love

August 6, 2023

Last Words: Be Careful What You Say

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/25/Gertrude_Stein_1935-01-04.jpg/500px-Gertrude_Stein_1935-01-04.jpg

We tend to think of last words in terms of famous quotations. On her deathbed, Gertrude Stein (no relation to me) was asked, “What is the answer (to the meaning of life)?” Her matter-of-fact response was, “What is the question?”

John Adams, our second President, alternately rival and friend of Thomas Jefferson, found some relief and gratitude in the belief that “Thomas Jefferson still survives” as he (Adams) lay dying. What he did not know in the pre-electronic year of 1826 was that Jefferson had, in fact, predeceased him by a few hours. Nor did either appear to reflect on the irony that these founding fathers both expired on July 4.

On a less ironic note, students of American history will recall the story of Nathan Hale, captured and convicted of spying on the British during the Revolutionary War. “I only regret that I have but one life to give my country,” uttered Hale before his execution.

More locally, Chicagoans might have heard of Giuseppe Zangara, an anarchist who took aim at President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt as he and the Mayor of Chicago shook hands in Miami’s Bayfront Park on February 15, 1933. The bullet hit Mayor Anton Cermak, who reportedly told FDR, “I’m glad it was me instead of you.” Cermak died soon after and is memorialized to this day with a Chicago street that bears his name.

There are other kinds of last words, of course. The father of legendary musician and conductor Carlo Maria Giulini gathered his family around his deathbed to remind them that the word love, “amore,” should guide their thought and conduct throughout their lives. And one can only imagine how many times the word “love,” the words “I love you,” have been on the lips of the dying and their survivors at the end of earthly things. The religiously faithful have been heard to add, “See you on the other side.”

The last words of our parents tend to linger in our memory. We are often cautioned to part from loved ones on a high note, not a dissonant one, lest someone is left with the recollection and pain of a final disagreement or the regret of injuring a loved one in what proves to be their last possible moment.

Two unfortunate examples from my clinical practice come to mind in this regard. One woman, whose mother had died many years before, struggled to shake her mother’s last-minute assertion, “You’re an ass, Jenny (not her real name).” It is not the only example I can recall hearing from one or another of my patients. But the all-time cake-taker, the grand prize winner in an imaginary Hall of Shame of ill-timed and venomously expressed invective, are the words of a rebellious teenager to his severely taxed father.

A long history of mutual destructiveness typified their relationship. It seems that the Pater familias was inept and self-interested in raising his son, and the son repaid his parent’s cruelty and clumsiness with as much drug use and petty crime as he could muster. Nor did it help that the family was under financial pressure and that the two adults in the home were a poorly matched pair.

The father had only recently sustained a heart attack when the school reported to him and his wife that the son had been suspended again. The “mother-of-all” shouting matches ensued between the middle-aged man and his first-born disappointment. And then, the last words: “You’re going to kill me.” And the reply, “You deserve to die.”

Not 24 hours later, the words were realized. Deserved or not, the father was dead. And even though one could easily make a convincing rational argument that his death was not produced by his son’s words (or, at least, that the killing heart attack was waiting for whatever the next stressor was and would have happened very soon even without the argument as a trigger), it is easy to imagine that the sense of guilt would be lasting.

I’m not opposed to standing up to people who have injured you, including your parents. To say, “I know what you did (even if you deny it or justify it), and I won’t let you do it anymore,” is sometimes perfectly appropriate. That self-assertion can be therapeutic, even though it is usually not essential.

You can recover from childhood mistreatment without facing the offender. Witness those individuals who do so when their abusive parents are dead and therefore unavailable for real-life discussion. What is essential, however, is to make sure that the mistreatment stops. This usually means that you, the now adult child, must stop it: walk away, say “no,” or hang up the phone — whatever is required.

If you aim to change the offender instead, be prepared to be disappointed. Most won’t change or even admit that they did anything wrong. But if you wish to overcome your fear and master the situation, that mastery, at least, is possible.

It was better to live as Giulini’s family lived, with love at the center of their being. I’m told that the old Italian expression for this is “volersi bene” or “voler bene:” an untranslatable sentiment indicating that you cannot be happy without the happiness of the other. Yes, much better this way.

Perhaps it is no mistake that the words for life and love are so close in English and German. Change the word “live” by one letter, and you have “love.” In German, change the word “leben” (to live) by adding one letter, and you have “lieben” (to love).

