I.
During my son's first year of life--and later--I would periodically play a Mahalia Jackson record and dance about the room with little Philip in my arms, both of us laughing with delight. Her music, like all great music from Carnatic to classical, touched me very deeply. That was when I was middle-aged and he was an infant; now he is no longer young and I am old. The great gospel singer's music, unlike so many things that affected me then but leave me cold now, still can bring tears to my eyes.
One of her signature songs is the gospel song, "How I Got Over." The emotions--gratitude praise ecstasy--that she conveys in the song about overcoming the vicissitudes of life is astounding. My soul looks back in wonder, how I made it over...
I remember listening and dancing to this song many years ago; yesterday I listened to it again. The passage of three decades has deepened my experience of this music; then, "How I Got Over," probably had more of a context of having survived a difficult day; now, the deeper meaning, of "How I Got Over" a rather difficult life is joyfully apparent. Although I must say, along with the Spiritual, that "sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down," I am indeed still dancing, figuratively and literally. Not bad, not bad at all.
Some time after listening to that great gospel song again, I thought that those who "got over" might indeed have something to say to those who, as yet, haven't. That is the subject of this essay.
ll.
When my son was a little older, I took him to the Maryland Science Center. One of the exhibits there fascinated me a good deal more than him. When you pressed the bottom-most button, you were presented with a picture of a cohort of one hundred newborn crabs. Each of the upper buttons would have announcements such as "six of your siblings have been swept out to sea," "ten of your siblings have been eaten by birds," etc. until, at the top, only one of the original crabs survives--indicating a survival rate of only one percent! If crabs were able to sing gospel, I would imagine that they would all be singing in a minor key, say, Soon I Will Be Done With The Troubles of the World--very soon indeed! My cohort, American males born in 1945, had an average survival rate at birth of 65 or so, my approximate age now. That means only one in two born then are still alive now--I am pleased, indeed, to count myself among them.
Nature is obviously much more wasteful with crabs than it is with humans. We are at the top of the food chain, very very rarely becoming an animal's meal--while we're alive, at least. We have much to pass on to our offspring to help them succeed in producing the next generation; for this reason, and perhaps others, nature permits us to have a longer lifespan, which, as modern science has amply demonstrated, can be increased considerably by human effort.
So it is nature and an extension of nature, human intelligence, that has helped us to live (relatively) long lives. It is, of course, also luck. Cancer, accidents, suicide, etc. will always cause the deaths--in increasing numbers, as time goes on--of some in a cohort of people born in any given year. Sometimes it is a matter of pure luck to have escaped them. It is also a matter of genes. To my mind, the most significant factor--even more important since it is somewhat in our control--is the quality of life one leads. A good life tends to lead to a good old age. What matters is not just physical survival, but psychological survival: health is indeed very important, but a successful old age is more or less a matter of perspective, a matter of wisdom.
Wisdom--have you read the papers lately?--is always in short supply. Thus it is critical for all older people who are happier now than they were when young to reflect on the reasons for this, and to find ever better ways to pass on what experience has taught. That is why, I believe, human evolution fosters survival past the reproductive age. This is especially true, as research shows, for individuals with a positive outlook on life--depressives tend to die at younger ages. Such individuals are still here not only because they like being here but because they have an evolutionary task, that is, to pass on wisdom to the young so one day they too might say, "My Soul Looks Back in Wonder--How I Got Over!"
lll.
Cleaning up my blog, I found this draft fragment written a few years ago. I don't have the heart to delete it and do, alas! have the folly to post it. Life has become tougher and rougher--and that's with the help of a good wife and son! Yes, I am lucky, but I am now not as sanguine about the joys of old age in this world as I was then--except when around loved ones or friends, or when I am writing or listening to or playing music. (And, I am happy to say, I still do these things! Still--)
For those who would like to listen to Mahalia Jackson's version of the gospel song, I have provided a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVr0opLX9Fg
During my son's first year of life--and later--I would periodically play a Mahalia Jackson record and dance about the room with little Philip in my arms, both of us laughing with delight. Her music, like all great music from Carnatic to classical, touched me very deeply. That was when I was middle-aged and he was an infant; now he is no longer young and I am old. The great gospel singer's music, unlike so many things that affected me then but leave me cold now, still can bring tears to my eyes.
