House Calls

Finding Ways to Join the Human Race

When you live into your seventies, there is hardly a day when one person or another in your life isn’t suffering from a health crisis. The infamous “organ recital” that precedes many conversations with friends becomes an opportunity for body-talk intimacy, and its notes endure, at least for me, long after the friends go home.

Some of my deepest current friendships, in fact, are rooted in the fact that people I used to know more casually have recently taken ill or been bereaved, and I’ve upped the ante on our friendships by staying in touch and traveling to make house calls. Several years ago, at Rosh Hashone, I pledged to myself that I would stop dodging scenes of death and illness and start fulfilling the mitsve of g'milut hasadim, acts of lovingkindness, as part of my acceptance of getting old. In taking that on, I have discovered new feelings for certain people, new levels of admiration and compassion as I witness them coping with misfortune yet reciprocating the lovingkindness.

It’s all part of my larger scheme to try to join the human race in my old age — to absent myself less and less from life, to say “yes” more than “no,” and to be less paranoid about the culture that surrounds us.

In truth, I’ve always been a snob and a curmudgeon, defending myself from anxiety and jealousy by dismissing a lot of things as no-count and stupid. These are habits of mind that are hard to change: the quick resort to criticism of everything commercial; the instant rejection of new cultural trends as just that, “trendy” and superficial; the running script that says, “I’m not part of that,” and “Jeez, can’t we do better than that?” and “What a load of crap!”

This IS plenty of crap surrounding us, of course, plenty that deserves scorn and rejection! The horrible complexity of America’s profit-making healthcare labyrinth (yeah, but those miracles of medicine are something else!); the idiocy of our so-called democratic system (yeah, but the alternatives are worse); the violence of film and television offerings (yeah, but you watch nevertheless!); the inanity and perversity of so much social media (so stay in your cave, go ahead . . .). I mean, don’t get me started — I could complain all day, but I’m trying to stop.

It helps to think of a short story by my friend Mark Morganstern, in which he portrays the Buddha shopping in a big box store, with a shopping cart that is overflowing with stuff. The narrator of the story comments to the Buddha at the cash register, “That’s quite a shop you’re doing,” and the Buddha replies, sheepishly “There’s nothing I don’t like.”

Now, that’s a sentiment to aspire to: to be amazed rather than fazed. It makes for greater happiness than “Bah! Humbug!”

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Two invitations, now:

1. Visit the new edition of ALTE: Getting Old Together, #14, on the theme, “Non-Human Beings,” by clicking here. (It looks best on a computer screen or pad, not a phone, but it will work on any device.)

2. I’m running a dirt-cheap sale on my books, including two that were published in the past year, AMERICAN TORAH TOONS 2 and my novel, HYMAN. Please check them out at my website, Babushkin’s Playhouse, and show me some g'milut hasadim . . .