Not just last words or Giulini’s father’s last words, but words to live (and love) by.

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The 1935 photo of Gertrude Stein is the work of Carl Van Vechten, from the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The second image is Carlo Maria Giulini. The final photograph comes from The Lonely, a 1959 episode of the original Twilight Zone TV series. Jack Warden and Jean Marsh are pictured.

July 30, 2023

I’d Like You To Meet My Deceased Father … Sort Of

When you meet someone new, you try to catch up to the life he lived before the moment of your arrival. Who were you before? Where did you live? Who did you love? What were your parents like?

Maybe you don’t ask. Perhaps you think the backstory doesn’t matter. After all, it’s who this person is now that counts, you say to yourself.

But I’m a psychologist by nature, training, and experience, so I’m the sort of person who asks. My wife’s dad, Thomas Henek, died a couple years before we met. He had his issues, but he survived battle in World War II, something he volunteered for despite being too old to be drafted.

Mr. H. had many friends, the kind of men who knew Tom would stand with them if the chips were down. They came in droves to his wake and funeral, and, at a time when men weren’t supposed to, they wept for his loss.

We sometimes miss knowing people by inches. Think of performers who passed away or retired before we had a chance to see them.

Yes, they leave recordings behind, but the communal experience of sharing the concert hall with others is rarely reproduced fully by electronics. Thus, the opportunity for a state approaching intimacy is gone forever.

Face to faceness becomes impossible.

Several years ago, however, I was prompted to rethink all this. Maybe there was a way to “meet” someone deceased, short of retrieving her from Hades, as Orpheus tried with Eurydice.

This brings my favorite uncle, Sam Fabian, to mind. My brother Jack acquired some old soundless movie film that had been transferred to DVD and gave a copy to me as a gift of sorts. Sam had been filmed by his wife almost 75 years ago while he played golf, probably on his honeymoon.

My uncle died when he was 50 in 1972. The silent film reminded me of his antic quality and the imposing 6’4″ animated presence that made him irresistible to almost everybody. He was a big man with big ideas and towering, thick-wristed strength; you had to look up to him.

The film recreated and enlarged my memory of Sam, something that stories about him or still photographs never do with anyone. If it is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie film is worth far more.

Mr. Fabian moved, and the movement was both touching and delightful. You had to watch him move, or you could not know him any more than you can grasp the measure of a gifted athlete without seeing him play or a magnificent orator without hearing his voice.

Think of all the people we missed because cinema came so late in human history. Women and men like Joan of Arc, Plato, Harriet Tubman, Moses, Jesus, Jane Austen, the Buddha, Pocahontas, Marcus Aurelius, Caesar, Cleopatra, George Washington, and more.

But the title of this essay suggests I might “introduce” my late father in a palpable way, a man who is forgotten by history except for those who loved him. Impossible in the conventional fashion because he died 23 years ago.

Ah, but he lives on in audio recordings and a four-hour oral history video I made of him almost 40 years ago.

Were you and I friends or mates to whom fathers mattered, you might want to know him, the better to know me. If you wished to understand how I came to be as I am today, you’d learn how he spoke, the way his mind worked, the manner in which he told stories, and the values he communicated to his three sons: myself, Eddie, and Jack.

You might look into his eyes.

I made that video because I knew there would come a day when Dad would vanish, as we all do. I made it because he could speak to the generations of his descendants and allow them to learn where they came from and the goodness of his being.

I made it because I loved him.

The past is valuable if we learn from it, just as books and films are essential to our self-understanding. To my mind, they are of desperate importance, now as much as ever.

Maybe more.

One piece of advice. If you ever meet someone who means the world to you, don’t forget to “introduce” her to your deceased parents or ask to meet her own. They still have something to say, to influence, and to reveal.

No matter what you believe, they are not done with you yet. Or with those you meet along the way.

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The top profile of Milton Stein, my father, was made in Paris in 1945 during World War II. The city had been liberated from the Nazis six months before.

The second image is Thomas Henek at the time of his confirmation in 1923.

The photograph of my Uncle Sam, probably taken in the 1940s, is uncharacteristically somber. His family was desperately poor during most of the 1930s. You can interpret the few dollars he placed on his body as you wish. The photo on the dresser displays a picture of himself.

July 16, 2023

The Take and Give and Forth and Back of Love


When we think of love, do we wish to give or receive? The answer is personal and includes both, but not always.

