the meaning of life

February 2, 2025

What It Means To Serve

She said, “I am a practicing Christian.” The woman meant someone who actively lives out their faith in every aspect of life—through obedience, service, transformation by the Spirit, and love for others.*

So said my audiologist last week. What, then, does it mean to serve?

For her, it means more than being in the business of helping others, for which she is paid a non-commission salary. When we discussed the cost of new hearing aids, I joked,” I don’t suppose there is a secondary market for the six-year-old ones I have now, is there?”

This uncommonly talented woman with two young children the age of my grandchildren smiled. “No, but I work with the homeless in my free time in Hyde Park. Their hearing gets tested, and we provide and tune donated hearing aids — at no cost to them.”

This is one definition of service. Her free time is created—not an idle space in an empty schedule. An average day helping the homeless requires a 50-minute drive from her home—nearly two hours back and forth to try to repair the world. Her clients’ lives are better for it.

There are several classes of service, of which she fits into the first.

  • Volunteer to provide uncompensated assistance to those less fortunate. Those who tutor students for free in schools belong to this group. Doctors Without Borders is another example: Doctors Without Borders/Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) cares for people affected by conflict, disease outbreaks, natural and human-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries. 
  • Doing work or advising someone else, for which you are paid or provided something in trade.
  • Armed service members who choose to defend their country.
  • Elected public officials take an oath to serve the people they represent.
  • Servers at a restaurant.
  • Bruno Walter mentioned another somewhat different service form, attempting to “serve the cause of Mozart.” The conductor felt that when he was young, he misunderstood the “depth of emotion which speaks in Mozart’s seeming tranquility and measure.” Walter’s sense of responsibility to the composer led him to wait until he felt mature enough to perform the profound Symphony #40. He was then age 50.

It is easy to take some of those who serve for granted. The bussers in a restaurant come to mind. The job requires efficiency and, to a significant extent, invisibility. Yet they serve us, have names, ideas, and emotions, and deserve an appreciation they do not always get.

We recognize those in the armed services, though it seems too little at the beginning of a sporting event. Their stories and the sacrifices they and their families endure remain unknown. From that point of view, a part of them is also invisible.

My conversation with the audiologist made me think about life’s meaning, a topic most of us have considered.

Might part of it be to acknowledge our fellow man’s existence regardless of race, nationality, or gender? Might part of it be to give him solace, hold his hand, and respond to his needs in moments of distress?

To do so does not require religious belief, although my audiologist is among the finest examples of how a grounding in faith sometimes engenders the best in people.

In part, the world is ours to make.

We have a choice. Who are we, and who do we wish to be?

I chose my audiologist because I recognized her expertise.

The next time I see her, I will also be in awe.

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*The bold description of practicing Christianity was sourced from Google and appears to have been created by AI. The italics description of the work of Doctors Without Borders comes from their website.

The top photo depicts Humanitarian Aid by U.S. Army Sergeant Kornelia Rachwal in response to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. She gives a young Pakistani girl a drink of water as they are airlifted from Muzaffarabad to Islamabad, Pakistan, aboard a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter on 19 October 2005. The photo was taken by Technical Sergeant Mike Buytas of the United States Air Force and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

September 22, 2024

What Can We Learn From Heartbreak?

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

It may be that everyone who ever reached the age of reason has suffered from a broken heart. Even those afraid of approaching someone for romance might imagine the person they desire and pine away.

Real hearts are resilient. They keep pumping, indifferent to the wound.

The loving kind of hearts have their own type of resilience. They mourn, endure, and often try again. Changed? That can be for the better, though it is a costly loss that leads you there: the end of courtship and countless plans and hopes.

Since we all have or will suffer in this way, might something positive come from the experience? Something to help us lead our lives and learn from hardship?

I think so.

Here is a short list of ways to enhance ourselves in the aftermath.

  • Learning Who We Chose And Why

One of the most valuable tasks we can undertake is to reflect upon the kind of people we are drawn to. Are they hard to get? Have they had many broken relationships themselves? Do they often blame others to justify their actions rather than take responsibility?

Did we ignore the danger signs our friends warned us of? Do the people we pursue remind us of someone else? Were we so taken by their appearance and sparkle that we ignored their minds and hearts?

We cannot change our former lovers, but we can change ourselves and increase our chances of finding a better-suited person.

  • Enhancing Our Empathy

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” wrote the French philosopher, teacher, and activist Simone Weil. It is possible to enlarge one’s empathetic capability by experiencing pain.

Weil’s life exemplified not only witnessing the suffering of another and giving the attention of which she spoke; she chose to experience it herself. Though this woman came from a privileged background, she took on punishing factory jobs for a year, entered the Spanish Civil War battlefields, and worked in the harvest.

None of us choose heartbreak, yet it offers something to learn about adversity. We can apply our experience and awareness to help those who have lost the one they loved in whatever way.

