I can’t believe I am about to write these words: This month I turn 50. To celebrate, my girlfriend and I are planning to splurge on dinner at Rivoli,the ultra-fabulous North Berkeley restaurant on Solano Avenue. But there’s a chance I may end up picking at my risotto dejectedly before the night is through.
As much as I cling to the feeble notion that 50 is the new 40, there is no getting around the truth: I’m old. The half-century mark is a pretty good sign that Elvis has begun to at least consider leaving the building.
Say it ain’t so.
I’m a baby boomer. I thought we we’re supposed to be immortal. Peace, love and strawberry fields forever. I want my money back.
Thankfully, I feel fine, no different than I did at 20. Except for the occasional sore back and sore feet. Except for the hair where I don’t want it and no hair where I do.
So far, this birthday has given rise to more personal reflections than most, though hitting 30 did seem like a big deal at the time (how quaint). Foremost among those reflections, this very big question: Has it mattered at all that I was even born?
That’s when the life inventory/ checklist kicks in. It runs something like this:
• Offspring: One son. Childhood, idyllic. Teen years hellacious, yet he emerges relatively unscathed. The kid stays in the picture. Check.
• Career: Other than an awful teen job in a warehouse (where I napped in the storeroom as often as possible), I almost always enjoyed the work I was doing. Check.
• Creative fulfillment: I’ve written some things I’m proud of. No Pulitzer yet, but there’s still time. Check.
• Love: Gave it and got it from family, friends and partners. Inexhaustible supply. Check.
• Money: Let’s skip that one.
• God and spirituality: OK. Stop. This is a big one that seems only to have loomed larger as time passed.
First a little back-story. My parents were atheists. So the mere fact that I have gone on to learn some Hebrew, study Jewish history, visit Israel, have an adult bar mitzvah and acknowledge — however tentatively — the existence of God is an amazing stretch, considering where I started.
But I’m not all the way there. Grounded in science and secularism, it’s been tough to give in to that impulse to believe. It’s so much easier to doubt and dismiss.
Yet as my generation and I begin to perceive “time’s winged chariot drawing near,” some of us want to believe the ride will never stop. We want an afterlife, guaranteed in writing.
There’s no denying the comfort factor inherent in religious faith. It permits an infinite continuum. Nothing really ends. And so, the need to believe exerts its tidal energies.
But what if I choose not to believe? Am I mentally ready to consign myself to an eternity of dust and ashes?
The short answer is, I don’t know. Fortunately, as I understand Judaism, I’m not required to adopt an elaborate afterlife scheme in order to be true to my faith and my people.
It’s like my old rabbi once told me in a Saturday morning midrash. He pointed out that the very first letter in the Torah is bet, as in the word b’resheet (“in the beginning”). Bet resembles a three-sided square, open on the left. The sages claimed that the open side represents an opening into this life here on earth. We Jews are not obliged or expected to inquire about what happens above, below and behind that one opening.
In other words, let’s just worry about what we need to do here on earth. Heaven can wait.
So whatever may come later on, I’ll try to remain focused on the tasks of today. Maybe that’s exactly how to build a legacy, whether it ends up being about public accolades or simply the undying love of kids and grandkids.
Years ago, there was a great Doonesbury strip that predicted how we baby boomers will know the end is near: when Esquire Magazine does a cover story on the “25 Hottest Mortuaries.”
So far, my checklist does not include a subscription to Esquire. But overall, I’m happy with my inventory and I will try to have a happy 50th birthday. Who knows? Maybe when I’m 60, this milestone will seem quaint as well.
Dan Pine lives and kvetches in Albany. He can be reached at [email protected].