LETTERS

To the Editor:

William Safire (column, Jan. 1) asks, "Why Die?"

My short answer is: There has to be a point at which living longer, even in a younger body, won't confer the sense of increased value to life that we will come to expect. At some point one will grow weary of the act of living itself. Of dressing and undressing, of sleeping and waking, of watching the culture convulse, of hearing the incessant din of existence, the drone of political and philosophic babble, of watching the rising and dropping of hemlines and markets.

Life has a lot to offer, but at some point the human mind will have had enough. At some point the individual will long for death, even in the midst of plenty, because death will finally be understood for what it is: the promise of real, profound, irreversible change.

EDMOND KEENAN WYNN
Healdsburg, Calif., Jan. 1, 2000

Letters

8.13.00

Re: Lisa Belkin's cover story (July 23) on children.

Belkin's article about the "childrunnn" ends like this: "And, in several decades, when the children are grown, we can all live side by side again, in child-free retirement homes."

Although meant as a humorous coda to the piece, it's quite telling: the truth is, nobody really wants to live with children, especially, it seems, parents. As soon as the term of incarceration as mommies and daddies is up, they move to gated, child-free communities, along with the rest of us.

It is not parents versus nonparents; it's adults versus children. As soon as they can do so, grown-ups hie themselves off to adultville.

Edmond Keenan Wynn
Healdsburg, Calif.