Let’s begin with reception. We wish to be loved, to feel it, and recognize the other’s patience and fixed attention.

Who doesn’t want to be heard, known, and understood? No one.

We dream of three words. Many wish they could speak the exact phrase unafraid: to utter “I love you” while holding the hand of the beloved and viewing eyes full of color, luster, and lust only for you. There is freedom and risk in this; a tightrope walk to a fuller life or a shattered heart.

We hope to be taken seriously, beyond appearance, to the recognition of our wholeness — neither objectified nor commodified. Sex, yes, but more. Tenderness, concern, sacrifice, poetry, and astonishment, too.

Flowers and candy are desirable but don’t necessarily convey much thought.

Which flowers? What kind of candy? Do you know her favorites? 

The best gift tells of a search for what will bring tears to this person and no other because such a present comes from insight, awareness, and comprehension of a non-generic heart.

Love is the unmarked path from complexity to simplicity — intense but easeful in the end, alive with smiles, humor, and touch. 

You extend yourself not to create indebtedness but because you wish your partner joy, and her joyfulness pleases you.

As the French call it, amour exists in the space before and after scent and sensuality. It lives between seeing and hearing, words spoken and those unsaid. There is a back and forth to it, a fullness inside to the point of bursting.

To be in love seeks no replacement part or participant. Someone new is unnecessary. It does not wait for a more fitting other, more dazzling magic, a trade of this for that as if dealing in stocks and bonds.

There are always possible substitutes, but the lover does not seek them like next year’s cellphone, with new features and claims of more than you imagined.

The nature of “the one” creates beauty lasting in the eye even when other heads no longer turn in her direction. You see her image afresh, permanently as she was.

Bonded hearts contain shared challenges and friendship, as well as intellectual admiration. The sensation is like an anesthetic trance you wish to last forever. The appreciation of the other fills your hours and fuels the want to say “yes” and give until the waterfall crests. 

Some important advice: do not take this wondrous state for granted. You must renew its lease. 

A living, loving romance is playfulness and laughter. Youthful when aged, the grateful amazement and contradiction of excitement amidst stillness. Secure because you are not alone and as close to oneness as possible.

How do you know it isn’t an illusion? You don’t, not yet, maybe never, though it helps to share histories and hardships, your separate worlds before you joined them.

Here is an unreal reality worth seeking. That at least once, when together, the world will disappear. Then, no women or men shall exist but the two of you. Call yourselves Adam and Eve, or whatever names and genders apply.

And when you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will know who stands before you as if for the first time.

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The photo is the 1898 work of Frank Eugene, initially published in Camera Work. It is called Adam and Eve, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

May 23, 2023

Waiting for Your Love’s Return

Before the idea of sex captured you, what did you wait for? It was the stuff of children, you included, crossing out the calendar’s Sundays and Mondays leading to birthdays, holidays, and visits to the amusement park.

The anticipation of gifts filled the time, coupled with the unimaginable prospect of 365 more days until the celebration came back for an encore performance.

Expectations made one irritable, restless, and eager, like a race runner on the starting blocks and ready to go.

Despite awareness of the long delay, the concrete, oversized bricks of time stuck to their slow slog toward whatever fulfillment lay ahead.

As I grew up, other matters became worth knowing, meaningful and necessary in a very different way.

The knowledge of how I arrived in this world was among them.

I asked my dad; of course.

Yes, the sex question.

He responded:

I planted the seed.

That’s a quote, by the way. Four words. Fake news of a sort carrying an indecipherable truth. 

Thrown by the answer, I pictured corn and beans and all sorts of vegetables grown by farmers. Did a family farmer produce me too? I thought my dad worked at the Post Office!

Did his children arrive in the mail, sent with a spear of asparagus?

It took me a while to recover from this confusion, delaying my sexual development by a decade.

Love came, but I also learned about how it can disappear.

Affairs of the heart sometimes grow stale with routine. Just as the psychologist tries to make each session new, the passion of the early days of romance demands renewal. It is best sustained when the couple works to keep the enchantment fresh, a bliss that makes us smile.

My folks didn’t have that problem. They knew what it meant to be separated.

They experienced an interrupted honeymoon phase of their relationship when my father was drafted into the army after less than three years of marriage. Two and a half years passed before his return from the war in Europe.

Dad made a recording for my mother while away, and his recorded voice aches with tenderness and desire. His letters, too, carried those emotions.

