Dearest Blog Reader;
I hope this finds you doing well. I of course am doing well.
Well fed on the anniversary of my birth, and at the end of a very successful
trifecta (see last week's blog), where those, who love me more that I deserve,
have showered me with kindnesses and permitted indulgences that if it went on
for much longer would turn me into a five year old brat and who wants to hang
out with a brat. So, now it is time to get my own pop from the fridge, time to
help load the dishwasher, and time to stop being a turd.
As you can well imagine, on this the first day of my next 50
years, I do feel the need to wax poetic. Not that 50 years hasn't been reached
by people wiser and more accomplished than I, they have, and the sales of their
autobiographies suggest that you are interested in what these titans of
humanity have to say. Just in case I do have standing to spout a few lines of
supposed wisdom, I think that I will take that opportunity at this the end of
the first one-third of my life.
That's right with certain medical advances that I am sure
will be available to all of us with universal medical care over the next 100
years, I could very well live until I am 150 years old. Now don't get me wrong,
I don't think it will be a walk in the park. I will have to live a healthy
lifestyle, and take my medicine, and be prepared to leave pieces and parts of
me in medical facilities throughout the country; hips, knees, appendix, a lung.
Who knows, like Tony Bennett, I may have to leave my heart in San Francisco
What with medical advances, and "life saving"
treatments, we will all live to this ripe old age. Some who have come after me
undoubtedly will live longer. Those who have lived life without Big Macs and
are older than me may live that long, but is a life without Big Macs really
worth living? Have you ever wondered about the phrase "life saving?"
"That heart transplant saved her life." "The chemo-therapy saved
his life." "That colonoscopy was a pain in the butt, but it saved his
life." "Good thing she was wearing her seatbelt while texting, eating
super-sized fries, and drinking a fructose infested large Coke, it saved her
life." The medical industrial state and nanny state always seemed a bit
presumptuous to me; "saving" someone's life. Isn't the life just
being extended? Don't get me wrong. Life extension is a concept that I
whole-hearted support, or I will until at least until 2112.
At best, it is a rigged game. Like a proctologist, Death
gets us in the end. It reminds me of a hockey game. The goalie "saved"
the score, but death scores on the rebound. What me worry? I am not. That
reality is a century away; 100 years of an Alfred E. Newman grin is what I have
in store.
It is a bit sobering though. One-hundred more years when 2
generations ago, one's lot had been cast. At 50, you were on the down hill slide;
15 years to retirement and 7 years of living off your kids social security
withholding. Even that scenario had the Pollyannas in Washington
Instead of the downhill slide, I am just arriving at the
launching pad. I only have to punch a clock for 15 more years and the I get to
live off the teat of human kindness and governmental largess for the next 85
years. Now that is an investment that I can get excited about. I thank you great great grandsons and great
great grand daughters. While you are working until age 125, I will be out riding my
bike deciphering the ways and methods of the assassin deer and probably
"saving lives." Don't worry, surely free medicine, medicine without
the economic incentives to attract the "best and the brightest" will
continue to advance and you will have a 75 year retirement. Can a 1400 on your
SAT be turned into medical pioneer with $200,000 in student loans? Suckers!
So now that I am sure that my retirement years are secure, I
can focus on other things. I think that the biggest challenge to the 150 year
thing is really about flexibility. I don't mean the flexibility to be able to
bend over and tie my shoes. That is what slip-ons are for. No, I mean will I be
flexible enough to make course corrections in my life, my attitudes, and my
soul to make 150 worth it. In the old paradigm, Uncle Stubby was clearly an old bastard by age 60, and we only had to put up with him because we figured
that he was only good for another 5 years, what with the diabetes and high
blood pressure. While for a significantly shorter length of time, that was a
fine example of "life saving" medicine.
I'm thinking that if we had to put up with that old bastard
for another 80 years, our forbearance would have grown thin. There surely would
have been a hunting accident by his 70th birthday. While Stub's "old bastard"
diagnoses wasn't firmly made by his daughter at a family reunion after years of
her own therapy until he was 60, he had been on the road for a while. Bigoted
and prejudiced against just about everyone, no one had done right in his eyes
for a long long time. Everyone has their faults, and it was Stubs
self-appointed responsibility to point them out.
Surely he wasn't always like that. Hadn't he been a good
friend, father, husband; at least for a little while? The first missteps to his
terminal diagnosis must have been small. They were just a few degrees off of
the straight and the true. Yet, as the protractor of life stretched out and on
to forty years, that one degree left him way the Hell out there separated from
those he loved or should have been able to love.
I don't believe that it is a question of are we good enough.
By definition, we aren't. We are all a degree or two off true. Even the very
good of us, people who we want to spend time with, are off by a half a degree
from true, and even the good will wander off the path in 100 years and be
separated. No, I believe that the question is are we flexible and brave enough. Are we
pliable and corageous enough to transform, to make the course corrections to stay connected
when we sense or are told that we are getting further away, becoming separated. Are we loving enough to stay
connected for another hundred years?
Take care
Roger
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