Despite the boomers' zealous attempts to stop time - with fitness and anti-aging products, with cosmetic enhancements by needle, laser and knife - time has caught up.
The deaths of iconic figures and the noisy debate over assisted suicide have brought boomers face to face with their nemesis. "Suddenly," The New Republic observed, "we are all speculating about the feeding tubes in our future." Boomers want to control mortality so they're looking at living wills, and legal and medical options.
I've visited the future, and it isn't pretty.
Ah, but that's the problem with assuming you are in charge of your own life, and that pleasure, selfishness, and self esteem is the aim of life.. . Sick? See a doctor. Pregnant? Have an abortion. Tired of an old spouse? No fault divorce...eventually you face death...which is why assisted suicide is such a nice idea: You can even be in charge of death...
One of the lessons that John Paul II gave to us in his long dying is that even in the fragility of illness, ones life is valuable. God does not look at the beauty of our face, nor to our wealth, nor to our ability to have a pleasent life under our own control.
The Objibwe saw the elderly as honored, holding the wisdom of the circle of life. And those who were senile, weak, or even confused, were not "non persons" to be starved but people who were partly on the other side and could intercede for the rest of us.
Philippinos have a similar idea about the elderly and You follow God's will in this matter...which is one reason I am in the Philippines with my husband, whose health is good but frail: so that we will not have the desperate depersonalization of health care in "modern" hospitals, but where we also will be cared for in our old age.
Poor Maureen, she doesn't know that all things work for the best for those who love God and follow HIS purpose...
This small hope is what the weak can teach the proud.
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