He rushed from the dock when he returned with a boatload of troops from France to New York City. His first call was to her, the one.

Such stories of war, waiting, and reunion repeat the tale of Odysseus, the inventor of the Trojan Horse. After ten years of fighting to breach the walls of Troy, it took him another ten to reach his kingdom of Ithica and his wife, Penelope.

She remained faithful, putting off the pursuit of many suitors for her affection and riches.

Milton Stein told me about his own Odyssey in 1986, 40 years after he heard Jeanette Stein’s telephonic voice, his speech breaking with a wave of feeling as overwhelming and alive as it had been on March 6, 1946 — as alive as they prayed he would be.

He had waited for her in every sense, every part of him, as did she wait for him.

Most of us have homecomings of one fashion or another, seeing again those friends or relatives we missed. Sometimes it is our hometown or country itself we have longed for.

Do we know how much we miss anything — until we miss it; how much we love anyone until we are separated and in doubt?

The time we hold our breath has its way with us unless we transform it and squeeze tight the foreshadowed vision that makes us wait. Whether for Christmas, the amusement park, our family of origin, or an endlessly delayed reunion with the love of our life, we hope for this, we live for this: the never-guaranteed next time.

Just as a gifted therapist works to defeat the routine to which weekly meetings are susceptible, we all have the opportunity to make life’s fleeting moments special.

Learn patience, and bridge the terrible time and distance while dreaming of the gifts those efforts reward. They will fuel your ardency and gratitude.

My dad never gave me a clear answer to my childhood question of how I came to be.

I didn’t realize he would do better much later.

The tears in his eyes in 1986 told me all there is to know about love.

May 14, 2023

Of Love, Hate and the Love-filled Joy of Children

My grandson got married, but I wasn’t invited.

Amazing, isn’t it? All I did was show him love and buy him things. OK, he just turned four years old, and his parents weren’t invited either. Nor, from what I hear, were the parents of the bride.

I’ve seen photos of him holding hands with his “wife,” even in preschool.

Shameless!

Who knows what they do when no one is around?

But if this is how love starts, I approve. Fill your hearts full, children, because life will drain them, too — then, with luck, refill them again. Kind of like going to the gas or petrol station.

As to anger, let me say a little about that.

Anger is like a multi-blade knife with blades sharpened to a keen edge, mindless of who it cuts and capable of slicing both ways.

Where does such intense dislike come from?

First comes love, then rejection, then reaction to the dismissal from the life of another. A whisper saying you’re fired, no matter how delicate the voice.

Or, perhaps the starting point of antagonism is a failure to win respect, approval, and acknowledgment. Loathing can grow from the absence of caring parents or the simple difficulty of achieving success, however you define it.

Therapists have all heard the conventional wisdom that depression is anger turned inward. Don’t forget, however, that anger can result from disappointment in life turned outward.

We live in a competitive world, including competition for mates. Someday these two kids will seek consolation for a broken heart.

Someone will say, “Oh, you are better off without him,” or “He isn’t right for you,” but such statements rarely console.

Neither do they provide solace when the words are, “Oh, you are better off without that job — it wasn’t right for you.” Of course, both the young ones are far from the job market.

As we witness a world with more than its share of anger beyond romantic and professional disappointment, many of us are triggered by something less tender than lost love.

Some feel displaced from their spot in the world, their previous role as a worthy breadwinner, or as a person known for giving good advice and helping a neighbor fix his car.

Populist politicians and their allies play on this sense of injury, fomenting anger upon anger like a giant test tube full of bile with daily inflammatory statements, addictive but strangely validating.

Yeah! He gets it. It’s not my fault. I’ve been screwed! It’s THOSE people. They don’t look like us, don’t believe in our god, and steal our birthright.

My grandson and the love of his life don’t know about any of this. They only know about respect, affection, friends, and toys. Maybe an occasional “enemy,” meaning a minor league bully or two, but nothing serious.

We all want love, don’t we? We all hope for applause, a job that pays well enough, status, and an appreciative mate. We all hope to be well thought of, praised, and admired by those to whom we are close. 

In a different world perhaps this wouldn’t be much to ask for, but these days we are too often replacement parts that have been replaced.

Confronting a sense of disappointment in life, too many hunger to pay back those they think are responsible. They only need a model and some encouragement. When all the guys are whining, somehow whining is OK, not as shameful as it used to be.

