EVEN A PHILOSOPHER FORGETS HIS AGE

EVEN A PHILOSOPHER 
FORGETS HIS AGE

By ALEX P. VIDAL

When asked by a lady, a fellow lawyer, how old is he, a living philosopher goofed, nay hesitated: "I'm seventy...sssssee-ven!"

If you were born in 1931 and the question about your age was asked in 2011, that means you are 80, not seventy...ssssee-ven! 

Nonetheless, I was so rude to laugh in front of the living philosopher while the lady guest was listening. It turned out the philosopher was nursing a fever and was coy to admit it. My apologies, Mr. Socrates!

Non-issue. Everybody forgets something; we all forget dates and mathematical figures. We either forget our age or we deliberately violate geometry if we can't avoid the question. A graduating mass communication student doing internship in our publication told me in 1999, "Sir, we have been told by our professor to refrain from asking about a person's age. I won't ask about your age but I figure you are in your early 20s."  I retorted, "I will neither confirm nor deny it because I don't find it comfortable talking about my age. Let's just talk about history instead." 

"Sure. Let's include also the topic about sex, about Sigmund Freud and the Oedipus Complex since I don't know my biological father," she snapped back smiling. 

THINKER

Plato, second greatest thinker in history of all time next to Confucius, according to Dr. Will Durant, died on his sleep after a night of dancing. He was 83. Since Dante wasn't yet born at that time and hadn't yet written his Divine Comedy, nobody could tell whether Plato, the precursor of dualism, went to heaven or hell. We can only surmise he died dancing in the clouds. 

Sophocles, the Greek tragic poet, cried out for joy on his 80th birthday: "Thank God it's over."

But perhaps Sophocles might not have written an Antigone, if "it" had indeed ended for him before he was 80, and perhaps Caesar might not have felt his mark on the Western world if his soldiers had not been able to use their old marching song: "Men of Rome, lock up your wives, our General has arrived."

It certainly did not affect the work of Emperor Justinian of Rome whose wife was Theodora, and quite a girl. The story of Theodora's sex life is not well known to us because it is all in Latin, written down by her biographer, Procopius, and unprintable in the English language, even in this age of Lady Gaga and iPod. But the amazing Theodora did not seem to affect the work of Justinian, who gave the Western world its legal code.

DEATH

As we grow older we are more and more concerned with death; the death of others, of course.

"What did he die for?"; "How long was he sick?"; and "How old was he?" This is the most important of all. When a fellow dies who was 55, and you are 56--that's bad. You feel that perhaps they are beginning to call up your class, and the only thing you can do is toy with the idea that maybe the guy was really more than the age given in the obituary.

Thornton Wilder, in his magnificent novel, Ides of March, quotes the great man of antiquity, "Let us welcome old age that frees us from that desire for their embraces--embraces which must be paid for at the cost of all order in our lives and any tranquility in our minds."

Caesar was assassinated long before he reached "old age," but would it really have made any difference? Of course not. The day that Caesar hoped for never comes for any man.

W.E. H. Lecky quotes from the writings of St. Gregory the Great. When celibacy was introduced into the priesthood it was not retroactive--those who had wives were permitted to remain married. St. Gregory the Great describes the virtue of a priest who, through motives of piety, had discarded his wife. As he lay dying, she hastened to him to watch the bed which, for 40 years previously, she had been allowed to share, and bending over what seemed the inanimate form of her husband, she tried to ascertain whether any breath remained when the dying saint, collecting his last energies, exclaimed, "Women, be gone, there is fire yet!"

WISH 

Before he died, Benjamin Franklin said to his wife, "Debbie, I have only one wish: I'd like to come back to earth a hundred years from now to see what progress has been made."

This, of course, may be said by every human being of every age, and at every hour. The "next hundred years" will always be momentous, no matter when it is your time to go. 

The most sensible attitude is to do our job and finish the thing out with as few complications as possible. Marcus Aurelius (180 B.C.) said: 

"Consider that the great universe, of which thou art only a trivial speck, is governed by fixed laws, and be therefore content in all things, and especially to die at any time, and abide God's will of thee, whether of individual future life, or dissolution into universal mind and matter."