There are pills and there are pills. I could rally a defense or mount an attack on the original “The Pill,” the birth control pill, which has almost certainly allowed our society, and now much of the world, to change family structure, morality and government. There is also the abortion pill, and the pill for men who are in the, let’s say, drooping time of their lives, and so many other pills that lift us up or let us down. But none of those is the pill I wish to write about. Rather, my pill does not exist and may never exist, but it does raise some really interesting questions.
Enter Ponce de Leon, the conquistador who sought the Fountain of Youth in Florida. Old people still go to Florida in search of it, but what they find in The Villages is rather a pale replay of youthful dreams that still end in death. But our man Ponce listened to legends, and in fact it was reported by stragglers from a Spanish expedition that the natives listened to their own legends, too, by confirming on these pale ‘extra-Florestrials’ the ability to heal all illnesses. The stragglers, knowing that their lives were on the line, complied with their requests to attempt healing, and much to their surprise, found that they were often successful. Thus, the power of belief was confirmed to their astonished eyes. Still, mortality ultimately could not be held at bay.
Now enter my extra-terrestrials. Let’s say that one day late in life I find myself limping along on a short and sad hike when out of the blue a celestial light beams from the sky, carrying with it a glowing man with a large head and a tiny mouth. He holds out his hand to this terrified future me, letting it be known that the pills he holds before him will keep me eternally young, as long as I take one each year. He then beams up, and after I discard my soiled underwear, I count the pills: one thousand, to be exact, meaning that I could stay young for the next one thousand years. I pop one in my mouth and, shizam!,by the time I get home, my hair is grown in full with its youthful color and I am jumping around like the young, bright-eyed pup I once was.
I could imagine what I would do first after that, but after a short while, I would have to think again about this marvelous gift. Yes, I could stay young for a thousand years, but that would mean that I would see my wife die of old age before me, and then my son, and then all future wives and children I might have over so many centuries. I would have to rethink everything before I came to the inevitable conclusion that I must share these pills with the wife, and then the kid. Than I would have to think again: I would have to share this with future grandchildren as well and, thanks to our youth, to our own future children until, in a few generations, we would form a group who would die together at the same age within a few centuries or less. Meanwhile, all our friends would be dead, as might be everything that we hold sacred. Imagine, for instance, the Pilgrim’s view of transgendered children or gay marriage and soft porn on TV, or - say a prayer now - Facebook, not to mention the possibility of dying by nukes or germ warfare or mutant zombie DNA freakazoid lab-generated soldiers. Maybe they would not want to live in that future after all, no more than I might not want to live in ours.
Then again, maybe I would. Much to my surprise, I have found that even the very old, people who I once thought slid gracefully into that dark night, have the same fear of death as the young do, or at least the same desire to keep living. Would I share my pills to give up so many of those thousand years? We can draw analogies: would we give our coat to a loved one, or to anyone, and maybe freeze to death for our generosity? How about giving away those last slices of bread when we are starving? How about sharing that 401K nest egg even when we are not starving? How about sharing any of our earned comforts and securities to those both known and unknown, if we knew that such giving might harm us in the future? How about sharing our wealth even if we thought we would not be harmed but would only lose that cushion of safety (and maybe a few trips in the winter to Florida, that mistaken land of youth)? If not even that, just how generous would we be with our ability to cling to life itself?
I asked my wife the question about sharing the pill, and she responded instantly and with angry passion. “Why would I want to live see my friends and family die?” What kind of monster, she was saying, do you think I am?
I cannot speak for anyone else in particular, but I can speak for myself. I think I know what kind of monster I am. I have fought for prestigious positions and over slights to my ego, so why not over life? Would I give up my seat in the lifeboat? Would I not grab at a swimming man to save my drowning hide? And, in the world that I do know, have I given up what extra I have to the point of losing my security blanket?
The Pill: the original stops life from happening, the one from the ET stops death from happening. In each case, it is or would probably be all about ME. The pleasure to do my will; the opportunity to keep what is mine. Nothing of what I do or keep is forever, but I would like to make it so. I cannot, but that does not stop me. Imagine the view someone standing in eternity might have of me.
It is said of God that he is Love, and let us pray so, for he is also Justice. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” said a dying Jesus, but I sort of do know what I do. The comfort is that St Paul also fell in with the likes of me, saying, “I do not do what I want to, but what I hate” (Romans 7). For Muslims, one gains eternal life if, in the end, the balance of what one has done for the good outweighs what has been done for the bad, and we can only hope that we are judged by the better angels within and without us.
The lesson to me, at least, should be to share the pill and share life, for both would or will run out sooner or later, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all. The curse of humankind is that we can contemplate our future, which must include death. Since we know that all ends in ashes, maybe we can turn that foresight from a curse to a blessing; maybe we can use it to do what we should and not do what we hate. At the very least, I think I know myself well enough now to abandon any longing for the hidden curse of the Pill. ET, get thee behind me and go home, go hooooome.
