Are there virtues and vices characteristic of later life?
Even to ask the question can seem terribly old fashioned. It smacks of the 19th century rather than our 21st.
But moral theologian Edward Vacek believes it is helpful to discuss the issue. That’s what he did last week at a Boston College conference entitled “Living the Journey: Spirituality for the Second Half of Life.”
This March, the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging held their annual conference. Jim Firman, the CEO of the National Council, asked an audience of some 2,000 professionals to raise their hands if they favored the health care reform bill.
Almost all the people in the hall responded, indicating their strong support. When Firman asked for those opposed to the then-pending legislation, virtually no raised hands were to be seen.
“New England is the place where grandparents were invented. It was one of the first places on earth where people routinely lived old enough to have a full biblical three score and ten, and then some.”
So stated Jane Kamensky, a historian on the Brandeis faculty, in answer to a question posed by me. At a meeting of the writers’ group PEN New England, I had asked whether she and her fellow author, Jill Lepore, had included any old people like me in their 2008 novel Blindspot.
“We are made to persist, to complete the whole tour. That’s how we find out who we are.” These words come from Tobias Wolff’s book, In Pharaoh’s Army, and find an echo in my experience.
My route to self-knowledge goes through surprise, mystery, radical change, providence, and hope. The years teach me how everything is swathed in mystery, with layers underneath layers of things to be known, with no end ever in sight, and the search for truth the most appropriate activity.
As of last week, my friend Rachel had already seen the smash hit movie “Avatar” five times. Once she brought her 85-year-old father. Her fears that he might not like it proved altogether unwarranted.
So count Rachel among those providing the more than two billion dollars that Avatar has grossed worldwide. She has joined millions of other viewers in adding to director/producer James Cameron’s huge pot of gold. Monetarily, if not artistically, he has build on his earlier blockbuster, “Titanic”.
Americans consider the ten years just past the worst decade in the last half century. Only about a quarter of us hold a generally positive view of the 2000 – 2009 period.
These findings come from the Pew Research Center, a reliable source I sometimes use as a launching pad for columns. These particular results strike me as helpful for weighing the relative importance of historical events we have lived through.
About this time last year, I wrote a column listing some hopes for the coming new year of 2009.
Regrettably, precious few of my hopes for peace have come true. Certainly not my wishes for a settlement between the Palestinians and Israel, or for peace among and within African nations.