriting’s on the wall.”
Your response doesn’t need to be, “Everything will be wonderful.” That is merely Glum wearing a motivational-speaker costume.
A better response is: “Perhaps. What can I do today?”
Exercise. Write. Practice piano. Call someone. Eat well. Grade the essays. Take the walk.
Agency doesn’t refute mortality. It prevents mortality from colonizing the present.
Fifth, accept that you will never terminate Glum.
He is with you. He has always been with you.
Looking back, I realize Glum didn’t suddenly appear in my sixties. He was there during childhood. He was there during young adulthood. He has accompanied me through most of my life, providing an unwanted running commentary on the possibility that everything might go horribly wrong.
I’ve even lost friends over the years because they consciously or unconsciously recognized my inner pessimist and went running for the hills.
I don’t blame them.
Some comedians have managed to turn Glum into a career. Richard Lewis comes to mind. He took the internal voice of catastrophe, dragged it onto a stage, put a microphone in front of it, and made people laugh.
That may be one of the better ways of managing Glum.
Mock him.
Glum is an idiot worthy of ridicule, but he remains an idiot with tenure.
And there is another uncomfortable truth. Glum is part of you. You’ve grown attached to him. You hate him, but you also love him. After decades together, you have developed one of those poisonous relationships neither party has the courage to end.
Glum is your internal frenemy.
So recognize him. Understand where he comes from. Laugh at his absurdity. Accept that he may never leave.
But do not take orders from him.
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