Month: April 2024

April 28, 2024

Finding a Meaning for Your Life

We wonder, search, and think about what our lives amount to. Take any meaning of life you’ve read about, and many thinkers will offer alternatives.

Consider this one:

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness, and say to you, ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine. 1.   

The idea of an “eternal return” or “eternal recurrence” belongs to the German philosopher Friederich Nietzsche. However, similar thoughts can be found among Stoic philosophers and in the Hindu and Buddhist religions.

Regarding the meaning of life, however, the famous man may be suggesting something additional.

From an ethical point of view, he raises the issue of whether how you lead your life today grows out of your values. Are you guided by persuasive moral and/or religious standards you would follow if given a second chance?

Nietzsche puts it this way:

The question which thou wilt have to answer before every deed that thou doest: ‘is this such a deed as I am prepared to perform an incalculable number of times?’ 2.

Beyond decisions about right and wrong, the meaning of life can also take another form: Is your existence so fulfilling you would jump to have another life in the pattern of the current one? What is lacking if your answer is no?

Nietzsche offers this thought:

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati (to love your fate): that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it … but love it. 3.

Whether one or more repetitions or returns to life occur, a related question is worth thinking about: at what point should you determine if your time on earth has been fulfilling, moral, and well-lived?

To find the answer, we turn to the tale of Solon and Croesus. The former was an important statesman and philosopher, and the latter was considered the wealthiest man alive and conqueror of the known world.

When the wise man visited him, King Croesus made sure his servants took him on a tour of the glories of his palace and the treasures he possessed.

The rich man was disappointed to find his guest unimpressed. “Have you ever encountered a more fortunate, happier man?”

The philosopher proceeded to name four.

Of Tellus the Athenian, he said:

Tellus was neither rich nor poor, and all of his children were good and noble; he lived to see them give birth to their children and died an old and respected man while volunteering to fight for his country. 4.

Croesus asked for the identity of a second man whose life was more excellent than his own:

It has to be Aglaus. The man was so happy living on his farm that he never even felt the need to leave it. And that’s where he died, admired by his friends and surrounded by his loving family. 4.

The king persisted in questioning, and Solon told him of two brothers:

Cleobis and Biton, mighty king. They were healthy and beloved youngsters who always had enough to live on. One day, after the oxen of their mother Cydippe went missing, they yoked themselves to the cart and drove their mother for five miles until reaching the Temple of Hera, where she, a priestess, was headed to honor the goddess at a religious festival. Overjoyed and proud, The parent of the young men asked Hera to bestow the best gift upon her children. She did: her boys lay down in the house of prayer and died peacefully in their sleep just moments after. They are still fondly remembered for their strength and devotion.” 4.

Croesus appeared flabbergasted not to be thought of as the most impressive man in existence. The sage gave him an explanation:

You seem to be rich beyond comprehension, and I’m sure that, at this moment, no man can fulfill more of his fantasies than you can in the whole wide world. However, I’ve seen people just as rich as you die more disgraceful deaths than the commonest and poorest of all men. Because, Croesus, man is entirely chance, and nobody knows what the gods may bring tomorrow. You should count no man happy until he dies. 4.

Yours truly is no sage and cannot offer you the final word on the meaning of life. Most people ask this of themselves in any case. You might take a moment to determine what constitutes the significance and fulfillment you search for.

And if you are curious to learn more about Croesus, the glory of his life after the encounter with Solon didn’t last.

Was Solon, therefore, right when he said you should not evaluate the joy in a lifetime before an individual dies?” Perhaps you believe Nietzsche is correct in telling you to embrace and love your fate no matter what it is.

It’s up to you to discover the meaning of your life.

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The three photos above are the superb artistry of Laura Hedien, with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

The top image is Peek A Boo Slot Canyon, Utah, 2024. Next is Provo, Utah, Coming In March 2024. Finally, a Railroad Signal Light in the Fog, Lake County IL 2023.

1. http://Schacht, Richard (2001). Nietzsche’s Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche’s Prelude to Philosophy’s Future. Cambridge University Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0-521-64085-5.

2. Ludovici, Anthony M., ed. (1911). “The Eternal Recurrence”. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Twilight of the Idols. §28 – via Project Gutenberg.

3. “Ecce Homo”. Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Translated by Kaufmann, Walter. p. 714.

