wisdom

September 18, 2013

Yes or No? “What Goes Around Comes Around”

Justice and Law

Many of us comfort ourselves with the notion that life evens out in the long run. The evil go to hell, the good go to heaven. Or, if you are not religiously inclined, “What goes around comes around.” Meaning that eventually justice is done, something bad will happen to those who have done something bad, even if it looks like they are better off in the short run.

Then there are those who believe, usually in conformity to a “religion of prosperity,” that if you are injured by another you probably deserved it, since God would not authorize something that wasn’t in your best interest. Or, perhaps that the Almighty is giving you some sort of test or opportunity to learn and grow that will ultimately be of benefit to you.

Finally, there is a rather large group who don’t believe in any ultimate fairness in this life or the next — a darker view, for sure. They say that bad things do happen, sometimes randomly, and sometimes due to people who are malicious, unscrupulous, self-interested, and so forth. For those with that view, evil deeds will usually go unpunished and there isn’t much you can do about it. They ask the first two groups to defend the view that the world is ultimately just when they read the morning newspaper’s screaming headlines about chemical warfare, ethnic cleansing, and the like. They quote the great attorney Clarence Darrow’s comment that, “There is no justice — in or out of court.”

My own view is different from these. I am not counting on heaven to put things right, although I’d be very happy to be surprised on this point. Nor do I believe in the kind of God who would authorize injury to us on earth. If he exists, and if he is all-good and all-powerful, he can cleverly produce the results he wants without mayhem and heartbreak to we fragile souls.

On the other hand, I do agree with those who believe that many people escape external punishments: prison time, loss of money, that sort of thing. But, in my experience as a therapist and observer of life, I have seen very few people who behave badly on a regular basis and are happier for it. Let me elaborate.

Some of the most destructive people I’ve known are quite unhappy. Their self-interested actions discourage others from being close to them, so they have recurring relationship issues. Those who gossip too much (we all do it some) cause others to mistrust them. Then there are the promise-breakers, who also cause friendships to end. All these imperfect humans are usually clueless to what they do that injures others — perhaps even surprised that they obtain the reputation of being dangerous. If they are powerful or wealthy or beautiful, some people will stick around them hoping for a payoff. But that is not love or the kind of companionship that most of us want.

Would you really want to be the Mafia boss who must live in fear of arrest, imprisonment, or murder by someone close to him; who must have a body-guard or two around his palatial estate? Would you trade places with a person without a conscience because he has figured out how to lie, cheat, and steal his way to prominence? Do you imagine him capable of any real intimacy? Is money or property that important to you that you’d emulate his life if you could? Or perhaps you’d love the life of a gossip who works hard to believe that everyone loves her, but knows, deep down, that her relationships are shallow? Yet she is blind to the destructiveness that causes others to shy away from anything that is more than casual.

I don’t think you’d choose any of those ways of living. Nor do I imagine that it sounds appealing to become someone so self-interested that you trade the joys of friendship and sometimes even the good feeling that comes from self-sacrifice for the temporary personal satisfaction of selfishness.

You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned guilt. There is a lot less guilt out there than most people think. Most of us are pretty well able to rationalize the injuries we cause to others. It often goes like this: “He did X to me, so that means I can do Y to him.” Well, no, actually, unless you want to lose your own honor and decency, which usually comes in the process of trying to right the scales of justice or get revenge.

Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum

Here is an extreme example of losing your soul in an effort to extract revenge for a horrible betrayal. The speaker is Martha Nussbaum, Professor at the University of Chicago, in conversation with Bill Moyers:*

I wake up at night thinking about Euripides’ (play) Hecuba, a story that says so much about what it is to be a human being in the middle of a world of unreliable things and people. Hecuba is a great queen who has lost her husband, most of her children, and her political power in the Trojan War. She’s been made a slave, but she remains absolutely morally firm, and she even says she believes that good character is stable in adversity and can’t be shaken.

But then her one deepest hope is pulled away from her. She had left her youngest child with her best friend (Polymestor), who was supposed to watch over him and his money and then bring him back when the war was over. When Hecuba gets to the shore of Thrace, she sees a naked body washed up on the beach… She looks at it more closely, and then sees it’s the body of her child, and that the friend has murdered the child for his money and just flung the body heedlessly into the waves. All of a sudden the roots of her moral life are undone. She looks around and says, “Everything that I see is untrustworthy.” If this deepest and best friendship proves untrustworthy, then it seems to her that nothing can be trusted, and she has to turn to a life of solitary revenge. We see her end the play by putting out the eyes of her former best friend (and murdering his two young sons), and it is predicted that she will turn into a dog. The story of metamorphosis from the human to something less than human has really taken place before our very eyes…

One part of the message here, clearly, is what can happen to you if you become like the thing you hate, as Hecuba does when she murders Polymestor’s innocent children and puts out his eyes.

I’m guessing, though, that an outcome without punishment for the murder of Hecuba’s son might not be satisfying for some of you. Surely something should happen to Polymestor. And, just as surely, we need to have some sympathy for Hecuba, even if killing the kids does go over the line. She did, after all, first go to the local authorities to seek justice and was spurned. Perhaps you imagine the sweetness and closure that would come from revenge. Or perhaps it is simply that it is not right that Polymestor get away with this.

Two possible remedies. The first one comes from my wife, who wishes that the bad guys could have just one minute of self-awareness. She thinks that to see themselves as they really are for just 60 seconds would be a fit punishment in most instances. As I see it, though, the insight that would come in that short time might be worth the pain it cost and actually increase their chances of leading a more satisfying life. Still, my wife has no superpowers that I know of (I may get in trouble for saying that) and so her ability to create the justice she’d like isn’t going to happen.

Ah, but I have a remedy, too! It’s pretty simple. The punishment for most of the folks who specialize in the garden variety hurts of everyday life — the lying, the cheating, the broken promises, and the betrayals that don’t have a criminal penalty — doesn’t require either a super hero or any equipment. It is simply to let these malefactors continue to live the messed up and unsatisfying lives they seem intent on living.

—

*The interview excerpt of Martha Nussbaum comes from Bill Moyers: A World of Ideas, published in 1989 by Doubleday, pages 447 and 448.

The top image by ElmA is called Justice and Law. The photo of Martha Nussbaum is the work of Robin Holland. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 12, 2013

Seven Signs of Getting Older (on the Wretched Road to Decrepitude)

A Toast

I thought of calling this essay “The secret signs of aging that THEY won’t tell you about.” I figured that might engage the conspiracy theorists out there. TRUST NO ONE, as The X-Files used to remind us.

