It is said that our sense of time begins when we are born. Just ask yourself how far back you can remember. Can you remember your mother or father? What is the earliest memory you have of either? I remember my dad returning home from his work at the Harmon Watch Company. The door to our second floor apartment on West 96th Street would open and he would be there in his winter cloth coat. He’d give me and my twin brother a hug, and his end of the day whiskers would feel rough and wonderful against my face. No sooner was he in the door than we’d insist that he play with us. I do remember, as a very young child, urging him to cavort with me when my mom said that he couldn’t because his mother had died. That moment has stayed with me all my life. Perhaps because it was an early introduction to the concept of the permanence of death. So why does a much older man remember that moment as clear as day? I think we all have those formative moments and they remain with us always.
My wife and I were very lucky to have two children, a girl and a boy. They are both grown now with children of their own and we are very lucky in that they come to see us at our house in Great Barrington. Our son, Jonas, comes up from New Orleans where he runs a thriving consulting business, and our daughter Sarah is a professor and chair of the Political Science Department at the College of New Jersey. Since I’ve made my living as a political scientist my whole life, it is very gratifying to see her follow me into the “family business.” I am proud of her administrative capability in the academic world, which may be one of toughest and, on occasion, the most mean-spirited of occupations. In any case, she does it well and our son does his work well, and I suppose that is really a pretty good place in life to be.
As our lives progress along not always predictable paths, what can we really expect? We certainly know about the inevitability of death, but we don’t know when it’s going to happen and what form it’s going to take and that makes life’s guessing games, well, interesting. We do get occasional tastes of the inevitable. For example, we get ill which can be a forerunner of death. How many times does one come close to dying? How many car crashes have you been in or been close to? A quarter inch further to the left of the highway and you could have been dead. It’s really incredible when that happens. You reach down in your car to switch radio stations or open a bottle of Coke and that split second could cost you your life.
It is amazing when we make it to or past what is statistically considered to be our life expectancy. How much of that is due to the fact that we think about what we are doing? How much of it is just a sense of entitlement? We keep hearing about life expectancy and if the average age at death keeps rising, do we really think that we will live 79.05 years? That’s the average in the United States and it’s up .08 percent from last year. So just think about this. You expect to live to be 80 but how much does that expectation itself determine how long you will actually live? In other words, what’s the psychology of death? The behavioral psychologists have obviously done studies on this and that’s important. At least, I think that it is.