4. https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/The_Myths/Solon_and_Croesus/solon_and_croesus.html

April 21, 2024

Thinking About Memory and the Need to Forget

People without a fine memory often don’t realize they are forgetful.

Others, including bosses and friends, might inform them. At one point, I employed an office manager who failed to perform assigned tasks and denied she received instructions. She was earnest but insisted I’d never told her what to do.

I could have written every request, but that would have taken time I didn’t have. The relationship did not end well.

When I was young, I didn’t need to write anything down to bring it to mind—not appointments, school assignments, or directions to an address. In the days before cell phones and cars with built-in navigation systems, a first-class sense of direction was necessary. That, or mounting a compass on the windshield, as my directionally challenged Uncle Sam did.

My adeptness in recalling and following directions wasn’t always enough. A hard-to-get date with a student nurse led me to her crowded part of the city. I got to her dormitory in plenty of time but found neither an empty parking place nor a garage.

I went up the street, down the street, right, left, rinse, repeat over and over. Eureka! I found a space, parked, and frantically rushed to get her. One problem. I was so confused and disoriented that I had no idea where my car was. Good impression, correct? But I did stumble upon the vehicle, and there were more dates. As Blanche Dubois utters at the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, 

Whoever you are—I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

In this case, the gentle indulgence of someone I didn’t know well.

Some of us recall too little, while others retain too much. Each injury, disappointment, error, humiliation, misfortune, heartbreak, and insult. Imagine such a parent blaming you during childhood. The list never shortens because the storage space is endless. Pity those held to account for each new failure and reminder of old ones.

Fingerpointing harms many of those targeted while the less vulnerable push back or end the relationship. It is a miserable and lonely way to live for anyone whose index finger is too active.

Others accumulate every loss and cause of sadness, rerunning their injuries on a revolving internal wheel of misfortune. It is better to grieve, find gratitude, and learn to make friends who display the kind of character necessary for intimacy.

Some people possess useful visual memories of places and faces. One odd skill I inherited is seeing an aging face resembling a person I knew in my teens and watching it return to an individual’s appearance of decades before.

A patient of mine told me a heartbreaking story about recapturing the forgotten facts of a life. Her mother had dementia. The elderly woman’s husband had died long before, but she had lost the ability to retain the knowledge of his death, which drifted away each day. Upon waking, she asked where he was and insisted on finding out. Her caretakers revealed the truth and restarted the shock and tears of the widow. Daily.

Perhaps the most extraordinary example of the capacity to retain information is described by William Egginton in The Rigor of Angels. In 1929, the groundbreaking neuropsychologist Alexander Luria evaluated Solomon Shereshevsky, a journalist in the Soviet Union.

His memory “had no distinct limits.”

This amazing man became a mnemonist working in the circus. To enhance his skill, he refined his natural ability with a new approach to it:

To be able to recite back the lists of numbers, random words, poems in foreign languages, and even nonsensical syllables that audience members would call out to him, he landed on the strategy of picturing them drawn on a chalkboard.

Unfortunately, Shereshevsky discovered the ever-larger number of chalkboards he read from and retained in his head interfered with recalling the most recent ones he fashioned while performing for the patrons of that day. Egginton recounts, “Shereshevsky waged an almost constant war against images and associations from the past that threatened to flood his every waking moment.”

To Alexander Luria, the neuropsychologist who continued to test him, the man was disabled further by another facet of his retentiveness.

Shereshevsky’s world was “rich in imagery, thematic elaboration, and affect” but also “lacking in one important feature: the capacity to convert encounters with the particular into instances of the general.”

Phrases such as “catching a cab” would barrage him with possible interpretations, interconnections to old thoughts, visions, experiences, and multiple meanings. One can imagine him being overwhelmed to the point of compromising his everyday life.

One way to think of this poor man is to compare him to a King Midas. The difference between the two is that Midas wished for the “golden touch.” Shereshevsky requested no part of his double-edge talent for retaining every experience.

Photographic memory, anyone?

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The top image is Carmel Valley Memory, a 1999 work by Eyvind Earle. It is followed by The Gate of Memory, created in 1864 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Third in line is Presence of a Memory by Alekos Kontopoulos. The final painting is Ladies of Arles (Memories of the Garden at Etten), a work of Vincent van Gogh, dating from 1888. All of these are sourced from Wikiart.

