WHAT WOULD DVORAK DO?

When the child is in pain, the mother is there to ease and sooth. When the child becomes an adult, mothers alone are no longer enough. Soon we learn that pain is endemic to life itself. Be it physical or emotional, pain travels resolutely with us across the treks of time. With few get-out-of-jail cards!

Frankly, it may have been the very first question Adam and Eve pondered in the shadows of their very first night outside the Garden. How could a good God allow so much pain in His world...? Christianity's answer: "It is the free will of humans that often leads to such pain." Augustine went on to argue the pain continues until "we at last rest in the Lord." Chekhov shook his Russian head and added: "Life is a tragedy filled with joys."

If there had been no pain in the world, there would probably have been no philosophers. Trying to explain suffering is the philosopher's main raison d'etre. But then after centuries of suffering in the Old Worlds, a New World was discovered across the Atlantic. Soon entire populations looked to this land-of-the-free-and-home-of-the-brave as the best option available for "...the tired, poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

In 1893, Antonin Dvorak premiered his New World Symphony in Carnegie Hall. The ultimate musical salute to where humanity might still flee to be free of its ancient curse. Since that night, hundreds of millions have streamed into this land, including my own Father. For some seekers, they found what they were looking for. For most, the curse stubbornly clung on.

Now 118 years later, Dvorak himself might wonder. The New World has bred a consumerist ideology which promises to relieve our suffering with just the right meds or toys. Until, that is, near the end. In just the last decade, federal spending on hospice care for the dying has tripled to more than $10 billion a year. Nursing homes and hospices are among the top 10 employers in the nation. Would Dvorak see this as symptomatic of our incurable curse...? Or would he admire a government willing to care for its terminally ill...? Or would he decry those who would now find money for the weapons of war while slashing these weapons of comfort...?

The New World symphony is scheduled for next season's CSO programming here in Chicago. Lets see how the audiences respond to these questions. Has our new world found new answers to humanity's old curse? Or is suffering still the guest we try to leave out in the cold, until it finds its way in?