Fall Falling Leaves Moon
Psalm 90:10 (RSV)
10 The years of our life are threescore and ten,
or even by reason of strength fourscore;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
In the middle of reading this long article by Ezekiel J. Emanuel in the Atlantic, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” The argument so far has a rationale based on increasing life being linked statistically with a longer period of disability and illness. Why suffer yourself and why suffer the costs to your family and society? Why not just die at 75? The Jews believe 3 score and ten is a full life and anything beyond that is bonus time, so from that perspective 75 is within one metrics range.
How you respond to this article is of interest to me, and I’ll reserve my final opinion until I’ve finished, but here is my first response.
Emanuel has a lot of information about these issues as Professor of Health Care Management and Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. I’ll stipulate his data. And, I’ll stipulate that all of us will have opinions on this issue whether well-informed or informed by anecdote alone or, more likely, some combination of the two.
What’s unusual, of course, is Emanuel’s bald claim that he has a limit in mind for his lifespan. The exercising, right-dieting, medically attuned crowd (put me squarely here) are what he calls The American Immortals. That is, a group of folks who want to believe in life everlasting, or at least life lasting as long as possible. This clever phrase says a lot about Emanuel, but is not so illuminating for its target group.
Here’s what I think is wrong with Emanuel’s position. He seems to have an instrumental view of human life, spending considerable time showing how creativity, cognition and overall productivity decline after peaking anywhere along a broad bell curve with its flattened top extending between 30 and 60. After 60, unless you are an outlier, (and he says American Immortals believe they are all, or will be, outliers) it’s a long slump toward vagueness and discomfort.
In other words, as I read him, Emanuel doesn’t want to go into the process of decline. He’d rather phase out before that all gets too far underway. He wants to be remembered as vital, productive, keen. So say we all. But. Life is about more than productivity, creativity, thinking.
It is also about loving, about following the journey where it leads, about mystery. The Great Wheel speaks in analogy about this exact matter, the journey from birth to maid to mother to crone, then across the veil. Or, from birth to youth to adulthood and the third phase. I suppose you could say Emanuel is a latter day Stoic. I can see him in his chair, slumped with his toga around, arms dangling, veins open. As for me, I’m following this ancientrail as far as it goes, not for immortality, not for more productivity, but for life itself.
It is, I think, too easy to make shibboleths of work, of peak performance, especially in American culture. What of the supper table around which sit mechanics and waitresses, toll-booth operators and farm hands? What of the holiday meal with its small table for the young ones, their parents and their parents eating together? What about the grandchild who still wants to hold grandpop’s hand, even though he’s infirm? Life is about more than work, more than vitality, even. Life is not individual only; life is also embeddedness in the lives of others.