Still, I hope that you will trust me enough to treat what follows as a public service designed to inform you of some little-discussed, but tell-tale signs that your body is heading in a direction from which there is no return.

Why am I doing this? I don’t want you to be taken by surprise when decrepitude finally arrives. It happened to my mom in just that way. One day, past middle-age, she looked at her face in the mirror and heard herself uttering, “When did this happen?”

Of course, some of the more obvious signs of aging are well-known. Things like losing your hair, going gray, loss of muscle tone, and increasingly “jiggly” body parts are already represented in popular culture as danger signals. So are wrinkles, age spots, a tendency toward a thickening of the mid-section, memory issues and so forth. So I’m going to deal only with those things that are a bit less obvious.

Here they are, in no particular order:

  1. Becoming invisible. As a kid I enjoyed watching reruns of the movies that were based on the H.G. Wells tale The Invisible Man. Eventually, however, I discovered that no secret formula was required in order to achieve this apparently non-material state. Germaine Greer described it in a 1993 book called The Change. She was referring mostly to women, but it applies, to a lesser extent, to men as well. Simply put, if you are someone who has historically drawn the gaze of others because of your fetching appearance, eventually that stops, usually earlier than you were expecting. Instead of turning the heads of others, they now walk past you with hardly a look. You have become invisible. Your age is showing.
  2. The descent. Your body parts are on the move, like an infantry in retreat. Breasts, butts, jowls, double-chins, and even your height are slowly succumbing to the superior force of the opposing army, otherwise known as gravity. The direction of their path is toward “The Underworld” as the ancient Greeks used to call it. We usually refer to it as “six-feet under.”
  3. The generation gap. I started teaching at Rutgers when I was 25 in 1972. I can recall a moment in my first year there, lecturing a group of 19 or 20 year-olds. For some reason I brought up the name Adlai Stevenson II. No one had any idea who I was talking about. Yet Stevenson had been the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidate in 1952 and 1956, and famously confronted the Russians at the United Nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, only 10 years before. Yes, he died in 1965, but most Americans my age would have known who he was. In that moment, I realized that there was a body of knowledge that I could no longer naively assume I shared with those younger than I. As you might have noticed yourself, it eventually grows to cover lots of ground, with you knowing about things that are older, and younger people knowing about things that are newer. Movies, music, and TV shows are among the areas of information that seem to overlap less and less. Familiarity with historical events and technology also inhabit this divide, separating you from the growing group of people who were born after you.
  4. Betrayals of the body.  There is way too much territory here to cover fully, but let me give you a sense of what is in store for some of you. Your body will begin to inform you that its performance of actions you have taken for granted, does, in fact, take some effort. You are likely to discover that you actually have knees and that their job isn’t easy. Some aches and pains here and there tend to creep in, particularly involving your back. By middle-age, arthritis isn’t unusual, although it can be quite mild. Your nose and ears can begin to look bigger. If you are a man, shaving your face eventually becomes more of a challenge because the contours of your face change, leaving tiny hills and valleys that resist your effort to scrape them smooth of stubble. Your skin is likely to get drier. Sense of balance can decline. Many of both sexes encounter the need to urinate more frequently and find themselves scouting out public washrooms just in case. Yikes!
  5. How People Treat You. I remember taking my daughter Carly to the Art Institute of Chicago when I was 50, asking for two tickets, and being given a “senior discount” automatically by the young cashier — well before I was actually a senior. Young people, when they notice you at all, will see you as ancient by the time you are 40. Not long after, they will begin to refer to you as “sir” or “ma’am.” In the grocery check-out line, even middle-aged cashiers will ask whether you need help carrying the groceries to your car. I realize that some of this kind attention is given simply as a matter of course even to those who are younger. But, regardless of how fit you are, it will remind you of the fact that you are no “spring chicken.” And, just in case you are a checker at the grocery market, I’d like to let you know that I do indeed need some help. The help I need is to stop being asked if I need help!
  6. Sleep disturbance. You are at an increased risk of having trouble sleeping. This is actually much reported, so you can find the details elsewhere.
  7. The evening out. No, I’m not talking about a night on the town. This item refers to the changes in physical appearance that cause people to begin to look more alike. It is pretty scary really. Some male faces begin to look more like the female kind, with or without the addition of “man boobs” a little lower down. Some women’s faces look less different from those of men, even to the point of facial hair growth and thinning hair on top of the head. Perhaps worst of all, people who were once movie-star beautiful eventually discover that their declining level of pulchritude makes them less distinguishable from those who were never good-looking. I guess Mother Nature figures that the unfair advantage of beauty is just on loan, not a permanent gift.

Now that I’ve described these lesser-known signs of aging, I’ve gotta ask you a question. Why did you want to know? If you are young, whatever that is, you almost certainly don’t really believe you will ever become aged. And, if you are old, well, you probably already know the secrets I’ve mentioned. But, what good, at either period — young or old — does it do to know this stuff?

Yes, if you are young, perhaps you will take better care of yourself because you give some thought to your body’s future. And, consideration of your physical destiny will remind you to develop sources of self-definition, pleasure, and meaning other than the glorious state of your face and physique. Still, decrepitude is a “bigger than life” opponent who tends to have his way. There is little you can do to fend off time’s offending hand.

I suppose you can put the information above in the category of “the examined life.” I’m usually in agreement with Socrates on the matter of the unexamined life not being worth living. But, I’ll tell you what, your unexamined physical future is probably best left hidden under a rock most of the time. Like the thread on the sweater that begs to be pulled, a preoccupation with such things is pretty destructive. Believe me, you don’t want to imagine a day when you will ask your lawn care service to add the trimming of your lengthening nose hair to their weekly task of cutting the grass.

—

The top image, called Everyone’s Invited, is the work of SuicideGirls and was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 4, 2013

What Memory Would You Take To Eternity?

After Life

If you could remember only one moment from your entire life, what would it be? Or, to put it differently, if eternity (heaven) consisted of reliving that single experience forever, what moment would you choose?

Before I reveal to you how I would answer that question, let me tell you about a movie that deals with this rather odd dilemma. It is a 13-year-old Japanese film called After Life. It depicts a group of recently deceased people who assemble at a sort of transit station on their way to whatever is “beyond.” They are told that they will have several days to decide on their own version of eternity, which will consist of living forever in whatever single moment they choose from their just-ended life history on earth. They are each assigned a counselor of sorts to assist them with the choice.

