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May 21, 2006
People Die Too Young
While listening to NPR this morning I heard the sad news that Jaroslav Pelikan died last week at 82. While to most people Pelikan was the world's foremost church historian and historian of Christianity, to me he was my college advisor and a personal friend. I fell out of touch with Professor Pelikan a few years after I left college, and I had always meant to write him to tell him how well I was doing in my chosen career. He had wanted me to go to grad school and pursue an academic career, but I had resisted, knowing that the solitude of writing and research would never work for a hyperextrovert like me. Even though I decided to leave the academic world, he remained supportive of me.
My fondest memories of Professor Pelikan happened during my freshman and sophomore years at Yale. He taught my history section of Directed Studies, a "Great Books" type program in which freshmen who win a slot through the application process get to study intensively in sections of 15 students with some of the world's most famous scholars. I remember the day when it was my turn to give a presentation to the class, and I gave Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy a new twist by comparing Fortune with the chocolate covered espresso bean, and handing out large doses of the candy to my classmates. Pelikan loved the presentation, and later told my father that the next generation lost a great teacher when I decided not to go into the academic life. Later on in the year, Professor Pelikan invited our class of 15 to dinner at his house with his beautiful wife. His entire house was decorated with pelican figurines, and his wife wore a sliver pelican necklace. His office was a room with large windows sunken into a small pond, so that he seemed to float as he worked on his books.
In a moment that may be one of the highlights of my father's life, my dad and I ate lunch at Mory's, Yale's venerable private club and the only union restaurant in New Haven. My dad was in awe of the world famous scholar whose work he had been reading for years, and I think he was surprised at how friendly, accessible and humble "Jerry" was. Dad managed not to embarass me *too* much (it wasn't nearly as bad as the year when he went around telling my seventh grade SAT scores to anyone who would listen) and we had a wonderful meal with Professor Pelikan.
My sophomore year I went through one of those rough patches that a lot of sophomores go through, when I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life and completely freaked out after getting dumped by a computer geek and became obsessed with learning how to program (a hobby which eventually landed me a very good job working for Yale's Academic Computing Services making a shocking $10/hour during my senior year in college and the summers before and after.) During this period of time, which I will generously label a "freak out" (and could less generously label my first experiment with stalking) I lost interest in my previous passion, history, and paid less attention to my studies, attracting the concern of my advisor Professor Pelikan. We had a heart to heart talk in his office, where instead of lecturing me about how I should work harder and focus on my history major, he listened to my confusions and frustrations and expressed support and caring. He assured me that I'd pull through it, and that in the end I had to figure out who *I* was, not just pursue an academic or career path because it was easy or what other people wanted me to do. I never forgot that talk, and have frequently though about Professor Pelikan when I've searched for the courage to go off in a new or scary direction in my life.
Just last year, Pelikan published Whose Bible Is It?: A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages. He was an extraordinarily prolific author of both scholarly and popular material. He was a wonderful teacher, and a good friend. He wrote up until the very end, and taught up until just a few years ago. He died too young.
When we talk about the possible lifespan gains from CR, people often ask if the five or ten or even twenty years that we might gain from CR are worth the trouble. When I think about what Jaroslav Pelikan could have done with five, ten, or twenty more years, I have to answer a resounding YES! 82 is considered a ripe old age in our society, and by 82 many people are sick and frail and living in a nursing home. I am grateful that Professor Pelikan was able to live in relative health and productivity up until his death. But what books would he have written between 82 and 85? Between 85 and 90? Between 90 and 100? What lectures would he have given, what students would he have inspired? The world has lost a great thinker, teacher, and writer, and I believe he died too young. It's a classic example of how bodies begin to deteriorate at just the point when experience and education combine to form tremendous wisdom. Death steals wisdom from the world, and I don't think we should quietly accept this theft anymore than we would calmly allow a thief to walk off with our computer.
CR can only get us a few years, but I believe that every life is worth so much that those years are priceless. Professor Pelikan would not have made it to the dawn of radical anti-aging biomedicine, but what graduate student today might be the next Jaroslav Pelikan, and might, if we work hard enough, benefit from the eventual development of biotechnology that can reverse the aging process? How many books might that scholar write? Is it worth investing the resources into research that it would take to develop a cure for aging? I think it is, and that's why I am a member of the Mprize Three Hundred.
I selfishly hope to make it to the day when such biotech is available, so I do CR. When I think about the loss of Professor Pelikan, I am inspired to concentrate even more on my CR, and also to get the word out that such an intervention already exists, so that others who wish to maximize their chances of living long and healthy can have the option to do that. It's easy in the day to day shuffle of 12+ hour days at work, going out for drinks with friends, going out to dinner for special occasions, and skipping the gym when there's just too much on my schedule already to let my CR slip. But I don't want to miss what could be the most productive, most rewarding, most wise years of my life.
I'll end this entry with a final tribute to Professor Pelikan. I remember my freshman year when he gave the lecture on Martin Luther. He painted a vivid picture of Luther's accidental revolution against the corrupt powers that were in the Church, and of his mixture of faith, passion and insanity that changed the world in ways that he could never have imagined. At the end of the lecture, in a moment whose memory has given me courage at every point in my life when I have made the difficult decision to stand up for what I believe in, Pelikan quoted Luther:
"Here I stand. I can not do otherwise. So help me God."
Posted by april at May 21, 2006 9:03 AM
Comments
Hey baby,
I love the fact that you once had a professor/adviser named Pelikan. What a great name, what a great person... I am really sorry that he passed away. But he obviously had a very full and productive life, up until the very end. So, we can celebrate that.
Where are you darlingimou? You must be too busy not to even be able to blog.
Posted by: zeynep at May 25, 2006 6:37 PM