Time and death

Hey all,

I'm twenty-two now, I find. I guess it's taken me a day to get used to the idea, as twenty-one is a sort of milestone for all of us, just as sixteen and eighteen are. My younger sister reminded me that it's the last one I'll have. I guess in the youthful sense it is. My next one will be thirty, I suppose, when we all start thinking we're getting old. Eight years, but everyone says the time flies after that. I'm not sure that's true except in the retrospection of those who have already attained later years.

It puts me in mind of some thing I've been thinking about for some time. Age and aging. In light of the decline of our civilization, people often site the degeneracy of our youth. But who talks about the degredation of the elderly? Not many! I come into contact with a great many people now at the school (and I did get promoted), from kindergarteners to their grandparents. And I have a good many personal contacts, of course. I think we often take it for granted that the elderly are due some sort of respect and reverence for their years, perhaps because they've "been through it all". And the elderly are expected to act in a particularly decourous way, often being some what more humble and reserved.

But look at the world! Not so much "age" itself as the process of "aging" is society's abhorrence. Look at all the wonder drugs and treatments to slow down or prevent certain effects of age. There are things to keep your skin smooth, to grow back or colour your hair, and, what I believe to be the most insidious of all, drugs to keep the, shall we say, "animal parts" active longer. Viagra and the like. I see commercials now for this stuff with white-haired people being told to pop a pill "when you feel the time is right". In the third and final chapter of the Godfather movies, one of the old mobsters tells an old rival that he wants peace in his old age. He says he wants to see his grandchildren grow up and that he's lost "the lust for women". I believe the dulling of the animal passions has been the reason for the wisening that occurs in old age.

As a young man with his share of animal spirits (as we all do) I think I can speak to the problems of the much-vaunted youthful vigour. Is it not in the natural order for these things to pass away? And with the loss of wild passion should come an awareness of the future and inevitable death. The problem is that society hates death because they know that those who espouse today's promiscuous lifestyle have only to dread it. And so they tell the aged that they shouldn't have to lose the vigours of youth and should strive with all their might (and money) to prevent it.

The result tends to be that our elderly are more youthful: again, that's in my experience. And I will not say that all effort to retain health and vitality is vain, wasteful or sinful. Much less is decrepitude a virtue. But within reason. I find that a rift exists between those few surviving from my grandfather's generation (he's a WWII Purple Heart and will be eighty-eight this year) and those of, say, Bill Clinton's generation, the Baby Boomers if you will. Bill Clinton's sixty-one this year! But he's from the original hippie generation. One thing I always took for granted when I was a child was that old people didn't curse like every one else. Part of that can perhaps be attributed to the naivete of youth, but I think often it was true. I've never heard my grandfather curse, and I've seen him electricute and otherwise maim himself many times and in many ways. I know it was never universal, but it stands to reason, does it not, that since the tendency to swear is an impassioned response to stressful stimuli, those who manage to keep their hormones raging and ready for one sort of youthful activity will continue in others?

And I think it is extremely harmful to the young to be unable to look up to the old. It's less and less that the elederly can be held in higher esteem and set apart from the folly of youth because they're trying to retain the things that lead to that folly. Does this mean I believe we should all get old as soon as possible? No, but we all have a duty to control our passions by reason and I think it's wrong to fear the natural processes that facilitate that. Age should be a venerable thing and the aged are closer to God and His judgement than most of us. They should be allowed to prepare for that meeting. I could write about this for ever, but I think I'll stop and ask for your comments. I now know that at least two people have seen this new blog, so I hope to hear from you! Really, agree/disagree? Personal observations? Lay it out there. God bless.