What will that moment be like when I know that I am dying? I stayed with my dogs as they were slowly dying. I was there as life leached out of them as I did my best to comfort them, to try to make them feel better. But I could see death coming to them, as if they were slowly sinking into a bog.
I write this with considerable discomfort: When I die, I hope I don’t feel the incredible loneliness, that end-of-the-world, cataclysmic feeling of loneliness. I have felt that, that feeling of nowhere to go, of no one to turn to; it is my hope that when that moment of death comes I don’t have time to think about how lonely I will be. What I do hope happens is that I am overwhelmed by a sense of curiosity. That I will have time to wonder: What is this going to be like?
So it appears to me that this life is all there is. I was born into a privileged life. I understand and appreciate that. For me, it is the most joyful voyage possible—but that’s not true for everyone. I suspect many people suffering from famine, pestilence, war, disease, extremely painful conditions, people living under harsh dictatorships, people who have no control over their own lives and at times have to watch their children suffer, see death quite differently than I do. For them, death is the end of a torturous journey and ahead of them lies the allure of heaven and life after death. I understand that, but it is not true for me. So I read the medical stories, I exercise, I do whatever I can to stay healthy. I listen to the experts, I go with their flow, changing when it seems logical, doing whatever I can do to keep going. There is, however, one thing I try very hard not to do: allow my fear of death to cause me to lose my passion for living. Until my very last breath I want to be actively engaged in life. I know there are some deeply religious people who can’t wait to die because they know they will be welcome in the kingdom of heaven. How unfortunate for them, I think, because the rest of us treasure every minute as our time runs down, while they seem to believe life is a test, keeping them from their true destiny.
Time does go by so very quickly. People measure it in so many different ways. One person I know uses the Gilligan’s Island scale: A three-hour meeting is six Gilligan’s Island episodes long. Is it worth it?
This fear of death too often casts a dark shadow over the remaining years of life, however many they are. I rarely ask people about their health, because at my age people will be happy to tell you. Worse, when you’re in a group talking about your physical condition people try to top you. “You had your knee replaced? I’ll raise you a second knee and a hip!”
Other people may accept death peacefully. Not me— when I go, I’m going kicking and screaming. I’m holding onto the furniture. And until that time on a daily basis I do as much as possible to stay fully engaged with the world. I am working as frequently as I ever have, and I am making plans for my future. I am keeping up with changes in society and technology; I may not be able to program my own computer, but when a new communications tool becomes available, I make a point to learn about it and use it. I am on both Twitter and Facebook on a regular basis; I tweet and post regularly, for example. I am actively involved in social media; I have more than 2.5 million followers on Twitter and another 2 million on Facebook. I use Twitter to raise money for my charities—we had a silent auction for the horse show and tripled the money we’d made in previous years; I also use it to promote my projects and those of friends, to connect with fans and on occasion to get in a bit of a scuffle with a troll or just to make an enjoyable point—as I did one May 5 when I tweeted a photo of a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise in a kitchen sink as a way of wishing everyone a very happy Sinko de Mayo.
I also have begun to get involved with virtual reality. In my lifetime we have gone from black-and-white movies to television to performing holograms and virtual reality. When we were making Star Trek, none of us actually believed we might live to see the Enterprise’s holodeck become reality; it was special effects and, in those days, the effects weren’t very special. We would point our plastic guns, our “phasers,” and in the editing room someone would add what appeared to be a beam. That was a special effect. Ironically, within a few years people will be able to interact with “me,” or my avatar, on a “holodeck” in their own home. In early 2017, I had some experts in virtual reality come into my office to begin creating my VR image. They filmed every aspect of my body, even my musculature, everything necessary to enable technicians to make my image move and speak realistically. Now if they can just figure out how to make that image consciously think like me and feel like me and believe it is me then perhaps I might not fear death so much. But because of that image, Shatner will now “live” forever—or at least until the sun burns out and becomes a frozen ice ball racing through space.
