Becoming 90

 So, this 90 thing is getting complicated. First of all, sleeping ain’t what it used to be. I imagine I’ve gone from getting 8-10 hours a night, to getting 3-4 hours a night on a reasonable night.  Yeah, such fun.

And then, I keep seeing postings on FB or even my e-mails about people I know, either personally, or through TV/movies life, and it turns out they just croaked.  And most of them are younger than me.  Of course, I still have my role model, a young lady who lived with us as the wife of one of my colleagues when we lived in India, during the mid 1960s. She is now 103, living alone and still observing nature, in Rhode Island.  Yep, she’s a champ.

But then, I am also a 90-year old observer. I still have memories of me at maybe age 5-6, sitting in my Front Room in the early 1940s, in our midtown Manhattan railroad flat, listening to the radio—yeah, that thing. I listened to The Shadow, and others of that ilk. But I also remember listening to FDR tell us about Pearl Harbor, and then tell us about Nazi Germany, and our role in ridding the world of those evils.  And this is what troubles me perhaps the most about being 90. The Humans killing other Humans.  I read often about that Christian belief in the power of humans to resolve issues, mainly all by being nice to one another. Except humans mostly are not nice to one another.  It seems to me that I have almost never stopped reading about someplace in our world where humans are gunning down the folks who live in their world. First it was that Second World War thing. Then it was Korea, then Vietnam, and then the Middle East. Yeah ever since 1947, folks in the Middle East have been killing one another. First they were killing Jews in Israel, but then they just started killing one another, without of course, ever stopping their killing of Jews.

But it seems, every time I turn around someone is killing their neighbors so they can assert power in whatever sad part of our globe on which they live.  Yeah, life on Earth seems to involve killing as a routine.

OK, so I’m turning 90. What that means is that I have somehow escaped the killing machines.  Now, to be Fair, Life itself is a killing machine. Yeah, apparently we are created so we can eventually die. And we are supposed to do something so as to be remembered. But that something often revolves around the death machine of life.   You know . . . the Martin Luther Kings of our world who existed briefly to show us how to be civilized and stop that White on Black killing machine. You know, -- Be Civilized toward one another. That’s not too hard is it?

But then Donald Trump happened, and he said, “Yeah that is too hard. We weren’t made by God to be nice to one another. We were made to be nice to ourselves, That’s it, folks. Donald’s Central Principle of Life = Be Nice to Me. You don’t matter.  And, so as I age from 90 to 94, I will have to watch Donald Trump destroy America. Ah, well, such is Life. Maybe Life will finally get The Donald and put him out of his misery, and then the World can resume trying to become civilized. That would be nice. Huh?