  • Acquiring Knowledge Of Our Resilience

When my patients explained their affliction, they often doubted they could take it on and get past it. I asked the following frequently: 

“Please tell me of the hardships you lived through before this.”

They ran down a mental list of such situations. 

“What inside you enabled you to survive?”

The sufferer proceeded to identify the human characteristics within him that got him through his previous misfortunes. 

“Do you still have those abilities and qualities inside yourself?”

The answer was yes, more often than no. Thus, the client affirmed the forgotten strengths he could still draw on.

Life contains everything imaginable: beauty, wartime horror, hope, and despair. If our ancestors lacked resilience, the planet would be without humankind.

Not everyone is resilient in every circumstance, but most have elements of a hard-won or inherited capacity to survive the heartbreak caused by a lover’s departure. We live to love again or not, as we choose.

  • Learning Kindness

The pain of breakups sometimes adds insult to injury. There are many ways to say, “We are done,” and some people hurt us with cruelty or indifference. 

Think of those who blame the person they left while failing to recognize his value or visible torment. Some people end a relationship by ghosting the other or sending a text rather than face-to-face. A few tap an intermediary to deliver the bad news.

Once we experience this kind of ending, it can instruct us on what not to do when we break up with someone. If we have loved another, the best we can do is honor what made them desirable in the first place and show them the respect we would wish for ourselves in the same circumstances.

St. Paul advised the Ephesians to speak “the truth in love,” not hate.

  • Changing Ourselves

If a gentle ex-partner had been insightful in revealing what we lacked, valid shortcomings might have been understood despite the pain of taking in this information. 

With former partners who were less wise, some of us might have thought the indictment unfair when hearing the list of our deficits. Others among us flee from the truth. We do well to discount falsehoods when considering the judgments of others in any case.

Most of us avoid or regret these discussions. The closure we seek then must be found alone.

There is an alternative path to the same knowledge. We can recognize our deficiencies by looking in the mirror and reflecting on why the relationship ended.

If we conclude that the mirror provides a sense of recognition worthy of internalizing, the future offers us a chance to change.

A long pattern of breakups leaves us with this task—not on the first day or the 50th day, but someday.

  • Enlarging Our Humanity

As James Baldwin wrote in the quote at the head of this essay, his heartbreak led to a new awareness about the human community:

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

I wonder why we find it so hard to remember the connection Baldwin describes. Perhaps it is because a significant portion of the shared pain of life—the unhappiness we all experience—is hidden. Maybe it is also because much of it happens to people we have never met or who live far from us.

We persuade ourselves we will outsmart fate.

Imagine this: one day a year, as if by magic, we could see through the momentary gladness of our fellow men to the physical and emotional scars they hide. On the same day, we would witness the tears they carry from the episodes we call the Dark Night of the Soul.

Would that cause us to treat each other more kindly?

I can only say that the message we take from heartbreak and suffering, however long or short, informs us of one of the reasons we are here, not alone but among others of our kind: that our foremost purpose in life is not to gain wealth, status, victory, or material things but to care for others.

To this, I believe Simone Weil would say yes.

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The top image is a Broken Heart symbol by Orazon. It is followed by photos of Simone Weil and Her Family in 1916 during World War I and Weil in a Cafe. Finally, a Kid Caring for Young by Joseph Lionceau. All of these were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 11, 2024

The Meaning of Life in Pictures

Over the years of writing this blog, I’ve offered different takes on the meaning of life.

I’ve never suggested a definitive answer.

Maybe pictures will do a better job.

Here are a few ways to look at it — literally.

From the Top:

Laura Hedien captures the world’s beauty in her photography and is kind enough to allow me to display it. You and I enjoy the pictures because of her subject matter, her gift of capturing it, and because it is there.

Thus, one implied meaning to the gorgeous Arizona sunset (above) is that one cannot take such photos unless we protect the world from the existential danger of climate change. Preserving the only home we have (and all the living things on it portrayed elsewhere in her work) is one possible meaning of life.

The Jains:

Jainism, one of the world’s oldest religions, involves three central beliefs: ahiṃsā (non-violence), anekāntavāda (non-absolutism), and aparigraha (asceticism). The principal vows taken by Jain monks are ahiṃsā (non-violence), Satya (truth), asteya (not stealing), brahmacharya (chastity), and aparigraha (non-possessiveness).

To live by those beliefs, a Jain’s diet is lacto-vegetarian. Moreover, the Sthanakvasi Jain Monks wear a Muhpatti type of facemask to avoid damaging sacred books accidentally or inhaling small insects (seen as a violent act) and to remind them to refrain from violence in speech.*


The Meaning You Give It:

One who lives as an existentialist has given himself the task of making his own meaning. He tries to do justice to the complexity of the life we are thrown into. This requires grappling with the weight of responsibility for creating a life, its meaning, our anxiety, and the world’s absurdity. He has the opportunity to create something of value and uniqueness that is worth his effort.