Still, we search for someone loveable. If politics enters that pursuit, it can be contaminated by opinions that tend to be unloving.

We are not as companionable as we were a few years back. Now we grind our teeth or laugh at the ones “ruining” our country, whoever they are, however preposterous the claim.

We lack the innocence of my grandson and his companion. Indeed, when she was ill and away from school for a week, he missed her and worried about her, dear boy.

Lucky for them, they are not on the internet, an occasionally monstrous place. Many of our interactions with fellow humans come electronically, where plenty of anonymous hatred can be found.

Despite all its wonders, metaphorical bombs are easily thrown by those who are literally out of sight.

If one imbibes the toxic message of anger now widely distributed, I doubt one will become more tender or charming. The four-year-olds have innate wisdom and sweetness, qualities not characteristic of those addicted to TV’s political anger-fests.

Nor will the Rageaholics have much reason to approach those of different races, nationalities, ethnicities, or religions, perhaps even those who pray to no god.

Trust me — one of them might be “the one.” Or, at least, a friend not so different from you as you thought.

We live in a time of loneliness, the anonymity of cities, and the solitary pursuit of “being your own person,” however worthwhile that may be.

Though the small ones don’t know it yet, the time of our lives walks and whistles quickly past the clock, especially if one desires to be loved.

Companionship begins with a decision to pursue it, knowing armorless vulnerability places the heart at risk. The kids haven’t learned that yet, either.

Bless them.

The second decision is this one, made by a wise man over 2500 years ago:

I don’t have time to hate people who hate me because I am too busy loving people who love me.*

An ancient Chinese man said this, but the kids I’m talking about live it.

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*Laozi, also known as Lau Tzu (the “Old Master”) born in 604 B.C.

The first image is a 1957 photo of Two Children Holding Hands by Irvin Peithman, sourced from Wikiart.com. 

May 7, 2023

When There is Nothing More to Say to Your Lover

At a certain point, there is nothing more to say. You can repeat yourself, of course, but if you have not been heard the first thousand times, the next 250 probably won’t matter anyway.

They will grind up your insides and do the same to the one who is tired of your pleas, complaints, and sadness. The logic and reasons you spray at him are like the water in a hose over grass already drenched, changing nothing.

You live together. That’s the sad thing. You are touch starved amid thousands of opportunities for touch. You used to try. Now you’ve given up, but still, the topic arises. The one you are with doesn’t listen but interrupts while you ask why. He gives no answers and doesn’t seem to have them.

He looks at you, hears you, and has no idea what you are talking about.

The man lives in a world of books and television, work and buddies, small bets on football, and hobbies. The rest of the world, the life you shared, the youthful passion — all that was — is unremembered and unthought. Oh yeah, it was like that, wasn’t it? It all happened in the time of cavemen, a now-distant epoch that seems to have vanished. I’m not a caveman, he says. Is that who you want? Uhhhh…

But he’s an excellent provider; there’s that. And a swell father and you do your part more than ever. Taking care of the social end of the family, helping with homework, and much more.

Does that matter, or is it assumed, you wonder? He never says.

Your integrity falls into the category of qualities taken for granted. You would never cheat anyone, never lie, never be unfaithful. You are honorable, though sometimes unkind when the frustration and loneliness, the craving can’t be ignored.

He won’t go to marital therapy. His life satisfies him.

Sometimes you feel like a male honey bee — very strange since you are female. But the male — the drone — mates and then dies. At times you sense you are dying inside.

How was it for you? You asked the insect. You wanted to know.

Let’s just say we drones mate once for less than five seconds. Heard enough?

The tiny fellow expired before he could say more.

Yet you love him, the man in your life, and know he loves you — in his way. You have grown out of sync.

Was Tolstoy right when he wrote about families in Anna Karenina?

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Nobody’s fault. It’s nobody’s fault, you tell yourself. I shouldn’t complain, you say; look at all that is fine. But, just to check things out, you speak to your dearest friend. 

For the first time, to anyone.

You want her assurance that your life is good, even though there are things it lacks in the department of the heart. So you speak, and when you finish…

You: Everything is ok, right?

(Silence).

Right?

(More silence).

RIGHT?

More silence, then…

AHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Both paintings are works of Joan (pronounced Juan) Miro. The first is The Escape Ladder (1940). The second is  Persons Haunted by a Bird (1938).

April 29, 2023

What Would You Give Up To Make a Relationship Work?

