January 2002 I'm Still Here By Rabbi Alvin Kass The other night I was doing some work in connection with my forthcoming college reunion, of which I agreed to serve as chairman. To relax for a few moments, I put on the CD of my favorite Broadway show of all time, Stephen Sondheim's Follies. That play is also about a reunion, albeit of veterans of a Ziegfeld Follies-type revue who get together in a decaying New York show palace about to be razed. The show's great anthem is surely the powerful song, "I'm Still Here," a tribute to survival in show business. Even if you've never been in show business you know how grateful you ought to be if you can say: "I'm Still Here." To reach the point where your college class is celebrating its 45th anniversary makes you especially cognizant of the priceless blessing of just "being around." That is really the theme of the shehecheyanu prayer that we Jews recite at the beginning of every holiday and at every major milestone. Follies revolves around two couples who come to the reunion, Buddy and Sally Durant Plummer, and Benjamin and Phyllis Rogers Stone. Both women met their husbands at the time they were show girls, and the marriages of both of these middle-aged couples are inÊthe process of erosion. Ben, who had a quick but memorable affair with Sally, is a famously successful politician and author; the childless Phyllis has hardened into sophisticated brittleness. Buddy is a traveling salesman with a mistress and an inferiority complex and Sally, whose two sons have grown up, still pines for Ben. Early in the show Ben and Buddy recall courting their respective wives as they sing about "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs." They remind us wistfully that "Life was fun, but oh so intense. Everything was possible and nothing made sense." What a marvelous summary of the ambivalent blessings of youth! All of us would agree that youth is certainly a great time to be alive. Our lives are filled with surplus energy, strength, vitality, and imagination. They sky is the limit of our bold dreams and daring visions. However, it is also a time of perplexity, indecision and contradictory aspirations. With good reason, George Bernard Shaw lamented that "youth is wasted on the young," and Eugene OĠNeill entitled his play about youth, "Ah! Wilderness." Maturity brings with it a perspective which helps us to deal far more wisely with the dilemmas and conundrums of human existence. Judaism was right to mandate that older people be treated with respect and even reverence; for they are often the bearers of profound insights about the nature of life. The disparity between what these two couples were and what they are propels them into a crisis of conflict. The message of the show ultimately is about learning to find light in the shadows of your past and to make peace with the frustration of your youthful aspirations. As I examine the biographies of my Columbia classmates, it is awesome to note the extraordinary achievements of so many of them in a variety of areas. Yet, it is in the nature of life that no one has everything, and some of our wild dreams are always going to be way beyond our reach. Henry David Thoreau observed correctly: "The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them." Members of the Class of 1957 have certainly experienced their quota of "good times and bumtimes," but, thankfully, weĠre still here. I'm looking forward to that weekend of reunion, a chance to revive old friendships and make new ones. Perhaps, it is also a time, as Dmitri Weismann, the Ziegfeld-ish showman who oversees the "Follies" reunion, declares: "to glamorize the old days, stumble through a song or two and lie to ourselves just a little." There is also beauty and wisdom in recognizing that who we are and what we have done are built upon the foundations of yesterday. To appreciate that past is to make the most of today and tomorrow.