The blank canvas of his existence waits for him to fill it in.

Bringing Life into the World

I cannot say these photos cover all life’s possible meanings, but the last one is personal. Yours truly, then a man with hair, was holding one of my children slightly closer than shown. My daughter peed on me a moment before, producing the twin smiles.

How does this figure into a meaning for life? Life comprises three components: love, laughter, and getting peed on, often unintended but sometimes unfortunate in a way very different than anything below.

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The top photo is Arizona Sunset, late July 2020, South of Tucson by Laura Hedien: Laura Hedien Official Website.

*The two paragraphs describing Jainism are sourced from Wikipedia. The photo of the Sthanakvasi Jain Monk is the work of Samyak Modi, while the Easel With Empty Canvas was photographed by Cara from Boston. The second and third images are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

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.

November 30, 2022

Late Night Thoughts on the Meaning of Life

In 2009 I wrote an essay on the BIG question: life’s meaning. I was drawn to the possibility a better question might be found behind it.

I wondered if it could be more useful to consider how the meaning of life might change over time. Stated that way, the question would produce different answers as an individual aged and grew. My 13-year-old post, therefore, focused on the many reasons we do what we do at life’s various stages, as demonstrated by where we put our time and effort.

The ancient Greeks used the word telos, the end goal driving us from a starting point. Some of us have such a target requiring years of dedication, while others don’t. A youngster hopeful of becoming an Olympic champion is an example of the former.

In my mind, however, whether we begin aiming for a bullseye, we can give it up and substitute a different aim. Ambitions are changeable, and one’s goals depend on moments of choice in anyone’s life. A suitable target might be one thing at 15, quite another when you are 40, and still another at 65.

Whether one believes in one meaning or more meanings in any lifetime, neither strategy offers a singular purpose applicable in all situations. That is, a short answer satisfying at any age, place, or segment in your history or mine.

Perhaps that’s why I set aside thinking about life’s meaning after writing the 2009 essay. I found nothing more to say or consider, so I believed.

Until now, when a friend offered a new idea after watching a YouTube video.

The enlightenment he provided consisted of whether people might engage in actions without wanting to set a goal sparking their labor. Was there any significant activity without external ambition or intention causing exertion in a specified direction?

Put differently, is life’s significance to be found in automatic motivation without a telos, target, or aim, except for doing the activity itself? One would engage in whatever it might be without expecting some payoff or distant fulfillment.

Almost all the other possible meanings are done for reasons beyond themselves. However, the one I’m thinking of is important for itself alone. Not making money, finding love, pleasing a deity, living by heavenly rules, creating a family, achieving fame, or purchasing the perfect home.

Nor is such a singular long-term practice intended to produce life satisfaction, lasting happiness, or someone else’s approval.

The answer is affirmative and obvious, but I never recognized it.

To learn for its own sake at every stage of life.

There would be no promises of an advanced degree like a Ph.D., J.D., or M.D. propelling you toward graduation. No intention of having a worthwhile career because of what you learn. No desire to reach heaven or repair the world with your well-earned knowledge.

I am not suggesting such actions or their intended goals lack merit. Yet, if the meaning of life were to become a physician, for example, we’d have received the news long ago and flooded the world’s medical schools.

Learning is not like that if done for itself. No outside objective exists, though one woman in class acquiring knowledge for herself might be sitting beside a lady trying to gain entry to med school. They both would be learning, but not for the same reason.

Gathering understanding just for itself is as satisfactory a solution to the question of life’s meaning as I can imagine. We are, after all, creatures who spend our lives discovering more about the world.

We do it in an unconscious fashion as well as by intention. We do it even when we have no duty, desire, or calling to enrich ourselves by using what we learn, though we might grow as human beings — improving ourselves because of what we discover. Those products of our tuition would be incidental to the mastery we accumulate.

Some scientists and philosophers say reproduction is the essential task of all living things. Without creating new little creatures, our planet would be empty.

Indeed, in many cases, we learn as a means to win love and have a family, though learning and familial love tend not to be on our minds as we add to our knowledge of what we need to do in advance of those wants.

The direction toward which knowledge-seeking takes us depends on our abilities, the role of chance, and the prior experiences of our lifetimes. This includes how we were brought up, the limits of our imagination, and more. 

Among other factors are the people we encounter, the places we live, our moment in history, extant medical knowledge, and the actions of people who came before us.

After all, for any of us to be born, every one of our ancestors reproduced with just the person they did.

Think of it. Even identical twins are not perfect in their identity, and their life experiences vary. You and I are unique, one of a kind, and this world will never produce such another.