Can you have everything in a relationship? For those who can, if it lasts well beyond the honeymoon, you deserve more than applause. Cheers and hugs all around. 

For all other satisfied twosomes, your mate will fall short of scoring 100%, and so will you.

Perhaps those who succeed in living with the imperfect are the couples we should praise. They will work for their happiness, including the effort to recognize what should be changed and what can be lived with — accepted without recrimination.

Given that, try to peer through the springtime bloom of new encounters, those glorious moments of newborn bliss. Here is a two-sided list of qualities in your present or future lover to consider waiting for, insisting upon, or setting aside.

Which of these do you want? Name the items you can’t live without. Perhaps make a separate list of the qualities sure to bring unhappiness and discontent.

Evaluate for yourself the benefits and the costs.

  • Does your mate give you the freedom you want or try to limit you?
  • Are his parents wonderful to you and each other? Study the model he’s had for how relationships work. That might be your future.
  • If the one you love doesn’t modify some of his characteristics, would you be able to accept that? Which might be deal-breakers?
  • Is he playful, unsmiling, or both?
  • Does he treat people with kindness, including acquaintances and strangers, regardless of rank? Does he display generosity of attitude and temperament?
  • How much unsolicited judgment and criticism is sent your way?

  • Are necessary and sincere apologies offered? Will this individual then reflect upon himself and change, trying not to repeat the errors? There will be errors, you know.
  • Sexual compatibility, anyone?
  • Are you in-sync and accepting of his hobbies, friends, money management, musical affections, sports, and fitness? How about pets, travel, and hopes for the future? If you assume rather than search for the answers to what the other is like, you might be wrong.
  • How self-aware is your romantic partner? Many people believe they know themselves despite enormous blindspots. If the intimate friend cannot now recognize his dark side, you may find yourself in the dark.
  • Do you agree about taking chances versus choosing the safe path? Do your preferences for deliberation or speed and patience or impatience match?
  • What about sharing a sense of humor?
  •  Have the two of you created a workable division of housekeeping, managing finances, doing the laundry, and other life tasks? Do you coincide in terms of tidiness and messiness?
  • Is he sensitive to you? Does he listen and provide comfort or point to solutions you didn’t request when you desire an attentive ear and consolation?
  • Are differences resolved with words, careful listening, compromise, apology, change, and recovery without blinding rage? Do your hands touch in tenderness?
  • Will the spouse defend you with family, friends, and children?
  • Consider learning about his history of friends and lovers. If he hasn’t made them last, why not? He might not see any pattern, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
  • Would he discuss such a list of questions as this and honor the reasons for the request?
  • Do you share a vision of childrearing?
  • Are you attractive to each other and satisfyingly attentive to scent, attire, and appearance?
  • What about lies, towering or tiny, deceit, and fidelity?
  • How do you mesh in being direct or indirect, confident, and assertive?
  • Where do you stand on religious faith or its absence? Is the other accepting of any difference in this domain? Does he fathom why the two of you might not agree and accept it?
  • Are your ideas respected?

  • Couples often say they were first drawn together by the fun and the physical in the early stages of their relationship. Is there anything else that recommends the other now?
  • Does he expect you to read his mind or tell you about his dissatisfaction?
  • Will he fix his eyes on yours and love the soul beneath the beauty, recognizing what makes you unique and that which is necessary to fill your heart?
  • While reading this list and considering concerns about your partner, have you recognized them in yourself?
  • Does he know you as you wish to be known? Have you shown him who you are?

Any questioning of this sort could go on. Add whatever you wish.

Such queries are often not answerable by asking your lover but by shared interaction, observing him, and looking in the mirror at yourself.

I suspect that if we lived until the end of time, most of us wouldn’t be listing our accomplishments. I’m guessing the money we earned, the episodic urgency of vacuuming the rug and thinking of our best vacation wouldn’t matter much.

We’d think instead of love — or better — embrace it and the ones we care about. What else justifies our gratitude more than all the other good fortune we might have had, the trophies and awards we’d won or lost, and status high or low?

Sharing our hearts in generosity, protection, respect, laughter, and kindness, would be the most telling source of fulfillment, even in exciting and successful lives. So it seems to me. After all…

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” *

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*The words of William Bruce Cameron, 1963, not Einstein, as often assumed.

The top photo is Sunrise Coming into Miami in November 2022 by Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website. 