Meanwhile, I intend to keep living, thank you very much. To me, among other things living means staying involved on a daily basis with the world. I watch the news stations and, admittedly, find it somewhat humorous to hear people commenting that the world is in terrible shape, the situation is at least as dire as it has ever been. Another of the few advantages of being older is that you have lived through so many historic events. I am a Jew who lived through the Third Reich. I lived through the dropping of atomic weapons on cities. I’ve lived through the Depression. I’ve lived through the spread of communism and the erection of the Iron Curtain. I have seen endless brutal dictators take power and disappear. I have seen Hitler and Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao, and the various North Korean dictators. I’ve seen massacres in wartime Europe, communist countries, Vietnam villages, and American schools. So those events I am witnessing on my TV set and iPad and phone and every other available device certainly don’t seem to be any worse than what has taken place in my lifetime. The significant difference, obviously, is that I now can see them as they are happening anywhere in the world and I can watch endless discussions and rehashes and interpretations of what happened. In earlier years the news came to us by horseback, then teletype, then radio and newsreels; now the perpetrators use cameras to record their crimes as a means of spreading fear and propaganda. The world is in sad shape today, but the good news is that the world has always been in sad shape! Being alive means being aware of it all, which I try to do.
I am told that depressed people lose interest in events and people. They often isolate themselves. I wonder if it might be the opposite: People who lose interest in those things, perhaps because they feel death approaching, invite depression into their lives. It seems to be that is the obvious result of succumbing to the power in their life, I have nothing to live for, syndrome. I have a very simple philosophy I follow: If you can get up, get up. Don’t give in to anything.
I never plan for death; rather, I plan for life. People have asked me many times what I would like the inscription on my tombstone to be. And my answer each time is that I don’t have the slightest idea, I haven’t thought about it—nor do I intend to. I have heard all the jokes and clever inscriptions. I have read that lifetime Dodgers player and manager Tommy Lasorda plans to have an electronic screen on his tombstone with the Dodgers’ upcoming schedule. I have laughed at Merv Griffin’s inscription, “I will not be right back after this message,” and Rodney Dangerfield’s “There goes the neighborhood,” but it isn’t that important to me.
That’s about death; I am too busy focusing on life. That’s another one of my strategies, although I wouldn’t call it that: I would say simply that I am continuing to do what I have always done. In this case that means surrounding myself with young life as much as possible. In addition to the time I spend with my grandkids, which is essentially as much time as they allow me to be around them, Liz and I got a new puppy in early 2017. She is a daughter of Starbuck that we bred through artificial insemination. We currently are setting up a larger breeding program. I want to breed this dog so there continually is new life coming into my orbit. I know older people who refuse to get a new animal because they are afraid it will outlive them. My answer to that is, So what? Animals adapt to the situation.
We continue to breed our horses, too. I’ve h
eard it said that you will never find someone who has a mare in foal committing suicide, because the anticipation is too great. Obviously I feel the same way about my dogs. Each birth is the beginning of possibilities. I may see some or all of them come to fruition or I may not; I never think about it, so I never allow that possibility to hold me back. When I watch the puppy or the foal, I share their joy in exploring life, in learning that walls are hard when you run into them and a human hand is not something to be afraid of, and it brings great pleasure to me. I have no concept of what is going to happen in my life in the next few years. People now ask me how it feels to be my age. I respond with the truth: I don’t know, I’ve never been this age before. Actually, that isn’t precisely true. Several times in my career I had played myself as a much older man. We did an episode of Star Trek in 1967 titled “The Deadly Years,” in which the Enterprise visited Gamma Hydra IV and the landing party, which included the essential members of the crew, contracted a bizarre condition in which we aged approximately thirty years a day. My explanation for that was simple: “I admit, I’m getting a little gray, but radiation will do that to you.” I don’t remember much about filming this episode or how I decided to act old. I do know that it took several hours to apply my makeup. Looking at photographs of me taken fifty years ago as I was made up to look about the age I am today, I am somewhat startled at what a good job they did. I don’t have to act old anymore; I can simply act my age. Although in the latest movie I’ve made I did play a man a decade younger. The reality is that I am here and I feel fortunate to be able to be this age. It didn’t happen in a day or two, although at times it does seem that time did move that quickly.
But if there is anything that has surprised me about reaching this age with almost full command of my physical and mental capabilities it is how much I still care about those things that have long been important to me and, even more, the fact that I probably am better at some of them than I have ever been. I know I am better at being a husband and a grandfather than I have been. I know my riding ability has continued to improve. And to my surprise, I know without doubt that I am a better actor than I have ever been. The greater control over my instrument, combined with many decades of experience, has enabled me to become a far more complete performer in whatever it is I am doing.
That and the fact that I still care so much about giving the audience its money’s worth. I never watch my own performances; it makes me too uncomfortable. And I almost never read reviews. It amazes me that criticism still bothers me. I mean, what damage can criticism do to my career? And yet as an entertainer I still so much want to feel loved by the audience that it bothers me terribly when I’m not, so I’d rather not know.