You will learn from almost everything and lead your life based upon the conclusions you draw as your train passes through the “everything of it all.” You will be the only human who acquires the precise combination of lessons you absorb. They will influence your life in thoughtful, casual, and unconscious ways, including what you order from a restaurant menu.

Moreover, what we discover will fit our lives only for a while (as aged people realize). Thus, Homo sapiens have to reconsider the same lessons over and over because the “right” answers undergo alteration, like a school exam scored with one answer key on Monday and a different one on Friday.

Every soul changes over time, as we discover with an honest look in the mirror or reading the number on the bathroom scale.

A great opportunity exists to learn and accomplish something with the tuition our inquisitive nature offers us. Learning might be the one thing fate has put on our list of things to do from almost the moment we were thrown into life.

Nor do we have a choice in the matter, as Ecclesiastes 1:18 reminds us in the Hebrew Bible,

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

The acquisition of knowledge is our lot.

Do you say this isn’t a satisfying meaning for life?

Who promised permanent satisfaction?

But I’d like to think, without searching for it, all our learning leads to at least one piece of awareness.

That we learn to be kind and offer joy to others along the way.

Learning can be joyous, you know.

And if you don’t, perhaps it’s time you found out.

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The first image is The Dance by Spanish artist Joaquín Sorolla in 1915, sourced from History Daily. Next comes Child’s Head, the work of Albrecht Durer from Wikiart.org/ The third image is called Classic Learning, the sign for the Brown House of Learning on the TRU campus, from cogdogblog via Wikimedia Commons. Finally, King Penguins at S. Georgia, Antarctica Peninsula, 2022 by Laura Hedien, with her generous permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

October 24, 2021

Can You Hear the Loss of Silence?

It was a day in the summer-like early autumn. The morning sun of the backyard sent me an invitation to step outside. Sometimes I meditate there instead of reading. But a “nothing” that was “something” arrested my attention.

Silence.

The once commonplace ambiance startled me. Daytime silence has become a strange occurrence.

Living in Chicago as a child of the ’50s, silence created the background for the first daylight hours. My family lived on a side street in the West Rogers Park area. Talman Avenue led nowhere in particular, nowhere of importance.  Cars parked on either side of the single lane, one-way thoroughfare. Little traffic passed through.

Their movement wasn’t rapid, and horns remained muted most of the time. Bicycles traveled on the sidewalk only, but we didn’t need them to walk to school. Most kids came home from Jamieson elementary school for lunch. Nor did the small shops in the area require automobiles to get to work or visit. Buses did the job your feet didn’t, along with their connections to more distant elevated trains if needed.

Libraries were still, too. We respected the librarian’s unstated role as a pseudo police officer. Conversation didn’t occur unless you needed help to find a book. The dear lady in charge enforced the atmosphere by her presence and the readers’ ingrained discipline. The woman ruled but not as a ruler.

Jet aircraft rarely flew overhead. A plane flight was unusual. I didn’t take one until college, by then on a jet.

Propeller planes moved in discrete slow motion and one at a time, so it seemed. Only skywriters, a dying method of advertising, claimed exceptional attention.

The neighborhood offered modest two-flat residences and newer single-family homes, though not many of these.

Lawnmowers depended on boys and men muscling up to the task of pushing and pulling. Winter in the neighborhood insisted on snow shovels, no plows or blowers.

No one thought these conditions exceptional. It was the way we lived, and nothing about that mode of living changed until after I finished 12th grade, maybe later.

Of course, on the recent day I mentioned, birds engaged in conversations and announcements. No electric or gas-powered mowers did their dirty work of beautification. Trains couldn’t be heard in the distance, though a low-pitched drone of human movement came from a few blocks away and its four-lane street.

Skyscraping jets sped elsewhere, not overhead. I tried not to think about any of this and enjoyed the tranquility while it lasted.

Ah, but the moment disappeared too soon. Employees of multiple lawn services disturbed my reverie, making a simultaneous assault with riding mowers as their weapons. The O’Hare airport flight path altered too, with the up top passenger travel bringing war between the grasscutters and the skywaymen to dominate everyone’s ears.

All this is common in a summertime town 26 miles from Chicago and 18 miles from the airfield. They call it progress.

I left the yard for the quieter inside, an artificial thing but better than the punishment.

I realize more distant places are quieter most of the time. Moving to such spots, of course, brings losses too. Many restaurants, theaters, and museums exist only in imposing cities. The distance from my children, grandchildren, and friends would establish a further cost.

I sometimes think about those much younger than I am, those in a metropolis which never allowed any period of prolonged outdoor quiet except perhaps at night, if they were lucky. Nor did the inhabitants enjoy the once blue and true everyday sky. They don’t know what they missed.

When walking in any heavily trafficked, citified downtown, one notices young people wearing headsets or earbuds. These luxuries keep external noises out by topping them, superimposing voices to outshout twenty-first-century loudness with sounds more pleasing.