April 14, 2024

Mäkelä: In the Shadow of Great Men

Last week, the Chicago Symphony’s former 82-year-old conductor had reason to be unhappy. By contrast, his successor and future occupier of that throne, a tall, energetic, and ambitious 28-year-old, was feeling on top of the world.

The latter, Klaus Mäkelä of Finland, failed to mention the most recent CSO Music Director in interviews celebrating his own designation as the ensemble’s leader beginning in 2027. Ricardo Muti, the former head of the glorious band, is the fellow whose name was absent.

Here is an excerpt from Mäkelä’s April 5th interview with WBEZ Radio’s Courtney Kueppers. The young man offers a telling description of the sound of the Chicago musicians and two of those who created it:

It’s an amazing sound. Its brilliance, its shine, its strength, its everything. And it’s really touching to hear. I was thinking about yesterday, when I started rehearsing, I listened to all the recordings — I love the old recordings and all the recordings of the past — and there were some moments when I thought: Oh my god, this sounds exactly like a Fritz Reiner recording [Reiner was CSO’s maestro in the 1950s] or a [Georg] Solti [the Chicago orchestra’s longtime music director] … And I think that’s incredible that they’ve managed to preserve it. And of course, my job is to also further develop it, but also preserve it. And I think it’s so wonderful because in today’s world, orchestras start sounding the same. And we need voices which are really original.

Hmm. Why might Mäkelä have neglected Muti, now the CSO’s Conductor Emeritus? No doubt, Maestro Muti believes he did more than “preserve” the orchestra’s qualities in his 13 years as top man.

But Mäkelä associated himself with the two most significant conductors in the Windy City since the middle of the last century. One gathers that he expects to fill their shoes. As Daniel Burnham, the architect who designed the CSO’s Orchestra Hall, wrote:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.

Reiner and Solti would have agreed. They did more than “preservation” of the status quo. They made “no little plans.”

Fritz Reiner rebuilt a CSO in recovery from everything that had happened in Burnham’s building during the preceding 11 years.

“Papa” Frederick Stock, their leader since 1905, died in late 1942. He was followed to the podium by Desire Defauw, who stayed for a less-than-stellar four-year tenure. World War II complicated the Belgian’s time, leaving him with 11 new players in his first season.

Artur Rodzinski lasted only a season (1947-48), and the 36-year-old Rafael Kubelik just three (1950-53). Fritz Reiner’s arrival at the end of 1953 raised the CSO on all levels, not least their long-playing records, which remain perhaps the most consistently fine group of discs in its history.

Amsterdam’s  Royal Concertgebouw

Georg Solti’s contribution was different. A Hungarian like Reiner, Solti inherited many of the same players who performed with Reiner before Solti began as Music Director in 1969. The group included several fine personnel additions made by Jean Martinon, Reiner’s immediate successor, including Principal Horn Dale Clevenger.

Even so, the CSO had toured little domestically and never outside the USA. Solti made sure his new orchestra crossed the ocean. International fame and a flood of records followed, as did endless tours in the United States and abroad.

Klaus Mäkelä (K.M.) is in the habit of commending big, transformative names. Upon the news of becoming the future Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, he told Principal Double Bass Dominic Seldis of his admiration for Willem Mengelberg’s recorded legacy. The man K.M. named put that renowned ensemble on the map and led the first festival of Gustav Mahler’s complete Symphonies in 1920.

Mengelberg last conducted the Dutchmen in the 1940s. Mäkelä mentioned no one who served after that. 

It is easy to conclude that Chicago’s youngest-ever Music Director wants to change an orchestra that must adapt to survive in the post-Covid world. His charm seems to belie an extraordinary self-confidence.

The job is enormous, and he knows he must replace 15 players out of the gate.

Who might Klaus Mäkelä have named if he’d been appointed to the Boston Symphony? Serge Koussevitzky, no doubt. But that conductor’s mark involved more than insisting on a ravishing orchestral tonality and realizing his interpretive genius in concert and on disc.

The BSO leader commissioned countless works and steadfastly championed them, including those of American composers. His fingerprints are also on Ravel’s orchestral transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.