It is followed by two works by Mark Rothko. The first is No. 13, White and Red on Yellow, 1958, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The second is Untitled, No. 11, 1963 from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

I have chosen these paintings because the late works of Rothko can be best appreciated if you take some time to look at them.

I’d suggest you begin with the large, fluffy white, gray, and yellow rectangle in the first Rothko mural. Focus on the center and wait. You won’t have to wait long.

You will find this work of art changing its qualities the longer you do. So do people, including those you love or hope to love.

February 19, 2023

A Message to Future Generations

Here is a thought experiment for you:

Imagine you are famous. Because of your renown, you are given a chance to leave a message every future human will receive in 1000 years.

What would you say?

You have two minutes to say it, but as much time as you want to choose your words.

I’d suggest you make it short. You do have some competition in this department — from Bertrand Russell.

Lord Russell (1872 – 1970) was one of those impossibly famous people. Just to name a few aspects of his remarkable life, he was a British philosopher, mathematician, logician, and public intellectual. He even did a small amount of time in Brixton Prison because of his pacifist opposition to England’s involvement in World War I.

Talk about making a principled stand!

Not to be broken by the experience, Russell made his time in confinement useful:

I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, ‘Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy’… and began the work for ‘The Analysis of Mind’. I was rather interested in my fellow-prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally inferior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence as was shown by their having been caught.

Russell was a man who turned a defeat into opportunity and found humor in it.

On the BBC TV interview show Face to Face in 1959, Russell was asked the question I posed to you.

His two-minute message to the future was in two parts: intellectual and moral. Now you can leave whatever message you wish in whatever format.

Take courage, my friends! I’m here to listen and might even take a crack at coming up with my own answer to the big question.

But even now, I’d say this:

If our species doesn’t make it 1000 years, it will be because we didn’t take the great man’s advice.

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P.S. I’d add a brief bit to Russell, with apologies to his ghost and with thanks to those who have or will have given his words some thought.

For centuries, the world has had in mind a very lofty goal — to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” As Freud suggested, this might ask too much of us, a dream we’ve failed to achieve. But perhaps we should shoot for something more modest: to respect our neighbor, be kind, and hold back our judgment and anger until we put ourselves in his shoes.

One more thing. Property and material objects have limits in their ability to produce the happiness everyone wants. We have been persuaded that more is better while our fellowmen go hungry and homeless.

We will do better to the extent we think of ourselves as custodians of physical objects and the planet we call our home. Material things will break down, but we mustn’t treat the earth the same way. We have it on loan.

Like curators of fine art, we must treat it gently and work to return it and our environment to the state best disposed to allow our ancestors and all the world’s flora and fauna to live. Without life, there can be no “after” life.

February 12, 2023

Michael Gerson: Fighting Depression with Hope, Faith, and Love

On the day before the Super Bowl, I’m guessing the short supply of serious newspaper readers is smaller than usual.

Still, the mention of Michael Gerson in today’s New York Times demands attention, though he can no longer know that anyone cares. He was a good man and perhaps a great one who died in December. Fifty-eight is too young for the departure of a person whose presence on the earth made it a better place.

Funny, I should say that. I didn’t always agree with his politics and didn’t vote for the President for whom he wrote speeches.

But in my book, I don’t have to agree with you to admire you, as I did him. I envied his gift of language, his principled stance on matters of importance, and a heroic battle that found him outlasted by death: a bigger-than-life opponent with an undefeated record.

Gerson fought a chemically-based depression severe enough for hospitalization, serious heart disease, and cancer that killed him. Outnumbered, you might say, but not out of hope, faith, and love.

I don’t have to believe in your faith to praise the way you go beyond the weekly attendance at a house of worship to live it. Gerson lived his own beliefs in deep consideration and helping the unfortunate. President Biden just hailed the 20th anniversary of the “President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief” created by President George W. Bush and Mr. Gerson. In today’s Times, Peter Baker said their effort saved more than 25 million lives.

Since my words pale to Michael Gerson’s, I hope you watch and listen to him in the video above, an invited Sunday sermon given three years ago. He will tell you enough about his troubles, his concern for the disadvantaged, and his belief in something transcendent to regret his early passing.

The Super Bowl can’t do that, though I hope you enjoy it.

A few seconds at halftime won’t be wasted to remember a humble, wounded, and wise man beyond describing with anyone’s words but his own.