I imagine there would be no persuading the youthful ones of what has disappeared, that is, creating my emotional response to a vanished time. One day, however, those kids will make hearing aid manufacturers rich. Then they will know something similar.

For recognition of a change, one must watch and listen for the incremental theft. Like all the things we lose, the loss is informative of the person’s value, environment, opportunity, or freedom one used to have.

Youth and beauty are like that: temporary. What is customary is taken for granted. A shame we must learn this way.

I sometimes wonder if the silence fled with the honeybees, monarch butterflies, and houseflies. Weren’t they supposed to say thank you and shake my hand first? Rudeness, I guess.

Keep your eyes and ears open, then. Life is a precious thing with no guarantee of a second chance. You can think of what I’ve said as a dark perspective, but I hope you focus on what remains in the world, the better to enjoy and save all that is marvelous.

Make the most of all your senses and your possibilities. Keep the world a habitable place, one that offers kindly invitations from the sun, the moon, and the stars; the wind in the trees, and the birds and the bees.

If you decline such invitations, you won’t continue to get invited to their party.

Reclaim the best of the world while disposing of the worst for yourself and others. Maybe that’s the meaning of life.

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All of the photos are those of Laura Hedien, with her generous permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

The first offers Butterflies at the Chicago Botanic Garden in September of 2020. Next comes a photo taken Outside Moab in September 2021. The last picture displays the Slot Canyons Enroute to Lake Powell.

December 2, 2018

Sweet Memories and the Drowning of the Sun

A murder of sorts happens every day. You’ve seen it, but didn’t think to make a police report.

Remember the day at the lake? Or was it the ocean? You thought you watched the sunset.

Nope.

The invisible hands of the water pulled the yellow ball down, inch by inch. The flaming star drowned. The day was done and done for.

The world departs us without even a goodbye note. Well, you might say, the sun will rise tomorrow and you’d be right. Other things, different types of disappearances, are less predictable. A final meal with a parent or friend that seemed routine when it happened. The last conversation with a comforting voice. A live recital by a musician you won’t hear again. In the moment you don’t realize the “next time” is an idea about to be defeated by fate, but some day you’ll say, “Oh, that was the last time, wasn’t it …”

No, it’s not so serious. The old buddy might still be out there. The pianist is yet performing, but no longer at his artistic peak. Best not to go to his next concert, you say. Better to remember him at the height of his perfection. Some folks — athletes and actors, singers and trapeze artists — stay on stage too long. Of course the latter reside above the stage, but you get what I mean.

Last times happen because we cannot hold the globe still any more than we can stop a bull stampede.

Reading The Night Before Christmas to your little ones becomes a swan song, too. I loved my two charming girls cuddled around me on the eve of the once-a-year gift-athon. What they thought or felt I can’t be sure. Perhaps enjoying the ritual, my voice, and the closeness; but impatient to fall asleep, the better to jump over the nighttime to the morning.

As the years passed I’m pretty sure this habit of December 24th came to mean more to me than to my little sweeties, by then less little. I found uttering the words ever more touching. The girls were getting to an age when such things wouldn’t fit: the end of their childhood and a passageway leading to one fewer intersection of our lives.

I can’t tell you when we laid to rest the pre-holiday custom, but whatever the year, it was one of those things about which I am philosophical. Life can’t be freeze-dried, tiny creatures kept small in perpetuity. Put the flight of this ritual under the heading “a small price to pay for their growth and maturity; their flourishing.”

Thursday night, though, came an encore. The unremarkable routine of baby sitting at my youngest’s house offered no foreshadowing. Bedtime approached and with it the three books my grandson’s mom put next to the recliner in his room, his invitation to dreamland.

My boy responds to the drill as well as I do. He sits in my lap after we put on his pajamas and, once the recitation ends, gets tucked in.

How lengthy he’s gotten! He no longer fits snug in my lap. Remind me to buy a larger-sized space between my chin and my knees. Soon this three-year-old — long-limbed for his limited span of years — will be too big for this position.

I was about to pick up the first book when I spotted the title: The Night Before Christmas.

My eyes moistened, but I plunged in. He’d heard it before, but not from me. I’m an animated reader, so I gave the job passion: speeding up, slowing down; some parts louder, others softer. A performance.

The tear that started at the start made its way down my right cheek by the finish. I wiped the dew away and turned the mute printed words of the other two children’s stories into sound. Afterward my parents’ great grandchild scrambled into his bed, I kissed him, and we exchanged the words “I love you.” Once the lights were dimmed I left the room.

There have been moments in my life in imitation of eternity. Maybe they are eternity if you fully inhabit them, lose yourself, forget the hourglass and the daily sunset. Reciting this verse to my progeny makes me immortal for the few minutes it takes.

