Amortality

Yep – it’s soapbox time! I read a very interesting article in the March 23, 2009 edition of Time Magazine today. Zack had a psychologist appointment this evening since his psychologist is going to be out of town tomorrow. For whatever reason I forgot to take my laptop with me and I ended up reading an old Time Magazine from last month. I found an article in it titled “Amortality” very interesting. The word “amortality” was coined by the author of the article. Basically what the word means is “you deny mortality”. The article was about the 10 ideas changing the world right now. Amortality was one of these ideas and it was viewed as something positive. I took a slightly harsher view on the whole idea. Within this subject I saw the cause of so many of the ills that are affecting our society and have brought us to the point of the economic collapse in which we now live. I found this one paragraph in the article to be especially telling. “Amortals live among us. In their teens and 20s they may seem preternaturally experienced. In later life, they often look young and dress younger. They have kids early or late – sometimes very late – or not at all. Their emotional lives are as chaotic as their financial planning. The defining characteristic of amortality is to live in the same way, at the same pitch doing and consuming much the same things, from the late teens right up until death.” In that last sentence is the big gotcha – “Consuming much the same things”. What it is basically saying is that our consumption is stuck in this illogical “teenager driven” mode. To me it seems as though the people who live in this ageless way are forever sucking the life and financial health out of the next generation. Who cares if you are 80 years old and refinancing your house for a 30 year mortgage. It doesn’t matter! The debt can just be passed along to the next generation. I am not passing judgment by my statements. In many ways I am one of these “amortals”. One of my fondest wishes is to celebrate my 85th birthday by skiing “Anticipation” (a blue run on the North Peak at Keystone). Of course that may not be possible if the extreme consequences of global warming take place – but you get the idea. I guess the point is – yes we all want to be ageless. Yes – we all want to be healthy and strong long into our advanced age. But, we can’t forget about those who are to come after us. At some point we need to stop consuming and consuming. Somehow we all have to step back and enjoy the benefits of being strong and healthy for a very long time but we also have to be cognizant of the impact on the earth and the generations to come. Now exiting soapbox left. Our doings for the day were a little bit off the beaten path for the day. Zack didn’t go to school today. Instead he went to “take your kid to work day” at Lockheed Martin. As you probably know by now - I don’t work at Lockheed Martin. However, I have friends who do – Jeff and Amy. They take their daughter who is 8 years old and then they ask their friends if their kids want to go. Lockheed Martin puts on one of the coolest presentations. The kids get to see rocket components and the buildings where the rockets are assembled. There are also lots of neat science experiments and things that are going on. Zack really like the Mr. Nitrogen experience where they had a guy demonstrating the properties of liquid nitrogen. This evening Zack had the psychologist appointment as I mentioned above. He has really been wrestling with a lot of anxiety issues recently. The appointment went pretty well and I spent a good bit of time in the room with him. Normally Zack is alone with the psychologist and I am in the lobby. Today’s session was one of the first in which I really got to hear him talk to Dr. Jane about his fears. Even though he is going through a ton of anxiety, you can see he has made so much progress from a year ago in the fact that he can talk about what is making him feel fearful. After his appointment we grabbed some takeout from both Noodles and Chipotle (Noodles for Zack, Chipotle for me). This evening was as usual was low key as we hung out and watched some TV together. Zack and the dogs are all sound asleep upstairs as I am now winding down for the day. We hope everyone had a wonderful day! Thanks and peace to all – J.