A Postumous Letter to Everybody

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I just read something really interesting: a certain woman who died of cancer left behind a letter for her friends.  It starts out: If you're reading this, there's good news and bad news: the bad news is I'm dead, and the good news is that you're not!

[I first posted this in January 2016 in the Blog, but on second thoughts, I don't want to give the impression that it is a suicide note!  So I'm moving it out as a Page.]

It [the letter I read] continues in a lively vein, and is imbued with great love and concern for her little girl; she instructs her friends not to tell the kid that Mom has "gone to heaven," which would give the impression that her mother has chosen to go to a better place.  (Well, they could always tell the kid that a wicked god had grabbed her against her will, and put her in a sort of minimum-security luxury prison.)

I decided that I would also leave behind a testament, now, when I have no personal axes to grind.  I'm not in terrible health, I'm not being screwed by society, and I'm not in any sort of dire straits.  (Our roof, however, is leaking, which is not good.)

My parents: they were awesome.  We learn life from our parents, and then we have to go on to post-graduate life.  Some people's parents suck so much, they're pretty much thrown into post-graduate mode right at the outset.  Others are brought up by their friends, the so-called Wolf Pack.  In my case, it was my parents, my (maternal) grandmother, and my mother's two sisters; and to a lesser extent, my father's younger brother.

My parents were well known in their rather wide circle; they had a sort of star quality, in a small way.  I remember lots of gatherings in which Mom would lead community singing; she often produced amateur theatricals, and helped to organize carol festivals, and so forth.  Dad was a leader in the Church (despite my stubborn refusal to be religious).  They had very progressive and rational ideas about how to bring up their eldest child (me), but they became lazy in dealing with my younger siblings, because I suspect survival took a lot of energy.

My first wife and I separated amicably when I was about 45.  I still think how well she functioned as wife and mother, but things did not work out.  We were both very pleased when we had been living alone for a couple of years.  About 17 years later I married K, and we have been so happy that I almost feel guilty.  K and I share an almost crazy sense of humor, but we're very different people.  I love the fact that she is doggedly engaged with community projects, while I am only motivated to give moral support, and endorse her charitable activities.

During those 17 years, I was adopted by a wonderful family--informally, of course.  It was a couple and their daughter, and then it was just the father and the daughter, when the woman died under tragic circumstances.  They gave me a lot of affection and support, and we stumbled along for close to a decade, before we went our separate ways.  If they're reading this, I want them to know that they were deeply appreciated.

I have a daughter, about whom I talk once in a while on this blog.  She's amazing; but then, everyone would like to think that their child is exceptional.  In her case, I think my vote of confidence would be enthusiastically endorsed by more than a score of her friends, as well as K, and numerous others, for whom my daughter is a major pillar of their support system.

I have a number of friends, whom I refrain from enumerating for reasons of tact.  They know who they are.  I have some fabulous colleagues, by the sides of whom I have fought, sometimes successfully, but mostly not.  That's education: a sequence of battles, most of which you lose.

One thing I feel desperate to place on record is that these times in which I live are so wonderful.  Sure, there are lots of things wrong with the way things are.  But I, personally, have been in such a great position to use so much of what is here, that I feel utterly unworthy.  I understand technology more than most people of my generation, I suspect; I was in on innovations of various kinds very early in the game.  I found myself in the field of knowledge best suited for me, namely mathematics, mathematical physics, and computer science.  I have been surrounded by people with just the knowledge that I needed, when I needed it!  It is difficult for a mathematician to explain all the different ways in which mathematics helps to explain the world: the precision of the ideas, the value of abstraction, the universality of the concepts, the power of the logic.  And oh, the joy when a single student gets the message!

And to live where I live, that, too is a privilege.  We have four crazy animals who share our home with us: two dogs, and two cats.  The older dog belongs to K, the younger one to K's son, who lives with us, and keeps me laughing hysterically most of the time (both the boy and the dog).  The older cat, too, belongs to K, or rather, K belonged to him.  He had been living with K's youngest child, who died last February.  The younger cat was a rescue; she is a very whimsical creature, pretty much the same sort of cat you find anywhere.  She likes to shred the potted plants, and curl up in the middle of our bed, which she's not supposed to do.

The greatest tragedy I see is the struggle young people, and even adults, have, to understand the world.  I am baffled: have I had unusual experiences that enabled me to crack the code, or are people just too blind to make sense of the fascinating world in which we live?  Or is it that the education system that society has cobbled together is simply incompetent to convey anything beyond the absolute minimum necessary to get a start in survival?  Both of K's surviving children, the dude who lives with us, and the lovely young woman who lives with her husband an hour away, have a great head start in fully appreciating the world.  As for my own child: the world has always been her oyster.  But so many whom I encounter are like the proverbial blind men feeling up the elephant.  They might be very happy blind men, but still, they're too blind for my comfort.

The fragmentation of society makes me sad.  Society is so fragmented that I feel that people with similar concerns and interests are finding it difficult to find truly like-minded others.  As a result, they have to resort to public media and social media, which distorts their concerns and interests, and shoves them into ill-fitting buckets in which they do not belong.  So many citizens are so unhappy, because they don't know enough to develop a personal philosophy that truly works for them.  They have no alternative but to adopt an off-the-shelf set of beliefs forced on them by family prejudice, religious dogma, or regional superstition and the media.  And, of course, you can see why people are suspicious even of their friends, because many of these friendships have been brokered by distorted circumstances.  (I'm not explaining this terribly well, but one of these days I'll get it right.)

So anyway, if you're reading this after I'm dead, the good news is that you're alive, which is hopefully something to celebrate!  Cheers!

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