By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO — Unlike Jesus, I don’t plan on a resurrection and I really don’t know for sure what happens after this life. And that suits me fine. It is this life, and doing some good works while here, that matters to me; don’t have much to say about any other world.
Writing in Time this past week (the cover story is “What if there’s no Hell?”), Catherine Mayer has brilliantly coined a new phrase: “amortality.” She chronicles the increasing longevity of many Americans and then focuses on that segment of our civilization that is simply not acting our age—older folks who run marathons, people who have cosmetic surgeries or eat seaweed, dabblers in hormone and steroid therapies that collectively have blurred what I consider to be the edifying seasons of life.
“Amortality,” writes Mayer, “the burgeoning trend of living agelessly…is a product of the world many of us now inhabit, a sprawl of virtual Las Vegases, devoid of history and shorn of landmarks that provide guidelines for what is expected of us as the years pass.”
Like anybody else, I enjoy feeling still quite young and creative at the age of 58. But I cherish the wisdom the years have given me, the acceptance of failure and mistakes, the deeply liberating feeling of not having to be adulated and venerated. I want to stay as fit as I can for as long as possible but I don’t want to stick around forever, either. There comes a time when this life-extension thing, with its skin lifts, its burlesque fashions, and its growing abandonment of responsibility for the greater society (why not read to kids at a library rather than dabble in chemically-driven carnal banalities, old fellow?) deteriorates into pure narcissism.
Sorry, I don’t think people should have children in their 50’s or even older; a child requires a parent who is young enough to truly grapple with the complexities of rearing and nurturing a kid and who is not distracted by vanities, physical self-importance, and the need to prove one is not a grandparent. A teenager also benefits from the presence of a grandparent who brings the imprint of personal history, memory, and perspective to a conversation even as young people are increasingly subdivided by cyber language, textual communication, and digital discourse. Kids actually want stories, not sap from an older person who is distracted by presciption-written conceits. They want hear about God from a person who isn’t trying to outsmart God.
I don’t want to forget the meaning of rain pounding on my windows and I don’t have any interest in living long enough to see humanity finally grounding itself out of a meaningful existence. I want my grandchildren (if I am to be blessed with them) to think of my strength as measured in insight and the acceptance of life’s good and bittersweet seasons. And I want to make room for their own children.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com