But I do know who I am. It has taken me a long time to be completely comfortable being Bill Shatner, to get beyond the sometimes protective bravado and accept the fact that it is no longer necessary for me to send myself valentines. I was asked at one point how people react when I walk into a room. I had to give that some real thought: Mostly, what I feel is their smiles of acknowledgment. I see recognition on their faces and, as a function of age and perhaps accomplishment, respect. It is always, “Mr. Shatner, so nice to meet you. I’m honored.” To which I respond, “What are you honored about?” It happens often enough to remind me that I have been around long enough and done enough so that I have become a familiar face. People do think they know me, and depending on their age they know me in different personalities. The oldest people know me as Captain Kirk. People in middle age know me as T. J. Hooker. Younger people know me as Denny Crane. And the youngest people who do know me now recognize me as the Priceline Negotiator.
I am not in any hurry to find out what death is like. The optimist in me finds those positive aspects. Perhaps I won’t be lonely anymore. And I doubt I will worry about being broke ever again. And I won’t feel the pain of watching a person or an animal I care about suffer. Those aches I feel when I wake up in the morning will finally be gone. But … but …
I can make the jokes about it: Finally I’ll be on time for a funeral! But I will continue to put off that event as long as humanly possible. I have, as Spock wished us all so many years ago, lived long and prospered. And it remains my goal to go where no man has ever gone before. When the time comes, though, I will be so thankful for the good fortune I have been given, for the people who have made this journey with me, for the joy I’ve found in animals and nature, and then I will fight for one more day. I will, I know I will, do as Dylan Thomas urged and rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Acknowledgments
I ALSO WOULD like to acknowledge my friend and fellow Yankee fan, the late Carmen Lavia. Carmen truly had a lust for life and his many, many friends will hear his laughter echoing in our minds forever. And of course I would like to thank Carmen’s longtime associate Peter Sawyer, for his substantial contributions under difficult circumstances. I also want to express my appreciation to Kathleen Hays, who does everything that needs to be done, solves every problem, answers every question, and does so with grace and a smile. She takes the bumps out of the road. Our publisher, Tom Dunne, is simply one of the best people, not just in our business, but on our planet. He cares about the right things and understands the power of the printed word to make a difference. Stephen Power has the great editor’s gift of being able to push and pull without leaving his prints on the page; it requires a brightness of personality, knowledge, and taste that I greatly appreciate.
This is a book about aging and in my own life no one does it better than my friend Rich Soll. His never-waning fascination with the eddies of life have long amazed me, and this is my opportunity to tell him how much I appreciate his friendship and his wisdom.
This is the third book I’ve done with William Shatner. I was an admirer long before we worked together and the projects we’ve done have only added to that. Here’s the fact: Bill Shatner in private is a wonderful, really smart, remarkably creative, and very decent human being. His mind is always reaching someplace new and more often than is generally known it involves finding a way to use his success to help other people. I want him to know how much I enjoy working with him and how deeply I admire him.
And finally, my appreciation to my wife, Laura. I always end acknowledgments by expressing my appreciation to her, but while she is last on the page she always is first in my life. I am a lucky man to have won her heart. She brings joy to every day of my life.
—David Fisher
ALSO BY WILLIAM SHATNER
Up Till Now: The Autobiography
Zero G
Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man
The Spirit of the Horse: A Celebration in Fact and Fable
About the Authors
WILLIAM SHATNER has worked as a musician, producer, director, and celebrity pitchman, and notably played Captain Kirk on Star Trek from 1966 to 1969 and in seven Star Trek films. He won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role as attorney Denny Crane on the TV drama Boston Legal. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Elizabeth. You can sign up for email updates here.
DAVID FISHER is the author of more than twenty New York Times bestsellers, including William Shatner’s previous memoirs, Up Till Now and Leonard. He lives in New York. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1. A Fortunate Life
2. The Show Must Go On
3. A Passion for Passions
4.�
�� An Emotional Appeal
5. The Basic Ingredients: Health and (Some) Wealth
6. My Curious Quest for Adventure
7. Working to Find Happiness
8. Relationships Are Not All Relative
9. My Principal Beliefs
10. Where Does Time Go?
Acknowledgments
Also by William Shatner
About the Authors
Copyright
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
LIVE LONG AND … Copyright © 2018 by William Shatner. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Rob Grom
Cover photograph © Maarten de Boer/Contour by Getty Images
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-16669-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-16671-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250166715
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: September 2018
Live Long and . . . Page 16