The man I am is well-past thinking money is the solution to anyone’s troubled soul, outside of purchasing necessities. I am incapable of religious faith, never my strong suit. I am done asking the question “What is the meaning of life?”

As a young man I wondered and wondered.

Choose your own meaning or no meaning, but for me I’ve never come up with a more pleasing one than revisiting The Night Before Christmas with my children; and now the first male in my parents’ genetic line since my brother Jack. So long as I can do that, the sun will hover in the sky, the flaming thing keeping all my loves warm, safely beyond the water’s reach.

—

The idea of a river drowning the sun was borrowed from Matsuo Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1694. The top photo is a Sunset from Zebulun Beach, Herzliya, Israel. The photographer is RonAlmog. The last picture is the work of Maureen Boyle: Freya’s Golden Tears in the Style of Gustav Klimt. Both the sunset and the Boyle were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

June 4, 2017

The Taoist Farmer and a Patient’s Search for Answers

Part of the human dilemma is the trap of unhelpful, but habitual ways of thinking. Cognitive behavior therapists call them thinking errors or cognitive distortions. On occasion you probably have made one or more such wrong-headed mental turns into an emotional sink hole. Catastrophization is an example: predicting the worst possible outcome you can imagine happening to you, sure the expected calamity will finish you off, even when there are many less dire potential futures and most bad results are temporary. But other mental traps wait for us, ones not so commonly found in a therapist’s lexicon. Good/bad, right/wrong, lucky/unlucky are not as clear as we think.

Take the old story of the Taoist farmer.

There was a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse returned, but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “Maybe.” And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg.

Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “Maybe.” The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “Maybe.”*

As with any parable, multiple interpretations exist. Sometimes apparent bad fortune – like a broken relationship – leads to someone who is a better match. Being fired from a job can be a step toward a better one, even fuel your search and foster your growth. This is not to suggest all tragedies are the yellow brick road to Oz. Yet, we tend to recover, even if recovery can be lengthy, fraught, and incomplete. Then again, luck depends on when you take a measure of your situation. The farmer believed there was still time ahead, and the present moment represented a temporary vantage point: another evaluation down the road might change the assessment of his life.

One alternative way to think about this story is to recognize the problem of “keeping score.” We look around and ask, am I getting ahead or falling behind? In the West, the so-called First World of capitalism, we are trained in ladder-climbing, money counting, and concern with the opinions of others. A bit crazy-making, since someone else always owns “more,” and we are inclined to compare “up” rather than “down.” Put another way, we measure ourselves against those better off rather than those less fortunate. We also tend – after a moment of delight – to take for granted the Christmas toy for which we waited a year. Great honors don’t seem so great after the award ceremony is over.

Is there another way?

A Buddhist (or a Stoic philosopher) might tell you to become less attached to all things in the world: status, property, money; even relationships and health. Put differently, to give up clinging and craving, while practicing loving kindness and steadfast integrity. The more attachment, the more you will lose, so they say. Such an existence – preoccupied with getting and spending and fear of losing (and regret over what is already lost) – is a guarantee of suffering.

Yet another view is this one: maybe life is not a matter of assigning a grade to what we think or do, but to be experienced with little evaluation: passed through, lived. To be in the swim, not outside the pool, watching and afraid of the shock of the cold water if we should jump in. Not asking whether our stroke is beautiful enough, our pace fast enough, the distance traveled far enough.

To this way of thinking, failure and rejection are normal parts of life. They indicate we are still trying; necessary parts, too, because resilience grows from the knowledge you can come back from defeat.

Perhaps winning the game is not as important as playing the game. Perchance the world is to be tasted: different cuisines and flavors, not just chocolate and vanilla. If so, a person would experience many colors, sizes, possibilities. Engage in multiple careers. Know lots of people. Have your heart broken and sewn up and torn again and stitched until the twine itself breaks. And to read and discuss all the worthy books, play all the sublime music, climb walls until your muscles and tendons hurt. No, even past the time they hurt, adapting to the hurt. Not an either/or existence but “all-in.”

Or, is life properly understood to be perplexing and without a “solution”? If so, any belief in your own secret formula is misguided: your solution is, at best, temporary. You are not only fooling yourself, but missing the point. Which is? That the pursuit of happiness is more a journey than an arrival. That when traveling to the airport we should always go to “departures” instead of “arrivals” because we are forever “taking off” for whatever is next and never reach a static endpoint while alive.

Left to you is the creation of a personal meaning, not to be found in a book or a place of worship or from a mentor, whole and flawless; unless, that is, you are among those for whom the answer is unquestioning faith and an ultimate, unworldly reward.

Still another path: one is told the most satisfying existence requires living for bigger things than ourselves, including the future of the planet, our children, and the lives of others. We are warned not to count on or crave a posthumous glory. Unless someone else is doing the scoring, the record book will be lost along with our names, in a fast-fading blue ink on a yellowing parchment. Or, as Arthur Miller suggested, on a block of melting ice.

