But why not tell my mother about Dr. H’s death? Why withhold this information? For the same reason I never uttered the word “goodbye” in the emergency room while the nurses prepped her for surgery. Because I want her to get better. It’s that weird way I used to think of Farrah Fawcett, how I refused to watch the TV special following her death: if you don’t think about cancer, you don’t have as much chance of getting it. Logically, it makes no sense. Even icons die.
In my formative years, Farrah was it—the big Wow—an infallible superstar. I suppose my mom is my superstar, strained as our relationship has been. And my dad, too. I mean, something must have clicked. Both my parents were teachers. I am a teacher. Becoming a teacher, for me, didn’t seem like a choice—rather, it seemed like the only logical path to take, the only career noble enough, worthy of my pursuit. Teaching is a big potato.
When she tires of sorting photos (which sustains her attention for about ten minutes), I put in a DVD of Monk, the cozy whodunit detective series that she used to enjoy before the stroke. Forgetting I’m still in the room with her (her brain ignores everything to her left), she clicks the episode off halfway through. When I ask, “Oh, are we done?” she looks startled.
“I didn’t know you were still here.”
“I’m here, but I can leave if you want.”
“I’d like to get in bed and take a nap.”
“Don’t you want to see how the story ends?”
“Not really.” She pauses. Then she clicks the television back on and apologizes. “That wasn’t very nice of me.”
Thinking of others. Her brain is starting to work. I cling to moments like this.
“No problem,” I say. “I’ll stay till the end of the show, then I’ll leave so you can be alone.”
“Good.”
I’m not sure if “good” refers to my staying a while or my leaving soon. Probably the latter. If I help her into bed, I’ll verbally coach her through the process so she can spread the blanket and cover her feet herself—the blanket-spreading will take four or five minutes. If she gets into bed after I leave, the caregivers will do it all for her—blanket-spreading done in three seconds.
As the episode nears its conclusion, I fire up my laptop and check my Facebook newsfeed. My friend has twenty-nine responses. I add mine: “Oh, Steve, I am so sorry. Thinking of you.”
Thirty-Six
I question my mother’s quality of life in the rest home. And I question the decisions I’ve made over the past year, and whether those decisions have bettered or worsened her existence. Every emergency room event, every surgery, hospitalization, nursing-home admittance—in each situation, the nurses and/or doctors ask the same question, either verbally, in hushed tones while we huddle in the hallway, or in writing, as part of the admittance paperwork: If the patient’s heart or breathing were to stop, should the patient be resuscitated or allowed a natural death?
I also wonder about the less dramatic situations, the day-to-day moments over the past year. For months I (and other family members) have coaxed her, almost forced her to eat, to lift her head, open her eyes and see the hallway walls as I wheeled her through the hospital corridors in what they call the “pink chair” (which is really an elevated bed on wheels). She didn’t want to do any of this. Her damaged brain wanted to retreat, to sleep, simply withdraw from the world. If left to wither away in her bed, she would have spiraled into a vegetative state, then death. A year later, she’s far from vegetative; she’s alert and cognizant, and with assistance she can even walk a little. But I question her quality of life, and my responsibility for her present situation.
And then there’s my father. I suppose he really is better off in Mexico. His lifestyle—the taxis, the pedestrian-friendly street life, relatives in his town—allows for so much more independence than if he returned to my quiet suburban neighborhood. Then why can’t I sleep following a phone call from him?
I wonder if we can quantify the quality of life.
If you had to choose between a long and uneventful life and a short but exciting life, which would you pick? And how would you arrive at that decision? Can you reduce such questions to purely objective, formulaic equations?
Allow me to explore this notion. And just for kicks, let’s take it to the absurd.
Surely, I owe my propensity for teaching to my parents. It’s in my blood. So what follows are my hypothetical lecture handouts on “Quantifying the Quality of Life.” Pretend we’re in my college classroom and pretend it’s a philosophy class on death. Or life. Keep in mind that I don’t actually teach such a class—I’m not a philosopher. Just humor me.