January 8, 2023

At the End of the Day, Do Personal Accomplishments Matter?

When I attended my 20th high school reunion, it looked as if status and appearance mattered greatly to the assembled throng. Friends came to an identical conclusion. It could have been called a “Festival to Impress.”

I wasn’t that impressed.

The 50th reunion was different. No one cared about what you’d done professionally or were still doing. Friends, old and new, were pleased to talk, get to know you in some depth, and share the light and dark sides of distant memories.

If you’d achieved something worthwhile, you were now at ease with yourself. Everyone seemed grateful they were still in decent health, pleased to laugh with each other, and happy most of those they cared about were alive.

Of course, some who didn’t attend felt ashamed of their place in the world or how they looked. Others, also absent, felt no large attachment to the school or their classmates. They moved on, as the saying goes. Nor did embittered souls want to remind themselves of longstanding anger or sadness. Perhaps they recalled their time at Mather High School as an accumulation of humiliating experiences.

All of this raises questions about what is of value in any life. I can’t offer you a personal prescription, but I can relate a little about myself and what I know of those closest to me. Here goes a short version of what is important to me now and what isn’t.

Having lived almost 10 years since retirement, I’ve become rather indifferent about the kinds of items you put on resumes. My ego is still helpful for taking a stand about things, but I don’t spend too much time pulled back by my history or driven to look far ahead.

That is not to say I have no idea what is ahead, though I’m not expecting to vanish soon if you get my meaning.

I have a minimal selection of regrets and recently reduced that number by apologizing to an old friend to whom I was unkind years ago. He said he’d been thinking about me and hoping I’d do just that.

I have very little in my life worth hiding, and I tend to talk about anything you want to hear from me.

I want to keep learning, which means reading and engaging with people. An instructor in a Shakespeare course I just began said he would not only question each of us orally during class but hoped to make us a bit uncomfortable when he required us to justify our conclusions; the better for our understanding to grow.

When I heard that, I felt like jumping for joy. Seriously.

I care deeply about the well-being of loved ones and friends. I am at the stage when the latter are swept away without fanfare.

Everyone I know my age must deal with one malady or another, and all with aches and pains. In general, these are uncomfortable conditions rather than mortal ones so far. We all adapt.

As an old, retired psychologist, I won’t tell the young what is ahead of them if they live as long as I have. They’d neither understand it nor believe it. Young people cannot imagine the physical changes ahead, and I don’t want to be the guy to tell them. Better they just assume it is all either magic or bad luck.

When I became a new father, I hoped my children would achieve something meaningful. But, you may discover for yourself that regardless of what they accomplish, in the end, you care about their health and happiness. Your approach to your grandchildren is much the same.

Woody Allen commented about the value of accomplishment in a conversation with Dick Cavett just after Groucho Marx died in 1977:

He had achieved everything I wanted to achieve as a comedian but he still got old and he still aged, and nothing special was going to happen because he had achieved this enormous artistic accomplishment.

What did it mean anyhow — that he was going to get a long obituary?

I tend to agree with Woody on this point.

I have little interest in what is said about me, and I don’t expect, need, or deserve anyone cutting down part of a tree to produce the paper needed to enhance my posthumous reputation in the printed news. All who survive me, whenever that happens, will be far better off with the tree.

One piece of advice I shall leave my kids is that it’s OK to tell jokes about me and to imagine I’m laughing with them. No hallucinations of me allowed, however.

Speaking of jokes, I laugh more than I ever have. If you must choose between viewing life as a tragedy or a comedy, I just told you how I prefer to vote. Not everything should be taken with grave severity.

Being a “good” person is not as easy as being kind, though kindness is necessary. It is also a matter of what you do to help repair the world. That means some combination of effort and giving away money unless you are down to your last dollar.

And yet, I don’t want you to think I would leave it at that upon “taking off.” Don’t assume the humans you care about know how you feel about them. Considering it is nice, repeat it to make sure, and keep doing so. Endlessly.

With my kids and grandchildren, the last thing I say on the way out the door after every weekly visit is, “I love you.” We hug at the same time, too. So it has been and will be.

What would be better than to offer those three final words and a hug?

OK, maybe a kiss, too.

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Greg Williams drew and uploaded the caricature of comedian and movie star Groucho Marx to Wikimedia Commons. With her generous permission, the second image is Laura Hedien’s photograph of the Chicago River at the End of December 2022: Laura Hedien Official Website.