One of her signature songs is the gospel song, "How I Got Over." The emotions--gratitude praise ecstasy--that she conveys in the song about overcoming the vicissitudes of life is astounding. My soul looks back in wonder, how I made it over...
I remember listening and dancing to this song many years ago; yesterday I listened to it again. The passage of three decades has deepened my experience of this music; then, "How I Got Over," probably had more of a context of having survived a difficult day; now, the deeper meaning, of "How I Got Over" a rather difficult life is joyfully apparent. Although I must say, along with the Spiritual, that "sometimes I'm up, sometimes I'm down," I am indeed still dancing, figuratively and literally. Not bad, not bad at all.
Some time after listening to that great gospel song again, I thought that those who "got over" might indeed have something to say to those who, as yet, haven't. That is the subject of this essay.
ll.
When my son was a little older, I took him to the Maryland Science Center. One of the exhibits there fascinated me a good deal more than him. When you pressed the bottom-most button, you were presented with a picture of a cohort of one hundred newborn crabs. Each of the upper buttons would have announcements such as "six of your siblings have been swept out to sea," "ten of your siblings have been eaten by birds," etc. until, at the top, only one of the original crabs survives--indicating a survival rate of only one percent! If crabs were able to sing gospel, I would imagine that they would all be singing in a minor key, say, Soon I Will Be Done With The Troubles of the World--very soon indeed! My cohort, American males born in 1945, had an average survival rate at birth of 65 or so, my approximate age now. That means only one in two born then are still alive now--I am pleased, indeed, to count myself among them.
Nature is obviously much more wasteful with crabs than it is with humans. We are at the top of the food chain, very very rarely becoming an animal's meal--while we're alive, at least. We have much to pass on to our offspring to help them succeed in producing the next generation; for this reason, and perhaps others, nature permits us to have a longer lifespan, which, as modern science has amply demonstrated, can be increased considerably by human effort.
So it is nature and an extension of nature, human intelligence, that has helped us to live (relatively) long lives. It is, of course, also luck. Cancer, accidents, suicide, etc. will always cause the deaths--in increasing numbers, as time goes on--of some in a cohort of people born in any given year. Sometimes it is a matter of pure luck to have escaped them. It is also a matter of genes. To my mind, the most significant factor--even more important since it is somewhat in our control--is the quality of life one leads. A good life tends to lead to a good old age. What matters is not just physical survival, but psychological survival: health is indeed very important, but a successful old age is more or less a matter of perspective, a matter of wisdom.
Wisdom--have you read the papers lately?--is always in short supply. Thus it is critical for all older people who are happier now than they were when young to reflect on the reasons for this, and to find ever better ways to pass on what experience has taught. That is why, I believe, human evolution fosters survival past the reproductive age. This is especially true, as research shows, for individuals with a positive outlook on life--depressives tend to die at younger ages. Such individuals are still here not only because they like being here but because they have an evolutionary task, that is, to pass on wisdom to the young so one day they too might say, "My Soul Looks Back in Wonder--How I Got Over!"
lll.
Cleaning up my blog, I found this draft fragment written a few years ago. I don't have the heart to delete it and do, alas! have the folly to post it. Life has become tougher and rougher--and that's with the help of a good wife and son! Yes, I am lucky, but I am now not as sanguine about the joys of old age in this world as I was then--except when around loved ones or friends, or when I am writing or listening to or playing music. (And, I am happy to say, I still do these things! Still--)
For those who would like to listen to Mahalia Jackson's version of the gospel song, I have provided a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVr0opLX9Fg
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