The Willow Glen Resident What goes up must come down-apparently Carl Heintze I've been thinking of late about apogees.An apogee is a scientific term for (among other things) the highest point that a rocket reaches before it falls back to earth. Or, in more common terms, what goes up must come down. What made me think about apogees was Newt Gingrich. Four years ago Newt was on his way up like a rocket. Then a few weeks ago he reached his apogee and started, if not back to earth, at least to some lower point in the political skies. Once he was the head of the most powerful representative body on earth, the inventor of the Contract With America, the would-be writer of great Rupert Murdoch books, a kingmaker, the man who might have impeached a president. Now he's back cutting the lawn in Georgia just like the rest of us. Truly a tale with a moral, though I'm not entirely sure what the moral is. Indeed, I'm not sure if Newt knows what the moral is. But his story got me to wondering if all men (and nowadays women, too) don't have apogees, that maybe everybody's life follows such an arc. We're born; we flourish and prosper and grow up; we rise to the level of our competence (and sometimes beyond it), and then we start our descent. That set me thinking about some other figures of note and their apogees. I thought of Bill Gates, who now seems near his apogee. He's still the richest man in the world or at least the United States, but he and his corporation have about as many problems as Carter has pills. And maybe the day is not far off when most computers will not be running on Windows. Is he about to reach the point of his apogee? And what about Bill Clinton, or as a friend of mine loves to call him, Slick Willie. His apogee has often seemed to have arrived, but as yet it's not gotten here. His rocket, as it were, seems to rise by fits and starts--more fits than starts sometimes--but so far he's confounded those who've thought his career at an end--people like Linda Tripp and Kenneth Starr. But, of course, there are others. Ted Turner, who now wants to run for president, may have reached his apogee without knowing it. He should beware the likes of former would-be senator Huffington who not only spent a lot of money, but lost the election and his wife, as well. He definitely reached the apogee of his life and probably the level of his competence all at the same time. Ted, of course, like Alexander the Great, has temporarily run out of things to conquer. He won The America's Cup, created CNN, managed to sell it to Time-Warner, invented the Goodwill Games, married Jane Fonda and is giving away a lot of money. That would be enough to satisfy most men and women, but Ted has yet to find his apogee. Running for president might just be it, however. I've also wondered if Hillary Rodham Clinton has soared to the highest point that she's likely to reach in life. I have the feeling that maybe she hasn't. She's weathered an ill-fated attempt to do something about the lamentable state of U.S. health insurance. She's survived Monica Lewinsky. She's helped a lot of Democrats get elected, but mostly she has managed to maintain her dignity in spite of her husband. There may be more propellant to her rocket than most people think. And how is your own personal apogee? Have you reached your full potential and climbed as high in the sky as you're going to go? I like to think I haven't, that there may yet be lurking somewhere some additional push in my life, some higher summit to reach. But I have to admit that if my apogee has not yet been achieved, it had better come soon. And it had better be more evident than it is now. But then I never have gotten very far off the ground. To use yet another cliché, I have been resting on my laurels (I always wondered why people rested on laurels--why not a bed?), have become content with my lot and am mired in my own sloth. I have been tried and found wanting or I'm just not vertically challenged. [ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Willow Glen Resident, December 2, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.