Okay—so you’ve been handed a packet, the pages of which comprise the remainder of this chapter.
HANDOUT PACKET FOR TODAY’S LECTURE: “CAN WE QUANTIFY THE QUALITY OF LIFE?”
Here’s what we’ll discuss on the following pages:
1.Today’s Discussion Question
2.Assigning Point Values
3.Deriving Square Units of OVERALL QUALITY (sqOQ)
4.Measuring Different Kinds of Lives
5.Average Rank of Satisfaction
6.Comparing Types of Existence
7.Measuring Peaks
8.Homework Assignment (due next class)
9.Reading Assignment (as per homework directions)
Please note—
Mathematical formulas will NOT be on the test. So relax.
1. TODAY’S DISCUSSION QUESTION:
CAN WE QUANTIFY THE QUALITY OF LIFE?
As we’ve discussed previously, the point behind the go-for-the-big-potatoes, go-for-the-small-potatoes idea is to pack it all in—to fill your life with valuable contents, the more the better. Dying at 20 deprives you of goods you’d have gotten if you’d lived to 30, and dying at 40 deprives you of goods that would have come to you if only you’d lived to 70 or 80. I think we can generally agree that, all else being equal, the longer your life, the better. No chalkboard filled with high-level Einstein-type math is needed to figure that one out.
Einstein calculations
But consider this...
2. ASSIGNING POINT VALUES
a.So here’s a life, say 50 years long.
b.And suppose we quantify the quality of this life, say we give it 100 value points—whatever our units of measurement for calculating just how good a life is.
i.50 years @ 100 points
c.If you had to choose between your life of 50 years at 100 value points, or 50 years at 130 value points, you’d probably opt for the second life.
i.50 years @ 100 points = okay
ii.50 years @ 130 points = better = sign me up!
d.Yeah, yeah, quality matters. We know this. But if you think it through mathematically, maybe it ALL comes down to a matter of quantity. How so?
3. DERIVING UNITS OF OVERALL QUALITY (sqOQ)
a.When we measure quantity, we need to measure not just the length of the life, but the height of the box: one unit of quality multiplied by each year.
i.Formula: Duration × Quality = square units of value
Box A = 50 years × 100 value points = 5,000 square units
Box B = 50 years × 130 value points = 6,500 square units
b.Without getting too hung up on the numbers (as though there was any kind of precision here), the underlying principle states:
i.The area of the box represents “Overall Quality”
1.—which accounts for the quantity (longevity—how many years you live) and type of items (big and small potatoes—writing Moby Dick the Sequel: Good Whales Gone Bad and sipping fine wine) that you managed to cram into your 50-year lifespan box.
c.Now do this: Place each item on either the Big Potatoes or Small Notatoes list.
i.Hiking Mount Whitney6
ii.Attending your son’s school play
iii.Gardening
iv.Watching TV (alone)7
v.Watching TV (with your elderly mother in the nursing home)8
vi.Writing your novel9
So then, if...
/>
i.Potatoes is the same thing as square units of Overall Quality
Then we can say...
i.Potatoes = sqOQ
Which means...
i.Potatoes × Duration = square units of Overall Quality
ii.Formula: Π P × D = sqOQ
Box A = 5,000 square units of Overall Quality @ 50 years = 5,000 sqOQ
Box B = 6,500 square units of Overall Quality @ 50 years = 6,500 sqOQ
4. MEASURING DIFFERENT KINDS OF LIVES
a.We could start measuring different kinds of lives.
b.You could live 100 years at 90 quality points.
c.Or you could live 150 years at some lesser point value—less quality but longer duration.
i.We see how it goes:
Box C = 100 years × 90 value points = 9,000 sqOQ
Box D = 150 years × 40 value points = 6,000 sqOQ
Etc., etc., etc. ...
