THERE'S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL

One of life's inexorables -- genetics!

You and I are genetically aging every minute of every day. Lately, however, neurobiologists are promising the promises of genetic engineering. Which sound pretty terrific. Because along with refinements and corrections, there's also the promise of altering the aging process itself.

But here's where the waters muddy. While genetics can envision a super-race of enhanced humans, some geneticists worry about the results. Like the fictional Dr. Frankenstein and the all-too-factual Adolf Hitler. Other geneticists dream of perfecting our species by focusing on what's best in us. However, while the first group agree on what's "worse" about us, the second are not always sure about what's "best."

Some speak of enhanced sensory capacities so we will see and hear more than now. Other speak of enhanced cognitive powers so we will think and achieve more than now. I notice, though, few appear to be looking in my direction. I'm looking not at what we might become, but what we once were.

Before you and I inexorably happened into the coarser adults we are today, we once were the unblemished children prophets and poets sing about. Jesus: "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." Heraclitus: "Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play." Shakespeare: "A man loves the meat in his youth he cannot endure in his age."

If I were ever to meet with the brilliant genetic teams probing our better selves, I would lack their bona fides. I might, however, possess something which the profundity of their work has lost track of -- the purity of their own lost childhood. That kinder childhood which finally emerged in the early 19th C as generations of Oliver Twists were gradually released from centuries of child-labor. The lost childhood Citizen Kane's "Rosebud" became to him in his final hours. The magical childhood we see and celebrate every Christmas season.

OK, my vision of genetic engineering is counter-culture. "Grow up!" is the mantra of the majority. Especially as our children must face a brutal world. And yet, one can still wonder if it would have grown quite so brutal had its young not been encouraged to grow-up by leaving behind so much of what was best to their childhood.

IN A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN Tom Hanks shakes his head, "There's no crying in baseball." We laugh at the absurdity of it. And yet, and yet, maybe that's part of our problem! Maybe as adults we've lost the capacity to cry when we hurt, to embrace when we love, and to splash barefoot through puddles of April showers....