There are pills and there are pills. I could rally a defense or mount an attack on the original “The Pill,” the birth control pill, which has almost certainly allowed our society, and now much of the world, to change family structure, morality and government. There is also the abortion pill, and the pill for men who are in the, let’s say, drooping time of their lives, and so many other pills that lift us up or let us down. But none of those is the pill I wish to write about. Rather, my pill does not exist and may never exist, but it does raise some really interesting questions.
Enter Ponce de Leon, the conquistador who sought the Fountain of Youth in Florida. Old people still go to Florida in search of it, but what they find in The Villages is rather a pale replay of youthful dreams that still end in death. But our man Ponce listened to legends, and in fact it was reported by stragglers from a Spanish expedition that the natives listened to their own legends, too, by confirming on these pale ‘extra-Florestrials’ the ability to heal all illnesses. The stragglers, knowing that their lives were on the line, complied with their requests to attempt healing, and much to their surprise, found that they were often successful. Thus, the power of belief was confirmed to their astonished eyes. Still, mortality ultimately could not be held at bay.
Now enter my extra-terrestrials. Let’s say that one day late in life I find myself limping along on a short and sad hike when out of the blue a celestial light beams from the sky, carrying with it a glowing man with a large head and a tiny mouth. He holds out his hand to this terrified future me, letting it be known that the pills he holds before him will keep me eternally young, as long as I take one each year. He then beams up, and after I discard my soiled underwear, I count the pills: one thousand, to be exact, meaning that I could stay young for the next one thousand years. I pop one in my mouth and, shizam!,by the time I get home, my hair is grown in full with its youthful color and I am jumping around like the young, bright-eyed pup I once was.
I could imagine what I would do first after that, but after a short while, I would have to think again about this marvelous gift. Yes, I could stay young for a thousand years, but that would mean that I would see my wife die of old age before me, and then my son, and then all future wives and children I might have over so many centuries. I would have to rethink everything before I came to the inevitable conclusion that I must share these pills with the wife, and then the kid. Than I would have to think again: I would have to share this with future grandchildren as well and, thanks to our youth, to our own future children until, in a few generations, we would form a group who would die together at the same age within a few centuries or less. Meanwhile, all our friends would be dead, as might be everything that we hold sacred. Imagine, for instance, the Pilgrim’s view of transgendered children or gay marriage and soft porn on TV, or - say a prayer now - Facebook, not to mention the possibility of dying by nukes or germ warfare or mutant zombie DNA freakazoid lab-generated soldiers. Maybe they would not want to live in that future after all, no more than I might not want to live in ours.
Then again, maybe I would. Much to my surprise, I have found that even the very old, people who I once thought slid gracefully into that dark night, have the same fear of death as the young do, or at least the same desire to keep living. Would I share my pills to give up so many of those thousand years? We can draw analogies: would we give our coat to a loved one, or to anyone, and maybe freeze to death for our generosity? How about giving away those last slices of bread when we are starving? How about sharing that 401K nest egg even when we are not starving? How about sharing any of our earned comforts and securities to those both known and unknown, if we knew that such giving might harm us in the future? How about sharing our wealth even if we thought we would not be harmed but would only lose that cushion of safety (and maybe a few trips in the winter to Florida, that mistaken land of youth)? If not even that, just how generous would we be with our ability to cling to life itself?
I asked my wife the question about sharing the pill, and she responded instantly and with angry passion. “Why would I want to live see my friends and family die?” What kind of monster, she was saying, do you think I am?
I cannot speak for anyone else in particular, but I can speak for myself. I think I know what kind of monster I am. I have fought for prestigious positions and over slights to my ego, so why not over life? Would I give up my seat in the lifeboat? Would I not grab at a swimming man to save my drowning hide? And, in the world that I do know, have I given up what extra I have to the point of losing my security blanket?
The Pill: the original stops life from happening, the one from the ET stops death from happening. In each case, it is or would probably be all about ME. The pleasure to do my will; the opportunity to keep what is mine. Nothing of what I do or keep is forever, but I would like to make it so. I cannot, but that does not stop me. Imagine the view someone standing in eternity might have of me.
It is said of God that he is Love, and let us pray so, for he is also Justice. “Forgive them, for they know not what they do,” said a dying Jesus, but I sort of do know what I do. The comfort is that St Paul also fell in with the likes of me, saying, “I do not do what I want to, but what I hate” (Romans 7). For Muslims, one gains eternal life if, in the end, the balance of what one has done for the good outweighs what has been done for the bad, and we can only hope that we are judged by the better angels within and without us.
The lesson to me, at least, should be to share the pill and share life, for both would or will run out sooner or later, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all. The curse of humankind is that we can contemplate our future, which must include death. Since we know that all ends in ashes, maybe we can turn that foresight from a curse to a blessing; maybe we can use it to do what we should and not do what we hate. At the very least, I think I know myself well enough now to abandon any longing for the hidden curse of the Pill. ET, get thee behind me and go home, go hooooome.
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