To live “in the moment” necessitates that they give up that part of themselves that, like all humans, allows them to look back and remember the past, as well as to look forward and anticipate the future. Experiencing whatever large or small single event is most precious involves sensations and feelings attached only to that slice of time rather than to anything else, even including other positive relationships, experiences, and events. And so, perhaps not surprisingly, each person in the movie struggles with relinquishing all of their other memories, relationships, and daily preoccupations in return for an eternity of living within a single instant in time with nothing else on their mind.

In effect, what the movie is indirectly asking us is to determine how we value things. That is, to decide what means the most to us; or, perhaps, what experience has been the most pleasant or exciting.

Much depends on when one is asked. I am quite certain that I would have chosen a different moment if I had to make the choice in my 20s rather than in my 60s. Not only do memories change (often losing intensity) as we revisit them, but their relative importance is altered as new ones are woven into the tapestry of our lives. In my 20s, I might have wished to relive the intense excitement of a personal athletic triumph, or winning an award, or a blissful sexual encounter. If you’d asked me in my teens, I might have chosen a particularly thrilling baseball game I’d attended. But, as I think about those kinds of things at some distance, I know I wouldn’t choose them today.

You might ask “why?” Well, I’ve seen lots of good ballgames and I probably care less about sports than I ever have at any time in my life, even though I still enjoy these as a spectator. Maybe, as a Chicago fan, I simply have seen too many defeats for one lifetime! But, spectator sports are more about someone else’s experience you vicariously participate in, rather than your own. So if I were to choose one moment from my life to relive, it wouldn’t involve watching someone else perform. And, since my own athletic successes were quite modest, that category gets knocked off the list of potential winners in the area of “reliving.”

"The Dugout" by Norman Rockwell

“The Dugout” by Norman Rockwell

OK, what about sex? I knew you would ask. For most young men, I suspect sex is the dominating preoccupation, at least until they lose their virginity. Then, assuming that they are able to have sexual relations with some frequency, it becomes a thing that fades as a singular focus. Yes, I know there are people for whom it appears to be the only issue that matters. A pity. While it is an important part of life, I doubt most people (even including men), as they cross over the threshold into heaven, would say, “Boy, if I could only get laid one more time!”

Nor do I think that I, personally, would like eternity to consist of the intensity of a continuous orgasm. I guess what I’m getting at here is that the physically stirring nature of that experience isn’t any different (I suspect) from what a dog or a cat or a mountain lion feels in the moment of coitus. For eternity I’d choose something that involved every part of me, not just the physical part.

What else might I consider? Well, I met and interviewed my hero, Carlo Maria Giulini, when I was 31. Memorable, but not really a contender. I have heard lots of terrific musical performances and attended a few plays that had me spinning for days. Again, watching and listening, whether it is baseball or Brahms, aren’t as valuable as those endeavors that you do yourself. And while I had countless profound experiences in doing psychotherapy, I doubt even a brain surgeon would take a single successful operation with him or her into a personalized version of heaven. Nor is there anything unique about such things, as a rule. No, I think the actions or experiences you repeat probably don’t have the special meaning required for you to cherish them forever, above those that happened just once.

Well that narrows the focus, doesn’t it? The contenders for your afterlife usually have to consist of things you participated in (not watched) and happened only once. Let me tell you about three such instances that I think about from time to time.

My mother, Jeanette Stein, probably in the late 1930s or early 1940s

My mother, Jeanette Stein, probably in the late 1930s or early 1940s

In her 83rd year, my mother’s unhappy life was particularly difficult. Not only was she in great physical pain, but she’d lost my dad several months before. My visits with her had frequently and historically been unpleasant. She’d accumulated much anger in the course of her time on earth and those closest to her were often targeted. My weekly journey to see her was dutiful, but both of us knew I didn’t perform the obligation out of a sense of joyous anticipation.

Mom was a very clever lady who could get under your skin with the speed and deftness of a chef at a Japanese steakhouse. Even though I had learned how to deflect her sharp-edged and pointed affronts, I did have to be on my toes or deaden myself to the jabs that could be expected. One Sunday, everything changed.

This woman, who had told me more than once that she prayed to her mother and my father to die as soon as possible, was in a particularly light mood. She didn’t seem to be in pain that day and was the funny, warm, joyous being I had not seen in decades. We laughed, we talked, we showed affection. It was a small miracle.

When I returned the next week, things were back to “business as usual.” And one week later, she was unconscious when I arrived and dead within days. But that Sunday two weeks before her demise was a gift. When I think back, it is with a mixture of happiness and a tear or two. I got to see, for a brief moment, the best of my mother just before the close. And, I got to be with a woman I loved — briefly, finally, free of pain — the emotional and physical pain that was her nearly constant companion for much of her life.

The second contender for the memory I’d take to eternity will be no surprise to the parents among you. Like many dads, I was in the operating room with my wife at the birth of our first child. It had been a labor that started at about 1:00 in the morning and ended at 9:34 in the evening. Like any good husband, I held my wife’s hand, coached her on the breathing exercises we’d learned to minimize her pain, and urged her to “push” when the MD so instructed. And, when our first-born finally emerged, it was another small miracle. The emotional experience involved love, exhaustion, amazement, gratitude — the kind of mixture that is impossible to imagine, reproduce, or describe.

The Kiss

Only one more memory then, dear reader. This is one that has grown on me over the years. I had the good luck as a young man to kiss a sufficient number of attractive women to know that some were good kissers and some not so good. Some of those kisses by those kissers were enthusiastic, some indifferent, some creative, some passionate, and some loving. Some of those osculations by those osculators were ravenous, some languorous, some long, some short, some almost painful. But the one that I think about every week is the first time I kissed my wife Aleta. It was on the steps of her mother’s house, where Aleta lived, ending our first-ever date. It is doubtless colored by the life we’ve had together, our still growing love, our children, our ups and downs. But it was also memorable even at that time, without the accumulated experiences of more than 40 years since. It warms me and reminds me of how lucky I am to have met and married the best and most beautiful person I have ever known.

Well, by now you realize the choice was really not a choice at all. It is the memory of that kiss I’d take to eternity. That would be a heaven worth waiting for. But — lucky me — I get to relive some version of the moment every day.

—

The last image is a detail from Klimt’s The Kiss.

 

August 28, 2013

A Man Who Refused to Judge: Carlo Maria Giulini

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This is a story about a musician, but not about music. It is about you and me and especially all the loud voices in today’s world who not only claim to know what is right and what is wrong, but who is right and who is wrong. Most particularly, it is about a great man who had every right to judge someone else, but chose not to. I’m talking about the famous Italian conductor of symphony and opera, Carlo Maria Giulini.

