Courtesy of wikipedia.org
I hadn’t seen her for a while, so when we encountered one another in the mail room, I was surprised to see her wearing a back brace. “Bone cancer,” she said in response to my raised eyebrows. Outwardly, I expressed my sympathy. Inwardly, I suffered a spasm of anger. The woman standing opposite me is among the kindest people I have ever met. Good deeds should reap rewards, in my opinion. Even so, I’m cynical enough to know that bad deeds are a more certain route for those with blind ambition.
On a human level, I respect the notion of karma, but I doubt it’s a force in the universe like gravity. More universal still is change. Nature tinkers with matter. Age, for example, gives way to youth, regardless of how noble or kind a person is. As proof of that injustice, if karma structured the universe, my neighbor would not have bone cancer.
Nature favors youth over age, I think, because the young are unaware. Ignorant of impediments, they have no fear of change. They are born to experiment, ready to do Nature’s bidding, eager to smash things. Chaos invites invention.
The ancients, like the woman standing at my side and me, view the world differently. Behind the chaos, we discern patterns and repetitions. Some of us see wonder in that order. Others sense a lack of meaning.
That the old dare to strive for insight could be an affront to Nature. Yet because we exist, I wonder if that tolerance suggests a purpose.
The Pope says the old are the guardians of wisdom. That’s true, to a point. The child needs its parents. But does it need grandparents?
On a broad scale, beyond the family, I see tension between youth and age. Call it cynicism born from years of teaching, but I’ve rarely observed that the young are eager to learn from anyone other than their peers. Why should they? The past has little to do with them. They are the future. In his twenties, Mark Zuckerberg said that young people were smarter than anyone over thirty.
Perhaps we ancients serve as a challenge, an impediment to overcome so that others might advance over the rubble. That would be in concert with Nature’s way. Seeing others as a threat has taken us from stone arrows to nuclear weapons in a twinkling of history’s eye. But if the shambolic progress of our species is in accord with Nature, why does kindness, like that of my neighbor’s, exist?
I ask the question because we stand on the brink of the AI revolution. Capable of creating new worlds without Nature’s interference, what shall we mortals fashion? Will our new frontiers be filled with chaos? Or might kindness fulfill a pattern?
If the latter, then the ancients need make no apology. After all, who knows better about kindness than those who need it? Who holds a greater reverence for life than those about to lose it? If, by our stooped bodies and weathered faces, we teach the young to see us, not as the past, but a harbinger of the future, that would be a gift to them. Death is our common ancestor. Once we realize this, we humans would be fools not to fill the light between the dark with kindness…
The woman in the back brace touches my arm, breaking my reverie. “There’s a party planned for those of us turning 90 this year. I never see you at social events. Why not come to this one?”
Her smile feels like an embrace. Given her troubles, she shouldn’t care whether I attend. And yet, she does.
I return her smile, my hand covering hers. “Yes. We should go together.”
BOYCOTT: Tesla, Apple, Amazon