In 1942, he established the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, which continues to support living composers. Moreover, Koussevitzky fashioned the New York Philharmonic’s summer concerts in the Berkshires into an annual warm-weather festival of the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood, focused on performance and the mentorship of young musicians.

Serge Koussevitzky

Successful conductors each possess a potent ego. One cannot stand before soloist-quality musicians of experience and intelligence without it. The players must be convinced you are worth their time, though they will carry you even if you aren’t. Everything suggests Mäkelä has the ego and technique to do the job.

The three conductors named by Mäkelä, as well as Koussevitzky, had that and more: a visionary quality that would take the men and women sitting before them somewhere beyond the next performance.

As Seldis noted in the Concertgebouw interview, Mäkelä’s new “office” — the glowing concert hall in which he will perform in Amsterdam — has 26 red-carpeted steps leading not far from the organ pipes down to the stage — a harrowing trip for some.

One can only hope that the steep descent he will walk signals nothing ominous about the talented baton-smith’s future. Two storied orchestras expect every bit of his capacity beginning in 2027. 

My suggestion? As Former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt said:

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

For now, a Burnham-like “plan” will have to wait.

April 7, 2024

Where to Find Acceptance

Everyone wants acceptance from friends, bosses, and those we love. We also search for self-acceptance, the knowledge of oneself, and satisfaction with who we have become and what we have achieved.

One other kind is not less important. A rewarding life requires assent to the terms of living, the inevitable joys and sorrows, along with all our fellow travelers in the same air and water on or above the earth.

I’m speaking of accepting the rules of the game of existence, which include how to survive, live in the moment, take joy in small things, develop resilience, and mindfulness of the shortness of time.

No other creature knows the last of these conditions. Homo sapiens do.

The other side of the equation is expecting too much and believing time is endless. Thinking we can “have it all” when no one can.

What does all mean?

Those of us in the Western World want a significant measure of wealth and the material well-being that accompanies it. Many seek status and admiration of a substantial kind and amount.

People wish to be known by a select group and accepted for who they are, though this comes with risks.

Virtually everyone prays for a long and healthy life, maintaining the body and appearance of a preferred version of an earlier self. Countless others also hope to produce robust, handsome, happy, and bright children.

Men and women search for a society fit for fellowship, laughter, liberty, and a fair chance at happiness. Most tend to believe they’d “do the right thing” while hoping the daunting challenges pass them by.

One more desire should be added to a potentially longer list. To live in a peaceful world in a country striving for justice and the flourishing climate enjoyed by our grandparents.

Since a guarantee of winning all of the above and the entirety of whatever else you seek is beyond us, I’ll add a more attainable goal.

You can’t have it all, but you can have enough with effort and good fortune. Yes, despite much of it being out of your control in the hands of fate.

No one achieves a delirious, perpetual state of happiness. Even then, it is an elevated mood not because of but in spite of misfortune–looking for life’s randomly distributed good, joyous, incidental kindnesses and strokes of luck even when obtaining joy seems foolish.

Enough depends on rewriting your objectives and discovering a decent share of happiness in a more limited life. It is accepting life’s downside.

Enough is in need of patience with time, friends, (and therapy, if necessary) to return you to the set point of well-being you used to inhabit. Something close, at least.

Enough asks you to empty most of your bucket list and change your goals as you age. You might discover that 4-star restaurants don’t matter to the extent you used to believe, and becoming the chief of the tribe carries more unhappiness than the status it confers.

Enough is recognizing the day is short and choosing a modified catalog of priorities because you realize earthly eternity is out of reach.

Enough means learning to give to others and honoring their value as more fulfilling than receiving riches from them.

Enough is doing your part to repair the world. And being accepted by a few of those with the open hearts you seek.

You have one life. None of us will ever know all the universe’s secrets, win every game, produce a squad of Olympic gold medal children, and never encounter the people who like to fight.

There will always be scoundrels.

Will you rate your life high only if you do and see everything, with a perfect score on each new test?

Shooting for all the glorious targets exists in our imagination but not elsewhere. You, those you love, and the planet depend on a more nuanced set of expectations and efforts.

Modesty, humility, and acceptance provide a softer landing place.

Safe travels.

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The top photo is of A Local Morning Fish Market at Lake Awasa, Ethiopia. Next comes Sunset on the Candian Plains in Saskatchewan in August 2023. They are both the work of Laura Hedien, with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.