Who was Giulini and what gave him that right? Born in 1914, Carlo Maria Giulini would become the Music Director of La Scala, Milan; Principal Guest Conductor of the Chicago Symphony (1969-1973) and the Music Director of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (1973-1976). But it was much earlier in Rome that he played as an orchestral violist under the German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886-1954), as well as many other great conductors; and it was Furtwängler who Giulini refused to judge. Not as a musician, but as a man — a man in the middle — between the Nazi state that ruled his homeland and his conscience.

images

Furtwängler remains a controversial figure to this day for choosing to stay in Germany during the Third Reich (1933-1945). His celebrity would have guaranteed him important positions throughout the world. But, while evidence indicates that he did assist some Jewish musicians in the Nazi bullseye, he also allowed himself to be used as a propaganda tool by the government. Never having joined the Nazi party, he was seen as vaguely disloyal by some within Germany, but just another morally compromised German by some outside of it.

Giulini had his own set of moral dilemmas. Although drafted into the Italian Army that was allied with Germany, he and his two brothers, Steno and Alberto, made a pact not to kill:

We would not serve as Mussolini’s (the Italian dictator’s) agent to take anyone’s life, even if it cost us our own. (As a second lieutenant) when my men were fired upon, I had to appear to respond, so I would draw my pistol and fire high above their heads. One of my brothers (Steno) was in Russia with the Italian ski troops. His situation was horrible, with cold and snow and the constant attacks of the Russians, but he never loaded his rifle.

Even this stance proved inadequate to the circumstances that Giulini faced. In Yugoslavia, the Italian Army was confronted with partisan attacks and began to engage in revenge missions against innocent civilians. Before long, after the Allied invasion of Italy, Italy formally switched sides in the war — but not Giulini’s unit, which was ordered to stand with the Nazis in defense of Rome against the advancing U.S. Fifth Army. Giulini defected.

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It was late 1943 and Giulini now found himself a wanted man, his postered name and face to be seen with the direction to “shoot on sight.” For the next nine months Giulini, two comrades, and a Jewish family hid in a tunnel below his uncle’s house in Rome. Newly married, his wife Marcella and Italian resistance fighters provided supplies. It was Marcella who gave him the library copies of orchestral scores that he studied by candlelight and that they hoped he might eventually conduct if he survived.

On June 5, 1944 the Allies succeeded in liberating Rome. Thomas Saler, the author of Serving Genius: Carlo Maria Giulini, whose book is the source of much of the wartime background presented here, describes the scene:

After word reached him that the city had been liberated, Giulini climbed out of his underground hideaway and stepped outside. It was the first time in nine months that he saw the light of day and breathed the fresh air. Overcome with emotion, he walked to a nearby tree and kissed it.

Giulini was owed a four-year-old debt by Rome’s Santa Cecilia Orchestra as a result of having won the right to conduct it in a contest before war intervened. Thus, on July 16, 1944 he led his first ever concert — the concert that celebrated the liberation of Rome.

On March 18, 1978 I had the chance to interview the now legendary maestro. This elegant and charming man, polite and dignified, responded deftly to musical questions at the outset of our time together. That is, until I asked him about his opinion of Furtwängler’s decision to stay in Germany and the latter’s wartime behavior. He was not prepared for my question. I was not prepared for his response.

Giulini’s demeanor changed. While he was not impolite, I’d touched a nerve. He began by putting me in my place: “You are very young.” I was 31, he was 63. Giulini continued:

It is very, very difficult to judge the position of a man. It is difficult for you in American to understand the problems we had in Europe. It is difficult to put yourself in a position, in a special moment (in history) that is impossible to imagine if you didn’t live in that time. The last thing I should do is express my position on this point. I had my personal political position, I took my position — very precise. I was not a fascist, and at the moment I had to make a strong decision, and also a dangerous decision, I took it. But I am not in a position to do any criticism of another person.

The conversation continued, but it was clear that the subject of Wilhelm Furtwängler was closed. In that instant, I had seen the man who some called “the steel angel,” both because of his ever-present respect for people, including the musicians he conducted, and his backbone. He was every bit of both.

Giulini conducted his final concert with the CSO that evening. He would now be off to Los Angeles to take up the last major post of his career, as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Unfortunately, his wife’s sudden and chronically debilitating illness a few years later ended Giulini’s American career in 1984. He returned to Europe, never again leaving his Milan home except for a few days at a time to guest conduct, so as not to be away from Marcella for extended periods. His formal career ended in 1998 and he died in 2005.

Giulini is said to have been a well-read man, but I don’t know if he knew the Stoic philosophers like Epictetus. It was the philosophy of Epictetus that U.S. Navy Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale credited with helping him survive while he was a prisoner in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Over his seven-and-a-half years in enemy hands, Stockdale was tortured 15 times, in solitary confinement for over four years, and in leg irons for two. In other words, another man who, like Giulini, had every right to judge.

James_Bond_Stockdale

In a 1995 lecture to the student body of the Marine Amphibious Warfare School, Stockdale quoted Epictetus:

Where do I look for the good and the evil? Within me, in that which is my own. But for that which is another’s never employ the words “good” or “evil,” or anything of the sort.

“Goods and evils can never be things others do to you, or for you,” Stockdale concluded.

Giulini would have understood.*

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*For an entirely different perspective on Furtwängler’s wartime conduct, see this brief video interview of Jascha Horenstein, the great conductorial associate of Furtwängler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnXn9wwQeXQ

My gratitude to my friends Tom Saler and John Kain, the latter for alerting me to the existence of the Stockdale lecture. The photo of Vice Admiral Stockdale came from the U.S. Defense Visual Information Official Site, as downloaded to Wikimedia Commons by Darz Mol.

August 21, 2013

Death Notice: The Great American Pastime

Typical_baseball_game

The Great American Pastime has passed away. I am here to announce it. You won’t find it on the obituary pages, but it is true all the same.

Yes, I know they still play baseball in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco. But, if the pastime lives anywhere, it is away from the great stadiums and the big cities. Indeed, perhaps only in more modest venues might an old-time baseball experience now exist.

But, you say, what am I talking about? The rules haven’t changed. It still takes three strikes for an out and three outs to end each team’s turn at bat. The bases are still 90 feet apart.

You are right, but I’m not talking about the game as it is played on the field. Rather, I mean the game as it is experienced by a fan in the stands.

In the baseball of my youth, the Great American “Pastime” was a leisurely way to “pass the time” on a summer afternoon. The lyrical pulse of the match drew your eyes to the field, except when the beer-man approached or your neighbor asked you a question. A day at the ball park was usually easeful.  Moments of tension fueled by the drama of the contest were framed by many others that allowed you to relax; kind of like the rhythm of the tide, rushing in and then receding, rising and falling.