5. AVERAGE RANK OF SATISFACTION
a.Now let’s compare lives relative to the average rank of satisfaction on the Overall Quality scale. Suppose that...
b.A good life, an average life, ranked at an Overall Quality of 10
10 sqOQ ≈ J = good life
c. Zero would be a life not worth having, but no worse than nonexistence (NE)
0/+1 sqOQ ≈ (∞ NE) = K = icky life
d.Negative numbers mean you’re presumably better off dead(BOD)
-1 sqOQ ≥ ≈{Ø} → BOD = L = TERRIBLE life
e.Comparatively speaking, then, Box A (remember our first box?) is an incredible life after all!
i.Average life = 10 points of value?
ii.Box A = 100 points of value?
iii.Things are looking up.
f.Just for laughs, what if we restacked the potatoes in Box A?
g.Same potatoes, rearranged. Look how much taller! Even better!
6. COMPARING TYPES OF EXISTENCE
a.Now do this:
b.First, compare Box A with this very long but unexciting life, Box E
c.Box E = 30,000 years x 1 value point = 30,000 sqOQ
d.Next, do this: Choose between these two lives.
i.Life E or Life A?
e.Technically, Life E contains more quantity of what matters—
i.30,000 versus 5,000
f.Yet I’m pretty certain most of us would not choose Life E
MID-SUMMATIVE EVALUATION:
Even when we reduce the importance of QUALITY by FOLDING it into QUANTITY, we see that the totals don’t account for humanist values.10
7. MEASURING PEAKS
a.What else might we consider when choosing between lives A and E?
b.Even though Life A is shorter, it attains a kind of peak, a kind of...
HEIGHT
c....that isn’t approached anyplace in Life E.
d.Perhaps, then, in evaluating and choosing between rival lives, we should
CONSIDER THE PEAKS
e.Look at the heights. Think not just about how much you packed in, but determine your greatest goods, what you acquired or accomplished.
CONSIDER YOUR OWN LIFE:
i.Do you have 1 or 2 really huge potatoes in the mix?
ii.Or do you have tons of small potatoes & none big?
iii.What’s your ratio of small to large potatoes?
iv.How high are your potatoes stacked?
f.Maybe you just have one or two really giant potatoes, ones that trump a heap of small potatoes. Or vice versa. Maybe nothing matters except the peaks.
g.I think this is what the Romantic German poet Friedrich Hölderlin is getting at in his poem To the Parcae (circa 1800).
In ancient Roman religion and myths, the Parcae (noun; plural) were the female personifications of destiny. The poet wrote:
Grant me but one good summer, you Powerful Ones!
And but one autumn, ripening for my song,
So that my heart, fulfilled by sweet play,
Might the more willingly die, contented.
The soul deprived in life of its godly right
Won’t rest in Orcus, either, not down below,
Yet if the sacred boon my heart craves
Should in the future succeed—the poem—
Welcome, then, silence, hail to the world of shades!
I’ll rest content, even if my lyre and play
Did not conduct me down there; once I
Lived as the gods live, and more we don’t need.
Hôlderlin doesn’t care about longevity. If he can accomplish something really spectacular, if he can reach great heights—through his poetry in particular—that’s enough.
Once he’s lived like the gods, he needs no more.
In thinking about what we want to do with our lives, then, we have to address this question of quality versus quantity. Is quality only important insofar as it gets folded into producing greater quantity? Or does quality matter in its own right as something that’s worth going for, even when it means a smaller quantity? And if quality does matter, does quantity matter as well? Or is quality all that matters? Is Hölderlin right when he says once I’ve lived like the gods, more is not needed?
I imagine that Hölderlin is thinking about the lasting contribution his poetry might make. There’s a sense that if we accomplish something really great, something lasting, we attain a kind of immortality. We live on through our works.
h.Here’s a Woody Allen joke:
“I don’t want to be immortal through my work;
I want to be immortal through not dying.”
i.Yeah, me too. Sign me up.
j.But given our options, maybe we can take some comfort in the possibility of attaining a certain kind of immortality. Semi-immortality or quasi-immortality. Or pseudo-immortality.
8. HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT, DUE NEXT CLASS
1)Study the potato stacks below. Note their relative peaks and volume.
2)Revisit chapter 34 (on creation myths) and chapter 35 (on Choose Your Own Adventure books).
