(This appeared in Newsday’s Act2 section)
Getting old is fine. But personal experience indicates that the aging process does not necessarily guarantee the acquisition of wisdom. It certainly hasn’t solved a number of life’s mysteries for me. Such as: Precisely how does television function, transporting specific video and audio—live and in color—from, say, Jeopardy!’s Alex Trebek Stage at Sony Pictures Studios to the little screen in my den?
A couple of decades of formal schooling, a half-century of gainful employment, endless exposure to brilliant minds and galloping technology, and yet so much remains a puzzle. What exactly transpires with internal combustion? Might the egg in fact have come before the chicken? Who’s on first?
It has become clearer to me over time that existence on this planet is one extended whodunnit, with not nearly enough helpful clues. And hardly any answers. Just how do you hit a round ball with a round bat squarely? Why do we dream? How come pi isn’t a rational number? What’s with cats and cardboard boxes?
Obviously, there are people with different interests and varied talents who can figure out some of these things. My brother has particular engineering insight, is great with his hands, can fix about anything. When I was facing surgery for a heart valve replacement, I noted that he had experience doing valve jobs.
“Not,” he said, “while the engine is running.”
So there you go. Even he didn’t have every solution. Things can be Googled, but there are limits to the insights provided there. Photography baffles me. Even more so in the digital age. The fact that I can handle a camera reasonably well does not prove that I comprehend the first thing about pixels, which are no more real to me than cheerful mischievous sprites.
The birds and the bees. Neither my parents nor anyone else has been able to explain to me how they stay airborne, using entirely different physical equipment.
More enigmas: The James Web Space Telescope’s ability to display light from a distant galaxy that is 13.1 billions of years old. Bitcoin. Artificial intelligence (something like artificial turf?). Trigonometry. Vaccines. WiFi. (“Based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards”? What!?) Dolly the Sheep. Chess.
Let me ask you something, and I’d like an honest answer: Do you understand baseball’s infield fly rule?
Here I am, surrounded by gizmos with inner workings that are inexplicable. Laptop. Wall clock. Microwave oven. Modems and routers. Telephone. GPS. Wireless objects that nevertheless have wires. Hearing aids. Spectacles.
My lifelong circadian habit of reading the daily newspaper has dispelled some degree of ignorance; there’s basic information to be had there. Still, as a career journalist with enormous respect for my fellow ink-stained wretches, I am keenly aware of what I refer to as the dispiriting “third paragraph.” I submit that in any article, after the first couple of enlightening graphs reporting some marvelous discovery, scientific breakthrough or diplomatic agreement, there always seems to be that not-so-fast caution in the third paragraph. Which begins, “But critics say….”
You know how that goes. Even the most optimistic soul is left with significant gaps regarding the unraveling of society’s stubborn riddles. To keep peeling the hypothetical onion can regularly lead to a lachrymose state of mind—and to the sense of knowing less and less about more and more until you don’t know anything at all.
To my considerable benefit, my wife can—and does—fill in a lot of blanks. Financial know-how. A grandchild’s needs and demands. Scheduling issues. As we barrel through the 21st Century, her awareness of the latest boldface names, movie plots, musical genres, best-selling books and so on is crucial. (I know: Keep up.)
Meanwhile, scratching of this head goes on.