For much of the game, when nothing remarkable was happening on the field, one heard the low-frequency hum of the fans talking. As the play became animated — only then did the cheers and boos crowd out conversation. Other than that, the auditor heard barking vendors, with an occasional public address announcement about who was at bat; and perhaps the sound of the stadium organ from time to time. It was all relatively peaceful except when something exciting happened on the baseball diamond.

No more.

The fan is no longer safe. He is targeted for an electronic bombardment from the moment he enters the stadium, just as surely as Dresden was targeted for real (and equally unnecessary) bombs during World War II. The acoustic experience is one of non-stop, high volume noise. If it is not the loudspeaker’s musical blast that has replaced a simple stadium organ, it is the repeated announcements:

Jim Jones Jeep Dealership’s sales team is here along with Jim in Section 5. Let’s give them a hand. Now turn your attention to the scoreboard for a quiz on Cubs history. But before you do, check under your seat to see if you have won a Cadillac from Cathy’s Cadillac of Crown Point, Indiana.

Even so, the announcements are clearly insufficient for the fan who requires hyper-stimulation. He needs to keep his eye out for the dance moves of the paid customers that are being broadcast on the scoreboard screen, just in case he wants to exhibit a few of his own. He needs to keep a sharp eye for T-shirts of his favorite team being shot into the seats by stadium employees on the field between innings.

Most importantly, when the “kiss-cam” moment occurs, he must be sure to kiss whomever he is with, so that thousands of others attending the game can vicariously experience the thrill of his five seconds of relative fame as they watch that image on the Jumbotron. Then, when it is over, the “sausage race” begins, and several alleged adults dressed as a hot dog, a bratwurst, a Polish sausage, a chorizo, and an Italian sausage run around from foul-pole to foul-pole to the cheers of the Pavlov-trained fans who root them on. Surely, this is a comment on the extent to which baseball believes you can be easily entertained, and how desperate the “sausages” must be to make a living.

Hall of Famer Jimmy Foxx. The photo was probably taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Hall of Famer Jimmy Foxx. The photo was taken in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Before the Great American Pastime died, it was a game without a clock. You took your time and so did the game. Now watching a major league contest is fueled by the impatience of the audience for stimulation at every moment, useless information at every other moment, and blasting sonics without end. If you do try to bond with your little girl — the cutie you’ve brought to her first game — you just might find yourself hoarse before the end of the day. The most used phrase at your average big-league contest today has changed from “Hey, beer-man” to “What did you say?”

The only good thing about any of this is that you can probably use attendance at a Major League baseball game as a diagnostic tool to find out whether you are ADHD. If you love the multi-pronged assault on your senses, you should immediately call your doctor and get a prescription for Ritalin.

What has happened? I’ll tell you what I think. First, watch all the people in the grandstand whose heads are turning from side to side, from a blinking light to a dancing bear — from one call for their attention to another. But then look at those who tire even of this. And what are many of them doing? They are checking their iPhones, texting, tweeting, reading email, or surfing the web. The baseball moguls have decided that the game is not enough. Clearly, they believe that they must use every opportunity to gain advertising income from people like Jim Jones Jeep and Cathy’s Cadillac of Crown Point while, at the same time, drawing your eyeballs away from your cell phone.

Sausage_race_start

If you were at a baseball game in my youth (aka the 1950s and ’60s) there was one thing you did in addition to watching the contest and talking to your neighbor: you kept a sharp eye on the pretty girls walking by. Nothing captures the grotesque deformation of the current experience of attending a ballgame better than the knowledge that healthy young men in their seats now spend more time looking at their hands (and the cell phone in them) than any anatomical feature of the highly attractive members of the opposite sex who are dressed to be seen.

If you are young enough, you probably think I’m foolish — old and foolish at that. And, if you are closer to my age, you might have hardly noticed the change in the game because it crept up on you and me gradually. But think back and you will not fail to agree with me. My buddies Ron and Jim and Rock and Tom and Jeff and Steve and Cliff will vouch for me.

Once upon a time there was nothing that I found more prospectively enjoyable than the idea of going to a ballgame, no matter how bad the home team was (which, as a Cubs fan, was normally quite bad, indeed).  Now, unfortunately, my emotions are much more mixed. I’ve seen Major League Baseball played in 15 different arenas over a period of almost 60 years. The change has spread everywhere.

Something has been lost here, my friends. And I don’t think we are getting it back.

A fan returning home after a recent baseball game, aka "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.

A fan returning home after a recent baseball game, aka “The Scream” by Edvard Munch.

—

The top image is of a Typical Baseball Game played in 2005 in San Francisco. It was taken by Imageman and sourced from Wikimedia Commons. The third photo was taken by Agne 27 and uploaded to Wikipedia Commons by User Kelly. It is the Beginning of a Sausage Race at Milwaukee’s Miller Park on April 30, 2007.

August 15, 2013

Turning Points

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A few weeks ago I was with two friends, one of whom very abruptly became angry with the other over something that seemed to me quite small. A difference of opinion, as it turned out, about a political matter. Very angry and very small, at least in the sense that the issue wasn’t important to their well-being or anything that was in their control. It was triggered by an everyday observation about the behavior of one particular politician. You’ve probably heard or made similar comments yourself.

To me, however, it was stunning. Why? Because, in that moment, I saw something that I sometimes do: make a fuss with my wife over a subject of no real consequence, even though it tends not to be about politics. And, I’ll tell you what, what I saw wasn’t pretty. I’m sure it is every bit as unfortunate when I do it as when it happens between these two friends. For me it was a turning point. I have been much different since that day. More than once I’ve replayed in my head what I saw happening in front of me. I’m hoping that the change in me lasts and am writing this to keep myself on target.

I imagine that when most of us think of the idea of a personal turning point, we conjure up a more operatic circumstance. Something about death or winning (or losing) the presidency or falling in love, to name just a few possibilities. But, sometimes a turning point can be as unremarkable as the very personal one I just described. The kind of event that is inwardly dramatic, but not outwardly dramatic. The kind that has to do with an “aha” moment, the self-knowledge it brings, and a change in behavior because of it.

Put differently, turning points involve both what you experience and how you reflect on that experience. Moreover, that self-reflection must lead to a permanent change in conduct. Yet the trigger needn’t be theatrical. The event I just mentioned was compelling only because of the meaning I gave it. To anyone else watching, it would have been soon forgotten.

Here is a rather different kind of turning point, quite a contrast to the one I just portrayed. It is outwardly dramatic as well as inwardly dramatic. It changed how a teenager led the remaining 55 years of his life. Just reading this brief account might change yours: Turning Point.

