A Guide for Life (for old bastards)

There are few, if any, occasions in our lives when we are given unstinting heartfelt praise, love and  admiration such as that which we receive as a toddler from our mother following successful toilet training. 
So the atavistic pleasure of a really good crap is immensely enhanced by the reflexive feeling that we have done something immensely praiseworthy. (In this, our response differs from that we experience from other atavistic pleasures, such as having it off with somebody else's missus).

One of the first things I learnt as a medical student was: If you don't eat, you don't shit, and if you don't shit, you die.
From this fragment of profound wisdom, I concluded that the most important event in life is shitting, and, ipso facto, there can be nothing better than a good shit.

Thus developed a lifelong ambition to achieve this seemingly modest goal. 
Unfortunately, the physiological and psychological processes which affect shitting are diverse, and include diet, hydration, physical activity, emotional stress, medication, illness and social factors, and overshitting and undershitting are the rule, rather than the exception. 

And like all things that are worthwhile in life, it is not possible to assume that a good shit is a fundamental human entitlement (no pun intended), or that one can be achieved without planning and attention to detail.

A basic concept that must be grasped before considering more complex secondary factors is that, by and large, everything that goes in you mouth has to come out your arse (with a bit of help in fluid balance from your kidneys). 
So almost all disturbances are self-inflicted, related to what you ate or drank last night.

Master-class shitting connoisseurs will also be aware of the importance of other factors such as a stress-free environment, privacy and lack of time constraints. Some would recommend the utility of an accompanying good book, cigarette and a wee dram of malt.

Anyway, to summarise the requirements: diet, exercise and lack of stress. Which is a pretty good description of my life as a retiree.
Those who say that there is nothing to look forward to in one's advancing years are wrong. A good shit! There's nothing better!


On the other hand, life will have reached a pretty low ebb when the best one can hope for is trouble-free defaecation. 
It occurs to me that any old bastard who is not depressed just doesn't get it.
The slow dawning of awareness of impending oblivion comes with the realisation that the dreams and aspirations of our youth will never  be fulfilled, that opportunities missed can never be regained and that the pernicious reality of the tyranny of small decisions can only be appreciated  in retrospect.
As one of my surgeon-tutors tole me in 1969, when I was the assisting surgical resident at a cholecystectomy in one of the theatres at Royal Brisbane Hospital, "Only fools are happy - life is a loosing game." (I should add that he also defined happiness as "a full stomach, empty seminal vesicles and a blood-alcohol level of 0.05").


However, counting one's blessings and looking forward to a good shit are poor palliation indeed for such an overwhelming, incurable, life-threatening condition as life itself.
So here are my nine recommendations (for old bastards) for dealing with life and other  injustices:     

1:  Stop thinking. 

2: Maintain a blood-alcohol level of around 0.05g/dl.
     
3:  Ignore physical symptoms (the ones that are going to kill you won't be treatable anyway). 

4:  Avoid news bulletins, especially political news.                                    

5:  Don't converse with idiots.

6:   Fall about with awe and wonder at beauty wherever you encounter it, either in nature or in mankind.   

7:  Read more (but only if it doesn't contravene recommendation number 1).     

8:  If you wake up in the morning and nothing hurts, it means that you died during the night.    
                                                             
9: Remember that feeling your age, whilst not something to celebrate, is significantly more socially acceptable than feeling that nice little lady who works at John's News, Food and Wine.

10: In any situation where you are presented with a binary choice, you will always choose the wrong one.

                             
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