Mid-life anxieties

Press, 28 November 1987, Page 27

Mid-life anxieties

When all you’ve ever wanted isn’t enough: The search for a life that matters. By Harold S. Kushner. Pan, 1987. 190 pp. $9.95.

(Paperback).

(Reviewed by

Ralf Unger)

The reverend author of this small book is a rabbi in the United States who concentrates on Ecclesiastes in the Bible. He also pays attention to other books of the Bible and on his Tshirt, which he puts on for jogging, he has “Isaiah 40:31” which states “They shall run and not grow weary.” He quietly adds, “It didn’t help.” In fact, what first appears to be yet another cross between a sermon and avuncular advice on stress reduction, turns out to be spirited, enlightened thoughtfulness. A previous book was based on his loss of a son which launched him into publishing some years ago, forced him to take stock of his mid-life crisis, and discover Jung and his statement that “we go back and fill in the spaces we left blank when we were growing up.”

Central to Kushner’s thesis is a similar concept of “Mensch”: this has been frequently used in a confused way in some United States television dramas and is described properly as someone who is “honest, reliable, wise enough to be no longer naive, but not yet cynical. He has strong inner conviction of who he or she is and what he or she stands for.” “A Mensch,” he adds, "is whole and is one with his or her God.”

From this we go on to the Hedonist fallacy: namely that the more we pursue happiness the less we acquire it as it is a by-product of social and altruistic endeavours. Because we are in a world of unrealistic expectations, to become human we must seek ultimate values and ultimate concerns. He quotes yet another old Yiddish

saying, “To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish,” to underline the point. His God is one who punishes people not because he wants to show his absolute power, but for being wicked to each other; one who shares with us the task of building a humane world on the foundation of people caring for each other. His personal examples include “Casablanca,” with Humphrey Bogart, which he analyses as a cynical central character who, by saving and enriching the lives of others, finds his own life taking on meaning. Another of the author’s typical Jewish stories is of calling on a distressed parishioner who offered him the worst cup of coffee he has ever tasted, made with warm tap water, and after discussing how her husband constantly puts her down says, “I think if I hear another word of criticism I’ll kill myself," and goes on, “How’s your coffee, Rabbi?” Kushner’s philosophical conclusions are that an existential acceptance of life and the world not treating you fairly because you are a good person is “like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.” He follows Ecclesiastes’s five paths of: selfishness, renouncing bodily pleasures, wisdom, avoiding all feeling, piety, and religious surrender, and finds them all dead-ends. He concludes that to do whatever is in your power, with all your might, is all we can achieve for “there is no wisdom in the grave.” He personally no longer has a fear of death and has already done the three things that the holy book of the Talmud says one 1 should do: have a child, plant a tree, and write a book. This last is a fine little gem from an unusual cleric who, like Lloyd Geering, is a pleasure to think with.