—

The image above is a Korean Traffic “U-turn” Sign by P.Ctnt, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

August 3, 2013

Maturity: Ten Steps To Get You There

BigBenAtDusk

As children we cannot wait to grow up. Time is the enemy. Our pint size and inexperience — not to mention our elders — tell us that we are not ready yet; ready for all the things we’d like to do.

Soon after our chronology reaches double-digits we want to drive and drink and date. We want to be independent. We want to be taken seriously; to do the right thing, to flee the coop.

Time stands in the way, like an implacable Big Ben, blocking our path. Its clock-faces look down like some sort of gigantic, elongated, menacing owl, hovering over our air space. Well, nothing we can do about that. But what can we do to achieve maturity? Surely, just waiting to get older isn’t enough. And age, by itself, is no guarantee of wisdom.

Joseph Conrad’s novella The Shadow Line: A Confession deals with just that: the kind of experience without which one remains innocent of oneself and the world no matter what your age; the kind of experience that is informative and transformative of one’s character. In other words, that brings maturity.

Conrad’s narrator is a young man, a seaman, with no one to look out for but himself. He is impulsive and makes important decisions without quite knowing why. He is easily offended and uncertain of his proper place in the company of others. He wants to get on with things, at the point in his life where:

…one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind.

What he will confront — indeed, what he needs to confront — is a crisis at sea with an enemy no less implacable than Time. It is Mother Nature he will face, and the things that can happen when water and air and all the uncontrollable elements conspire to frustrate the lives of men. And he will feel much older because of it:

It seems to me that all my life before that momentous day is infinitely remote, a fading memory of light-hearted youth, something on the other side of a shadow.

In the space of three weeks Conrad’s unnamed protagonist is changed by his match with adversity. But what if you are not a seaman challenged by the Godless waters? What might you do to hasten maturity’s arrival? A few things come to mind:

  • Try things that are new and difficult for you. Will you suffer? Yes. Will you fail? Sometimes. But if you keep at it, you will grow from the experience. Keeping only to the tried and true will teach you little.
  • Question authority. No, this doesn’t mean throwing rocks and breaking the law. It means asking yourself whether you should believe all that you’ve been “told.” For example, is your religion the one and only “true” religion? Are your parents good models of how to live? Does your political party have a monopoly on truth? Does material wealth bring happiness? Is technology making your life better? Remember, the crowd isn’t always right.
  • Reflect on yourself, your character, and your behavior. Take an unflinching look at yourself, who you are, and who you want to be as a person rather than as someone of a certain rank or job title. Ask yourself why you keep doing things that don’t work very well. Look at how much of your decision process and conduct is performed on auto-pilot, fixed on a course that was set long ago.
  • Compete, especially in team sports. It is said that “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton,” thus referring to the character-building that can happen in team sports played in places like Eton College, an independent boarding school. Pulling for and working with a team of almost any kind is an opportunity to grow as a person. You cannot become mature as a solo-act.
  • Be open to experience and what it can teach. This means you have to be prepared to have your attitudes changed by what you observe (especially of yourself) and what you participate in; and that you have to go out and “have” experiences (including passionate ones), not just read about them or watch them on TV or simulate them via the computer. Beware of electronic signals and noises, cell phones and computer screens that tweet and squawk and bother and bewilder you with things that usually aren’t important. Rather, as Epictetus suggested, be a spectator of yourself and achieve understanding that way.
  • Be open to others. Allow yourself to become close to a few others, not so defended against what they might do to you that you are marooned in a fortress of your own design. You will be fooled and sometimes you will be hurt, but it is hard to mature without the experience of intimacy. And without the joys that come with human contact.
  • Take responsibility. Don’t always be a follower. Develop a sense of leadership and be willing to accept at least some responsibility for your failures, in or out of leadership positions. As Cassius said in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
  • Alter your default tendencies. If you are prone to act impulsively, slow down and become more reflective. If you are prone to looking back, try to look forward. If you anxiously await the future, set yourself the task of living more in the moment. None of this comes easily, but the practice of mindfulness meditation can often help.
  • Determine what is most important in your life, commit to it, and “live it.” I have an old friend with whom I sometimes differ on political questions. Nonetheless, I admire him enormously for “living” his beliefs. For example, he is a staunch advocate of the sanctity of life, a position founded on a deep religious faith. He not only defends this position, but has spent much of his adult life taking unwanted children into his home and sometimes adopting them. I am in awe. He has committed to something much bigger than himself.
  • Supplement your experience with reading. I’m talking here about the women and men of great ideas who lived in a quieter world: Virginia Wolfe, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Plato, Epictetus, and others. But be aware that however great their writing, you will not appreciate them (and learn from them) nearly so much until you have done some living. Their words are dead until they are infiltrated by the events, motives, and meanings that you know first hand.

A young man or woman will profit if he looks at life like a funnel. Begin at the wide end, taking in everything, investigating many things. Sample the riches that nature and civilization have provided for you. Once you have begun to establish your values, what is important to you, and what you are good at, narrow your focus. Make some choices. Concentrate on perfecting  your chosen craft and devoting your time to fewer things in greater depth.

At some point you will have to discover whether “God is in the details” or “the devil is in the details.” But if your approach to work is slapdash and casual, I doubt that even the devil will care. Discipline matters and you cannot be mature unless you both know its importance and “show” that you know by putting it into practice.

One final thought. If maturity, aka wisdom, is your aim, be aware that you must never stop learning, never stop growing, never stop deepening the capacities of head and heart. Life is rich. Spend your time well. There is never enough. Once over “the shadow-line,” you are free to roam.

—

The top image is a 2004 photo of Big Ben at Dusk by Andrew Dunn, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

July 22, 2013

Delivering “Bad News” and Causing Pain: Ending Therapy and Romance

Elvis_at_the_Heart_Break_Hotel_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1147517

Until recently, I didn’t fully understand the upset of various reality TV stars when they have to “let someone go.”

I am referring to shows like “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette” on ABC. These programs offer an attractive single-person the choice of a couple of dozen equally magnetic and youthful members of the opposite sex, with the desired goal of “finding love.”

The settings for these mini-series are always extraordinarily (if not exotically) beautiful, involving story-book activities that prime all the suitors to have strong feelings about the targeted object of their affection, unable to distinguish the dazzle of the surroundings from the more ordinary human qualities of the participants.

As the field of contenders is narrowed, the show’s “star” is typically shown struggling with an ongoing set of decisions: who to “keep” and who to dispatch. Much agony is displayed, sometimes to the point of tears, and not just by the people who are dumped. Indeed, as often as not, the individual making the choices seems more upset than the rejected admirers.

