Losing a World

And learning to cope with the new one is an experience of several groups of people in our society. At one time they had "places" in society but lost them due to advanced old age, serious disability problems, or by immigrating (there are likely other groups). Every person in each of these groups may yet find a place in the new world, depending on their particular situation, physical and mental abilities, interest, and adaptability. I am focusing on one of these groups in this mini essay—those lucky (?) enough to have reached the advanced old age of 90 and above.¹ Currently that number is reported at 4.7% percent of the US population.² It is expected to grow.

            The world in which 90-year-olds reached adulthood (in my case, 1934-1954) and with which they coped during much of their working years (1954-2005) has passed away.³ One of my earliest childhood memories is the family ice box (the refrigerator came later) and milk delivered to the front porch twice weekly. I became aware of the passing of an old world in 1983, when I skidded from the typewriter to word processing and rather quickly into the personal computer. Telephone booths and landline phones, once common are now things of a former world, since most of us carry personal smartphones, by which we can have instant visual contact with someone half a world away (assuming the phone is not smarter than we). This new world features the presence of artificial intelligence writing television ads and responding to online searches (just give it a google!); online shopping has become a major industry, and television has any number of movies, news shows, and TV serials just a click away. A big change is the advent of GPS and the loss of paper maps! Coping with the numerous changes that a new world brings challenges those at the very far end of things (alas, some far-enders simply give-up coping with technological advances altogether).

            Challenges are not simply technological. Many of us entering the nonagenarian stage of life have lost our life partners, and find the adjustment to solitary living difficult. For example, grocery shopping for one requires a skill that must be learned over time. Intimate hugging and touching are things of the past (paternal and formal social hugs are permitted, and some do find intimacy at the far-end). A thick silence fills the house, broken only by the TV and the startling sound of one's own voice. Retirement from the demands of salaried occupations has brought with it an enforced isolation from colleagues, friends, and other workplace associations. If one has relocated the family residence to a distant city, then close friends of many years are no longer in the picture. Such circumstances contribute to the loss of a familiar world.

            It is not easy for an active person to adjust to the increasing frailty of aging. There is a noticeable decline in one's abilities: balance, hearing, sight, dexterity, stamina, agility, and mental acuity. Eventually the trajectory will result in loss of independence (John 21:18), which is a last stage of living at the far end of things. Far-Enders know that obsolescence is the way of the natural world and eventually come to accept the inevitability of the outcome.

            The Christian synthesis of the 4^th century common era, distilled in many ways from the failed philosophies and religions of the ancient Hellenistic world,⁴ held out hope for a new world, set free from its bondage to decay (Rom 8:18‒17), and hope for personal resurrection in a "spiritual body" (1 Cor 15:35‒57). Such an expectation seems to deny our life experience known through obsolescing (birth, youth, adulthood, the far-end), and prompts the question: does living in this physically changing world mean anything or have any enduring value? The poet appears to have a similar question.

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on a hill.⁵

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Much of this essay relies on self-observation.

²https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/aging_population/cb11-194.html#:~:text=Because%20of%20increases%20in%20life,likely%20to%20reach%2010%20percent.

³In antiquity culture and society changed very slowly. In the modern Western world change is rapid.

⁴The Hellenistic period was the blending of Greek with indigenous cultures in the ancient world from Alexander, the Great (323 BC) to the end of the Roman Empire (410 AD).

⁵Wallace Stevens, "A Postcard from the Volcano" in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Knopf, 1961), 158.

What is the Meaning of Life?

Who among us, at one time or another, has not pondered what the meaning of life is, or asked: Why am I here? What’s life all about? These latter two questions are asking about the life of the individual. This essay, however, looks primarily at the issue from the “perspective” of Life itself.

The dictionary gives two definitions for “mean” used as a verb: (1) to mean is to have in mind as a purpose, to intend; (2) to mean is to intend to convey, to show or indicate, to signify. These definitions lead me to the question: what does Life intend or signify, if anything? Unfortunately, there is no definitive answer to the question. Here is what I think.

According to scientists, the first stirrings of Life on earth were humble:

In those early days lightning and ultraviolet light from the sun were breaking apart the simple hydrogen-rich molecules of the primitive atmosphere, the fragments spontaneously recombining into more and more complex molecules. The products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the ocean, forming a kind of organic soup of gradually increasing complexity, until one day, quite by accident, a molecule arose that was able to make crude copies of itself, using as building blocks other molecules in the soup.¹

This description of origin distantly echoes elements of the Genesis account of creation:

The earth was without form and void, darkness was upon the face of the deep…a firmament in the midst of the waters…separate the waters from the waters…earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed…waters bring forth swarms of living creatures… (Gen 1:2, 6, 11, 20 RSV) 

When no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up…a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground…formed man of dust from the ground. (Gen 2:4-7 RSV)

The biblical account of creation is a hypothesis and the scientific account is a theory. A hypothesis is a “working hunch or single tentative guess”; a theory is “a broader, more definitely established conceptual scheme. The difference between theory and hypothesis is a matter of degree.”²

However Life on earth may have happened, from inception it must have been self-programmed to survive, continue, and progress—judging by the fact that our earth continues to thrive with Life of all kinds. We Homo sapiens joined this great stream of Life millions of years later.³ Our species emerged from the great stream of Life without being consulted and I doubt we will be consulted about life’s ending or the fading away of our species.

One does well to ponder the meaning of Life, even though there is no definitive answer providing insight into our own personal living of Life. Initially, we pick up a little guidance from the influence of parents, and from that beginning we must make do. The simple truth is we live, and Life will become whatever we make of it.

These observations lead me to think of Life as a spectrum; at one end of the spectrum the meaning of Life is simply the living of it; that is to say: staying alive, or simply existing. At the other end of the spectrum the meaning of Life is living it well, or poorly. Within limits we get to decide which of these three options it will be. Living Life well is whatever one decides “well” is. It might be, as many believe, serving God (if God there be) or helping others; or it might be selling more beer than one’s nearest competitor. Living it poorly translates into frustrating the aggressiveness of life. Life aims at constant movement and improvement. Anything that one does to frustrate or block that intention is living Life poorly. Suicide, war, poverty, ignorance, racism, and other anti-life initiatives all frustrate the bountifulness and progress of Life.

For conscious life-forms⁴ what to do with life becomes an existential choice; non-conscious life-forms⁵ progress over time, or not, by means of natural selection, the process by which organisms change based on genes provided by “parents” and natural circumstances. Life’s prime directive for both life-forms is staying alive and progressing in the great stream of life. It is interesting to me that this areligious directive is not unlike that reflected in Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion…over every living thing that moves upon the earth (Gen 1:28).⁶

Perhaps Life’s prime directive will become clearer if one asks oneself what is the meaning of life during a world-wide pandemic? The answer can only be: staying alive!

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 30-31. Here is another description of life’s origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life#:~:text=Life%20is%20a%20characteristic%20that,and%20are%20classified%20as%20inanimate.

²Louise B. Young, Exploring the Universe (2nd ed.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 23.

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution.

⁴Conscious life-forms: capable of thought, will, design, or perception.

⁵Non-conscious life-forms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution.

⁶This prime directive is repeated to Noah with some significant differences (Gen 9:3-7). The formula, “Be fruitful and multiply,” is also found at: Gen 28:3; 35:11; 48:4; Lev 26:9; Jer 23:3.