Is human existence perhaps a multifaceted combination of tragedy, joy, inevitability, necessity, laughter, devotion, confusion, sacrifice, and the way things are until, too soon, they aren’t?

Having written all of the above, I fear my message – the answer without an answer to conceptualizing life – is unsatisfying. I’m not even satisfied. I have given you no certainty, nothing definite. Some of you will reject the inconclusivity. I won’t hold it against you.

To my way of thinking, therapy cannot provide “the answer” either. The counselor instead offers a remedy for specifics. He can help reduce or eliminate your anxiety or depression or some other malady in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. No text-book or training, however, offers a step-by-step solution to dealing with the human condition. I’m sorry about that, really.

We do what we can.

I offer this consolation to you, nonetheless:

No matter what we look like, no matter how happy or sad we are (or seem to be) for the moment – calm or stressed, wise or foolish – we are all in this porridge together. Sometimes we swim within a tasty bowl – “just right,” as Goldilocks said – though not for every meal and every appetite. Look around you and see all the swimmers. Tiny like us, precious like us. They come in all strengths and varieties, but they will not always be there.

No wonder we search for love.

—

*Source: Tao: The Watercourse Way, by Alan Watts. The first image below the youtube video is Ilja Richter rehearsing for his play Altweibersommer in Munich. The next photo is the work of SuzannePerry.enoughofit7. Both are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 24, 2016

The Lists We Keep and the Meaning of Life

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“Everyone has a list and everyone is on someone’s list.” I heard this from a musician, speaking of himself and his 100 orchestral colleagues. The statement reminded me of the 1971 “Enemies List” kept by President Richard Nixon’s assistant Charles Colson, naming Nixon’s biggest political and public opponents. He even included the movie actor Paul Newman. I suspect, however, those of us who make lists like this don’t actually intend to meddle and damage other lives, as Nixon did by means of Internal Revenue Service audits and the like. Fortunately, the IRS Commissioner Donald C. Alexander refused to do the President’s dirty-work.

Our catalogues of people and things are usually more benign. Here are a few:

  • Shopping lists.
  • To-do lists.
  • Bucket lists. I always wonder about this one. Postponing gratification is useful to get ahead in life, but assumes there will be life ahead, and the kind of health permitting joy in the delayed experiences. Anyone over 50 will tell you not to postpone too many activities. The things of youth belong to their time. Any athlete past his prime can affirm this. Down the road, the bucket springs some leaks and will not hold the treats we put in it.
  • Lists of lovers. I recall a conversation with an old friend and somehow it came up that he’d slept with about 50 women in his long life. He wasn’t bragging, but his production of a number suggests he counted them. In fact, in the opera Don Giovanni (Don Juan) by Mozart, the composer gave us something called “The Catalogue Aria,” sung by his servant Leporello. Here is how it begins:

My dear lady, this is the list
Of the beauties my master has loved,
A list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.

In Italy, six hundred and forty;
In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
A hundred in France; in Turkey, ninety-one;
But in Spain already one thousand and three …

I leave it to the reader to come up with the proper (?) response to this.

  • Lists of medications. The tally is created by older people, of necessity, because new specialist physicians need to avoid prescribing drugs likely to produce a dangerous interaction with those already in the system.
  • Lists of jobs (a résumé).
  • Lists of publications. Academics are judged by their number of writings, the excellence of the journals or books in which they appear, and the extent to which their work generates further scholarship from other authors and researchers.
  • “Ten best” lists. News and entertainment media enjoy ranking athletes, movie stars, and places to go. Of course, you can make your own.
  • Lists of employees, those who sign up for a course, etc.
  • A catalogue of life unfairness and injury. Those who routinely recite these (we all know at least one such friend) is someone whose presence can only occasionally be tolerated.
  • A similar list of grudges.
  • A short list of regrets — the big ones. Some of us keep circling our thoughts back to a handful of actions we ought to have done or not done. Interestingly, research suggests men are more likely to kick themselves about the chances they didn’t take with the fair sex (the woman not pursued, the opportunities bypassed), while the ladies reflect on relationships they chose with the wrong men.
  • Lists of things for which we are grateful. Not everyone has a list of this kind, but the benefits can be considerable if you review and remember the items.
  • Mental lists of subjects to talk about on a date. Young men often create these for fear of running out of topics of conversation.
  • The things you can’t do anymore and the parts that hurt. Older folks, without much pressure, can tell you and tell you — and tell you.

Lists tend to fall into categories. Those that are practical and helpful (to-do and grocery), achievement (publications and lovers, the latter if you are a braggart), tales of woe (the times you’ve been dumped and jobs lost), etc.