I’ve tended to side with the underdog, that is, the feelings of the soul who is being rejected, cast out of the Eden-like gorgeousness of the show’s locale, and set aside in the pursuit of romantic happiness. And while I appreciate the difficulty of making such choices and delivering the bad news to someone you have gotten to know, I’ve thought that the “star” generally tends to make too much of his or her own pain rather than that of those being rejected.

Recently, however, my own experience has opened my eyes a bit on the subject.

Although it has been a while since I retired from doing psychotherapy, this was written in the midst of telling my patients of my plans to set aside my career as a therapist. And, of course, with it, to set them aside.

I anticipated that it would be difficult for some of them. If the therapy relationship had been productive — if the implied promise was that “I would be there for them (forever)” — it could only be difficult. Therapists should be reliable and, for some people, the contact with a therapist is a life-changing relationship. The patient’s gratitude and reliance on a psychologist’s emotional support, which can become a dependency, are precious in any two people between whom those feelings exist.

I knew objectively and intellectually that the news of my retirement could produce a range of feelings; from disappointment to tears to a sense of abandonment to anger to anxiety and a sense of loss. But I had not done it before; I had not delivered such information. I had not had the task of telling people with whom I had a therapeutic relationship this potentially unsettling news.

Since I had not “lived it,” I could not know fully how it would play out. Still, I had a pretty good idea of how they would feel. I was less certain of how I would feel — what it would be like for me.

It turned out to be more difficult than I expected for myself.

A therapist is in the business of helping people, trying to assist them to feel and live better. Causing pain is just the opposite of what we hope to do. Relieving pain, sympathizing with pain — that is the ticket. Inflicting it is not. I was prepared for their pain, but not ready to be the source of it. And in the weeks before the news was delivered, the anticipation and the stress of becoming, however minimally, the instrument of suffering and disappointment, began to weigh on me.

I thought a good deal about how to deliver the news. I tried to tell all of my patients more than three months ahead of the event, face-to-face; and nearly all of them heard it in the space of the same 10 days. I didn’t want anyone finding out through the grapevine.

I explained that I would continue to see them until my retirement, assuming that they wished to continue. I told them that if they wanted a referral, I would be as helpful as I could be in that process, either before or after the end-date of their last therapy session. And that they would be able to email me thereafter. The way I put it was something like, “I won’t be fully out of your life unless that is what you want me to be.”

I was trying, in this way, to cushion whatever blow they experienced and inoculate them against a personal sense of rejection. For those who expressed interest, I briefly explained how I had come to the decision to leave the practice of psychotherapy.

I made my announcement at the very beginning of each session, in order to permit enough time to deal with the feelings it evoked and questions that might need answering. I also mentioned that I would be fully willing and interested to talk with them about their feelings concerning this change as the therapy process with me moved toward its closure.

Although I doubted that any of my patients were so vulnerable as to decompensate significantly, my plans for our termination were aimed at a break-up that did not lead to a break-down.

Seeing the surprise, disappointment, or pain (including tears) in some of my patients was also painful to me. But I don’t want to make too much of my end of this. In any relationship’s end, it is almost always the person who is making the choice who feels better about the parting. I must admit, it was a relief to have delivered the news, to make public what had been private, to get it behind me. But at no point did I feel good about it.

It brings to mind, I suppose, a very old memory that virtually all of you have experienced at least in some approximate way. It involved a college girlfriend with whom I maintained a long-distance relationship.

Expecting a phone call on her Wednesday return home, one day ahead of Thanksgiving, I called her because that contact hadn’t happen. It turned out that she’d been in town from Sunday or Monday without a word. Still, we made a date to get together the next evening, after the holiday festivities had ended.

As they say, “the handwriting was on the wall.” And, as Adlai Stevenson II once noted, “Most people can’t read the handwriting on the wall until their back is up against it.”

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Rembrandt_-_Belshazzar%27s_Feast_-_WGA19123.jpg/500px-Rembrandt_-_Belshazzar%27s_Feast_-_WGA19123.jpg

Belshazzar’s Feast by Rembrandt

In the course of that dreadful visit I learned that she now had another relationship back at school and that, of course, she hoped we could remain “friends.” This kind-hearted 19-year-old was in tears as she delivered the bad news, presumably the message that she had hoped to delay or avoid by not contacting me immediately upon her return home.

The “let’s be friends” overture was, I think, quite sincere, but it never is heard the way the person uttering it hopes. In this instance, it sounded something like, “I know you were expecting filet mignon and champagne, but I think I have a half-empty can of warm Pepsi that’s been open on the counter for a few days. How about it?” That said, she was a lovely and sweet-hearted person, and was clearly very much pained by what she was communicating. It was just that our desires didn’t coincide.

That lack of attunement between any two people is simply a part of the human condition. Not the best part, for sure.

Historically, such communications often came by letter during wartime. The “Dear John” letter to a serviceman overseas was widely dreaded and became something of a cliché during World War II, when duty’s potential cost of a soldier’s life or limb could also include a broken heart due to the infidelity of the wife or girlfriend back home.

Today there are lots more ways to deliver the bad news: emailing, texting, instant messaging, etc. All of these are missile-like missives launched from a distance; bad news that the sender doesn’t have to see hitting his target. But the emotional carnage of the unwanted communication is no less real for all that.

It is easy enough to vilify the person who has placed you on his discard pile. And certainly some methods of delivering the rejection are much worse than others, at times cowardly or cruel.

But we mustn’t forget that it is the human dilemma that sets the stage for such disappointments. It is simply a routine part of life that not all relationships find our interests aligned in a mutually satisfying way forever. People retire, therapists and friends leave town, bosses let go of employees, and romance that blooms in the heart of one good person is not always growing in another who is equally kind and decent.

Only the worst among us set out to do injury with malice and premeditation. Nonetheless — much too often, in fact — we are at cross purposes with each other and someone will be hurt.

If it weren’t so excruciating one could almost call it “normal.”

—

You may be interested in this related topic: How to End Relationships: a Practical Guide to Rejecting Others.

The top image is of the space reserved for Elvis Presley at Heartbreak Hotel, a cottage on Elvis Presley Boulevard. It was photographed by Evelyn Simak on February 3, 2009. The second picture is a reproduction of Belshazzar’s Feast by Rembrandt, sourced from the Web Gallery of Art. Both can be found on Wikimedia Commons.

July 10, 2013

“Welcome Aboard Group #6!” The Future of Airline Boarding

Vietnam_Airlines_772_VN-A141

I am usually in the last group to board the airplane on any trip I choose to take. It might have to do with using “frequent flier miles” or buying discounted fares. But, almost invariably, I am in Boarding Group #5.