3)Read the attached creation myth (a hybrid of sorts), “Cave of Enlightenment.”
4)Write your own ending to “Cave of Enlightenment.” Be ready to read your story aloud to the class.
9. READING ASSIGNMENT
Cave of Enlightenment—Part 1
In the beginning there was darkness.
There existed no father-daughter relationship, just two estranged adults linked by DNA and yearly phone calls. Both fear (What if my father dies and I never get to know him?) and curiosity (What’s he like? Are we similar? What part of him did my mother fall for back in 1963?) prompted a circuitous journey, a play-it-by-ear voyage via AAA map, from the Garden of Eden (my cozy apartment) to the dangerous desert of Cataviña.
Father and Daughter wandered through the desert while poking the sand for rattlesnakes, not for forty years, but for at least forty minutes, searching for the makeshift sign pointing the way toward a maze of boulders, a nature-made obstacle course promising enlightenment (in the form of ancient rock paintings) in what they assumed would be a dark cave overhead.
On the trail, Father tromped ahead.
Daughter stepped cautiously, slowly. She stood on one leg for an instant, midstride, listening for the rustle of snakes in the sand, anticipating the moment right before the bite, that sliver of time between question and answer, wonder and revelation. Paralyzed with fear, Daughter weighed the risks—continue or turn back? It was then, in that intermediate moment—the blip of time between the firing of one synapse and the next—that all the worldly knowledge unknown to Daughter, the collective consciousness of humankind, flooded her brain with abstract truth, with the specific answer to the same question, if applied to others—past, present, and future, real and fictional—that would explain her own drive to continue: What if Saint Augustine had not explored his thoughts (“the disease of curiosity”), had not written Confessions—how would Western thought have evolved differently had he not taken the risk of applying his background in rhetoric to the principles of Christianity? What if Profes
sor Mackessy at the University of Colorado had given up his research—that risky business of extracting snake venom in plastic measuring cups—which just might lead to a cure for cancer? What if Indiana Jones hadn’t overcome, hadn’t braved the pit of snakes—how many teenage girls of the 1980s would have missed out on his fictional adventures, the lessons of empowerment and go-get-’em that would someday fuel one of those girls to swim the Amazon River, to live her own real-life adventure, a shared mother-daughter journey worthy of deathbed conversation? What if Daughter and Father turned back now, never made it to the Cave of Enlightenment?
She pressed on.
They made it to the cave.
They sat for a while in the shaded respaldo overhang, sipping from their canteens and gazing silently at the primitive, childlike scrawls on the rock wall.
“I have so many things I want to tell you,” Father said, “about the origins of life and the universe and what it all means.”
That was it, the moment leading up to the cataclysmic epiphany, the pause right before the click.
NOW WRITE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE ENDING
Class dismissed.
6. Or the Mexican desert. Or the Amazon jungle.
7. Say a rerun of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or Charlie’s Angels.
8. Monk.
9. Moby Dick the Sequel: Good Whales Gone Bad.
10. Perhaps the authors of the Choose Your Own Adventure series were onto something. Taking the canoe is very risky compared to walking along the riverbank, but I’m willing to wager that most kids choose the canoe.
My mother and I, deep in the Amazon Rainforest—we chose the canoe. We knew good and well that the waters were infested with piranhas and caiman and snakes. But we chose the canoe. I’d choose it again.
Hiking with my father through the snake-filled Mexican desert of Cataviña—poking the sand for sidewinders—in search of rumored cave paintings. Worth the risk? It depends on what one values in life. That trip was a do-over for me, a chance to get to know a father I’d not really known until then—a chance to satisfy my curiosity as well as ease my conscience—what if he were to die before I ever got to know him? I preempted future regrets by choosing a new ending to the Estranged Father story. Taking that road trip gave us the occasion to talk, leisurely and in depth, to let the long silences settle around us when we’d tired of conversation, to simply inhale the sun-baked oxygen perfumed with cactus blooms.
Origins of the Universe and What It All Means Page 12
