“Rust Never Sleeps” was a tour with Neil Young and Crazy Horse in 1978, the live recording in June 1979, around the time I left home and began making my own way in the Great Wide World. Back then as a teenager, “better to burnout than to fade away,” appealed to me for some reason. In retrospect it was an incorrect assumption. I’m not exactly sure what Neil had in mind back then, when he used Elvis and Johnny Rotten as examples but I checked the WWW to see where burnout fit the vernacular of today’s pop culture and here’s a couple:
Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships.
If you said you were suffering from ‘burnout’ in the 1970s, the term was used informally to describe the side effects that heavy drug users experienced: the general dimming of the mental faculties, for example, as was the case with many a party animal.
When I look around now at the Great, Wide World, it seems that a lot of people thought it was good advice; trapped, stressed, exhausted and burnt out in their present paradigm. Or their cognitive skills degenerated beyond sleepiness to zombie-hood. So why did it seem attractive back then, when it is obvious now, that it is immensely better to fade away than to burnout?
Nature exemplifies the process, showing us how to gracefully make the transition. The tree cuts circulation to a damaged section, essentially cutting out the dead wood. The body works the same way. I can’t do many of the things I did when I was younger. I can do some maintenance, spray some rust-oleum, but “Rust Never Sleeps.” The truth is, I don’t really want to be doing the same things in my sixties as my twenties anyway.
I was on the burnout path for much of my life, chasing the dream, exhausted, emotionally, mentally and physically. So I can state with certitude that, no way is it better to burnout than to fade away. We need to follow nature and cut out the deadwood. Feed the part that is still alive and slowly, gracefully fade away. Even the 4000 year old Bristlecone pine is only here for a short time, many limbs dead and bleached white for a thousand years, yet it still soldiers on, sending out a few new green shoots every spring. I wonder if Methuselah, ( the oldest tree in the world) upon awakening in a new season deals with the pain of degenerating body parts, like I do every morning? Trees don’t have words like we do, we can only judge them by their actions. They soldier on, squeezing out every last bit of life they can, but “Rust Never Sleeps,” and slowly and gracefully they fade away, exactly the way nature intended.
We got news that my 87 year old mother had gone to the E.R. on Sunday night, with very high blood pressure. She has been struggling for a few years with erratic pressure, first too low and then too high, along with a number of other pulmonary issues that exacerbate the problem. She has made her peace a number of times over the last few years but each time she is given another chance, she soldiers on like Methuselah, reckoning that if her maker is giving her another opportunity, she is going to make the best of it, accepting that some parts of her are gone and channeling what energy is there to the parts that are alive. Pushing out new green shoots each spring. She is the epitome of the message nature has for us; squeeze out every last bit, feed what’s still alive, do what you can in each new season, gracefully and peacefully.
I came to Denver on Monday morning and my sister told me that on Sunday night, mom had asked her to please tell everyone how much she loved them, fully expecting that her body had come to the end of the line, again. The hospital managed to arrest the situation and it has been fairly stable for a few days and she is already pushing out new green shoots, an example of how nature speaks to us if we slow down enough to see. I’m hoping for a hundred but she is just happy with what she has already been given.
If we carry the “it’s better to burnout” philosophy too deep into our maturity, we doom ourselves to it. Like Methuselah, who has lived for nearly 5000 years, we need to relax into the coming storm, if you fight it, you will break, just like the branches ripped from the old bristlecones by the mighty storms of the high mountain winters.
It’s obvious wouldn’t you agree, that it’s better to gracefully fade away than to burnout. Life is too precious to destroy. We don’t have 5000 years or 1000 years or even 100 years for most of us. So, we need to take our cue from nature and use the last seasons here in the great wide world and feed what is still alive in us. Life’s a beautiful mystery, savor every moment of it.