There is something mildly humiliating about this. Kind of like being placed in “the dumb row” (as it was then called by the kids) back in the primary grades. How is the order of boarding determined? I have two theories:

  1. Cheap labor in terms of monkeys in front of keyboards, randomly pressing keys that will make the assignment.
  2. A more systematic and thoughtful attempt based on the following characteristics:
  • Group #1. Rich, famous, well-connected, well-dressed, influential individuals.
  • Group #2. Business people in charge of running the world, making money; the movers and shakers.
  • Group #3. Good and decent folks who go on frequent vacations and enjoy their lives. “Hot” men and women who didn’t get into the first two groups.
  • Group #4. People who typically fall into the above groups, but are having a bad day. Maybe they bought the tickets a bit late or were assigned to Group #4 by accident.
  • My group. Moral reprobates, the unwanted, the unwashed, the unpopular, and any individual with a history of at least two years of prison time and a certificate proving that he received his Governor’s pardon while on “death row.”

In other words, being in Group #5 is never a badge of honor. But today I suffered an additional humiliation that I didn’t even know existed. Something new. I was assigned to Group #6.

Normally it is difficult enough as a member of Group #5 to find any overhead space for my carry-on luggage. Now what?

A few minutes ago I asked the woman manning the desk in front of the gate what it meant. “Oh, we just started that. We are trying to speed up departures since a lot of people have complained about delays. So once the first five groups are seated, we will push-off. Then the people in Group #6 will be asked to start running toward the moving plane. The crew will drop a rope ladder and you just grab it with one hand, keep hold of your luggage with the other, climb up, and knock on the door. We’ve been able to reduce delays by up to five minutes this way.” She paused to look me up and down. “You look pretty spry for an old guy. I’ll bet you can do it.”

I looked at the young woman in disbelief.

“Thanks for the compliment,” I said with some irony in my voice. “You said you’d bet that I could do this. Exactly how much are you willing to wager?”

The woman turned to the other lady in charge of the counter and pointed her in my direction. “Hey Trixie! How much are you willing to bet that this guy can make the “rope ladder boarding?'”

“How old is he?” Trixie replied. “Remember, if he is a senior he gets a five second head-start.”

My eyes started to water after I’d told her that I am, in fact, a senior. I was touched that the airline was willing to give me the extra five seconds.

Trixie reached into her purse after a long look at me. “I’ve got $2.50. How about that for a bet?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said, as I regained my composure. “But what if I shouldn’t make it? What if I fall down?”

“Oh, in that case we give you a seat on the next available flight — assuming there is an open seat, of course. And, you get to board in Group #5.

She pointed across the concourse to what appeared to be an empty space that had just a bit of equipment. “Why don’t you go to that room over there. You can practice running and climbing the rope ladder. We’ve got it all set up. And, for $5 we will sell you a knee guard in case you fall. What would you like, one knee or two?”

I opted for protection on both knees, forked over the $10, and did a little practice. I’m back in the waiting area now. They are going to call Group #6 soon, so I have to go. Let’s hope that I don’t disappoint Trixie. I’d hate to cost her $2.50.

—

The photo is of a Vietnam Airlines Boeing 777-200 taking off from the Frankfurt Airport in 2012. The photographer is Milad A 380 and the image is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

July 4, 2013

Permission to Speak: Dealing With Difficult Subjects

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There are things about which it is difficult to speak. Hurt feelings, loss, and embarrassment can fall into that category. We are afraid to be misunderstood. We are afraid that disapproval will follow. And so, too often, there is silence.

The person who knows just a bit about our circumstances might also hesitate. Perhaps she doesn’t want to embarrass us either. Perhaps she expects that we will give a signal, convey the need to speak if that is what we want. Perhaps it is thought to be all too personal, too painful, too uncomfortable.

Or maybe it is simply that with more knowledge of another’s pain there also comes unwanted responsibility to ameliorate it. And so, too often, there is silence.

Sometimes what is lacking is a sense of permission. That the other is open to opening a wound, showing a scar. That the other is not too squeamish, won’t be offended, won’t judge. That it won’t be a burden or an imposition. That there is time.

It is all very fragile. As if two people were trying to move as close as they can to each other without touching; fearing that to touch — to go too close — would somehow spoil it. It is between two and about “too.” Two people hesitating at the possibility of being “too” close. As James Baldwin said, it is the mistrust of contact that

…takes off the masks we fear that we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

The ingredients for this delicate amalgamation can be named. The hope that the other will not be callous, belief that you will not be injured, need for consolation. And, naturally, something that caused the damage in the first place is also a required part of the equation. The thing about which words must be said. It is usually easier if that injury — that thing — came from the outside, not the person opposite you.

The 2011 movie,  Monsieur Lazhar, deals with just such a situation and the need to speak about it. Even more fragile and necessary because children are involved.

It is set in French Canada, where a class of 11 and 12-year-old students have suffered the loss of their teacher. A substitute is chosen, an Algerian immigrant named Bachir Lazhar.

The school doesn’t know quite how to handle things. The children’s room is painted a new color, the better to help them get over the loss; the better to distract them from their instructor’s death. A school psychologist meets with the kids in a group. The class does well academically, and yet…

There are signs of trouble. One boy remains aggressive. One girl who is not the object of his aggression is particularly angry with that boy. One student transfers out. Parents are bewildered. Something needs to be said, but no one senses the permission to say it. No one wishes to rock the boat since, on the surface, things seem back to “normal.”

Physical contact between teachers and students is verboten under the school rules, for fear that it will go too far. Thus, the setting lacks the comfort of both understanding speech and human touch. And so, too often, there is silence. What will Monsieur Lazhar, a man with his own pressing demons, do?

The movie is quiet and quite moving. It is sustained by an understated, gentle, hopeful possibility. The atmosphere is suspended. There is space for something to happen, something good that will help the healing. Courage is required on all sides.

If you are used to films about exteriors, you will be disappointed. This one is about interiors, what goes on inside of us and in the space between children and adults when the adults are as hesitant and injured as the children. If you need car chases and special effects and sex, it is not a picture for you. Monsieur Lazhar is a movie about children, but for adults. The English subtitles of this French language film are easy to follow.

If you are a survivor of loss (and who among us is not), there is something here for you. Not everything needs to be said. Sometimes a look or a touch is enough. But not everything just goes away without human consolation in the form of words.

We need to give ourselves and others the permission to speak. Otherwise there is emptiness, missed opportunity.

And so, too often, there is silence.