We probably are better off with fewer lists, other than those involving gratitude or producing a sense of fulfillment. List making, beyond what is necessary, doesn’t get you too engaged in the world in front of you, unless it includes actions you intend and a plan to carry them out. You need a method for your new year’s resolution madness, for sure.

Holding grudges doesn’t make you feel better, while creating a list of conversations topics for a date might. Remember, past a certain indeterminate age, we tend to enjoy telling stories about good old days. The best advice, perhaps, is to experience as many of those days as you can, not only to enjoy them in the moment, but bank them for fond remembrance later.

We often look for a cognitive lightning bolt, an epiphany, or a turning point to change our lives: “If only I do this or try that, then I will be transformed and fulfilled.” Or maybe you say, “These five things are what I need,” as if the check-offs on your list are both necessary and sufficient — a guarantee of happiness. Ah, but perhaps you will think of one more to achieve and then one more still when the last one is done. There is no end to the number of awards to attain, money to bank, and places to see.

I wonder if sometimes we miss the simplest things, forgetting to put them on the paper with the tangible wish list. Our feverish pursuit of goals — intent upon grasping and holding each one we touch — suggests a permanence not present in life. We believe once we grab them they will assuage all discontent. Are we like dazed and thirsty souls in the desert who see an oasis ahead, not recognizing it is a mirage instead?

Meanwhile, those simplest things cost us nothing and bestow what we all want: to live well. Yet they are easily lost in the overheated tumult of life and the mind-numbing routine of the day.

As Jack Palance said to Billy Crystal in the 1991 movie City Slickers, the secret of happiness (if there is one) all comes down to “one thing.”

What is that “one thing?” Watch:

May 26, 2013

What Would You Give For Your Heart’s Desire?

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt OSA211

What is precious to you? What do you want to get or to see or to do? What would you give for love, glory, money, or time?

Anything? Well, here is a little game to play. It won’t take long. Or, I should say, it will take no longer than you want it to.

What would you give for any item on this list? The form of payment is, in most cases, up to you. Perhaps you would beg or borrow or steal to get your heart’s desire. But the “payment” must be equal to the value that you assign to the thing you want.

Choose wisely!

  1. A ticket in the best possible location for your favorite team’s championship game.
  2. Being able to relive the best day of your life.
  3. A cure for cancer available to the whole world.
  4. A day in the body of the person you’d most like to be, with all the abilities of that person.
  5. One less year in your life with the guarantee that you would be the wealthiest individual on earth for all the remaining years.
  6. To be sexually irresistible to those you most desire.
  7. A change in the one physical feature you like least about yourself.
  8. World peace.
  9. The health of those you love.
  10. The love of the person from whom you most wish it, whether it be a romantic partner or a parent or a sibling or a child.
  11. Contentment. That is, perfect acceptance of whatever is your situation in life.
  12. Freedom from your conscience.
  13. A definitive answer as to whether heaven exists and what it consists of, if it does exist.
  14. Immortality (in this life) in a body that would never age beyond the age you wish.
  15. A chance to do one thing over — go back to that moment with all you now know and try again.
  16. The infallible insight as to whether people are telling the truth; to see through every deception, no matter how big or small. Tough Choice
  17. The ability to do one thing you can’t do any more.
  18. The gift of living in the moment.
  19. Fame.
  20. The ability to remember every second of every day of your life.
  21. The capacity to forget anything that you wish to set aside in your past.
  22. The talent to produce at least one masterpiece of art, music, or literature.
  23. Great recognition during your lifetime that will not endure after it ends; or recognition that will come only posthumously.
  24. To be the best possible parent.
  25. To have a job that you can’t wait to get to each morning; one that produces complete fulfillment in doing the work itself, not because of what you produce or the compensation or recognition you receive for it.
  26. To be the author of a great scientific discovery.
  27. A life that allows you to see all of the most beautiful places in the world.
  28. The gift of being a great teacher.
  29. Loyal and loving friends.
  30. A partner who provides you with the most sexually satisfying times imaginable for as long as you both live.
  31. The experience of living in a drug induced state of fantasy, such that you would have the imaginary experience of anything your mind could envision, even though none of it would be real.
  32. The knowledge, in the last possible moment of your life, that you have followed the path suggested in Micah 6:8: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

As you might have noticed, some of these things may actually be available to you at no cost; other than effort and, perhaps, a bit of luck. But, many of them are mutually exclusive, as you’ve probably also observed: you can’t have them all.

Life is a little like a birthday card I’ve seen. On the front it shows a picture of a beautiful woman:

Beautiful-Woman-2048x2048

And then, a picture of a birthday cake. It reads something like this: “This is Edith and this is your cake. You have to choose one, because…”

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“You can’t have your cake and Edith, too!”

—

The top painting is a detail from The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. The second image represents a Tough Choice; the third is a photo called Birthday Cake by Francesca Cesa Bianchi, Milan, 2002. The last of these was sourced from Wikimedia Commons.