The Continuing Promise of the Sunrise

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I have reached that age when conversations with friends often include discussions of "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" and their potential remedies. That is not, by the by, a complaint. The alternative is far less to be desired.

I would however like to assert that our objections to those "natural shocks" are largely the result of measuring our lives by the wrong ruler, or yardstick, or meter stick, or whatever you might wish to call it.  We make the mistake of measuring today in terms of yesterday. A brief example - yoga.  Would I like to regain the flexibility that used to amaze my doctor during my yearly check ups when I was in my 40s? Sure. Am I ready to buy a mat, special shoes and, shudder, spandex in order to coax my 67 year-old body back into that bygone decade? No. Especially when I realize that I, like all of us, was most flexible as a baby. I mean have you watched those little critters? They bend like Gumby, and no amount of sweat and spandex will ever get any of us back to those days.

Which might make the theme of this essay seem a bit strange: I believe I wake up every day better than I was the day before. Absurd? Better at 67 after two stem cell transplants than at 57, 47, 37? In a word: Yes.

It is, of course, all about the ruler. In 21st century America we tend to measure "better" in units defined by our media. Consider the t-shirt "You can never be too rich or too thin." We start getting "informative" emails from our employers telling us that not only are we eligible for "phased retirement," but we might want to consider what our Social Security options might be. Reality TV shows peek into the lives of 20 or 30-somethings as if there were something of importance to learn there. Wrong rulers. Warped rulers. Wrong. Wrong.

Recently I have been cleaning out files that stretch back over my four decades as a university professor. Correspondence before computers. Yearly semi-aggrandizing “reports” on my accomplishments. Oh my. Now, truthfully, when measured by "age and maturity appropriate rulers" I did OK. But given the opportunity to speak to my 27 or 37 or 47 year-old selves, my 67 year-old self would say, "Son, let's grab a beverage and chat. I can make this all a bit easier for you."

Eastern cultures, Native American cultures, aboriginal cultures all seem to have grasped something that we have let slip away in modern America: as we grow older, we often grow wiser. And that is what I mean when I say I wake up every day better than I was the day before. You see, I - and you - wake up every day a bit older and a bit wiser than we were the day before.

A couple of important caveats: When I say wiser, I don't necessarily claim to have a bunch of solid answers to life's confusions. But I do have some, and I have a lot of better questions than I had when I was younger. And, hopefully, I express both the questions and the conclusions with more grace and subtlety than did the youngster I once was.

Also, I have made many more mistakes than I had had time for when I was younger. So little time, so many mistakes.  But there is no better way to learn how to do something right than by doing it wrong a few times.

So that is the continuing promise of each sunrise: we wake each day - perhaps stiffer, maybe nursing the occasional twinge - but still we rise, older and wiser than we were the day before. And that, my friend, is something for which we should be thankful.

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The First of Nevermore

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The first time ever 

Announces itself 

With trumpets and cymbals:

The first time ever I

Came to this place

Breathed this air

Saw your face

Felt your kiss

Trumpets and cymbals.

But

The first of nevermore,

Like death,

Slides in silently.

Cloaked in secrecy:

Never to be seen again

Vanished without a trace

No further evidence 

The last time I ever

Knowing this

Remove the sting 

Of nevermore

By painting each

Precious day

In the fleeting hues of

The first time ever. 

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The Last Refuge of the Incompetent

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Once you set out to articulate your personal code of life, you soon discover why so many people choose to let someone else do it.  All the world’s great faith communities, governments, political parties, and most social and fraternal organizations have codified their beliefs in a “good book” or a series of laws, regulations, best practices, symbols, handshakes, what have you.  The problem, of course, is that as those codifying documents and rituals proliferate, it becomes relatively easy to find bits and pieces that contradict each other. This allows the various adherents to that particular “good book" to cherry pick which elements of “the truth” they intend to claim.  This tends to lead to bloody schisms as folks following one subset of beliefs decide that they must confront - often violently - those other folks who have foolishly chosen another subset of beliefs to guide them.

 

However, when the document you begin to examine for contradictions is one you yourself have created, you often find yourself deep in heartfelt arguments with, well, yourself.  It would be nice to blame someone else for those discordant inconsistencies. It would be nice, but not terribly productive, and more than a touch schizophrenic 

Distilled Harmony would, at first glance, appear relatively free from ideological contradictions. I mean, after all there are only four tenets: Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty, Distill Complexity and Oppose Harm. Pretty simple right? Only at first glance.  Maybe I put Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm at opposite ends of the mantra so it wouldn’t be so obvious that they are in direct contradiction.  Foster Harmony clearly has its roots in philosophies similar to Isaac Asimov’s assertion that "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. King come to mind as significant, relatively recent adherents to that non-violent creed. But then you open your morning news emails and read about the latest atrocities committed by one group or another in order to enforce their notion of “truth” upon innocent others, and you wonder at what point one needs to move past Fostering Harmony to a remedy based in Opposing Harm.

These days the media, both corporate and social; as well as coffeehouse conversations ring with the strum und drang of contemporary geopolitics marred by much volume and little reflection. The dominant theme is discord, angst, and variations on “my way or the highway!”  The truly ironic element in these parrying pontifications is that they are often voiced by people who, like me, have no power to implement the changes they advocate so strongly. Truthfully now - what role do I have in determining who occupies the White House in DC, or the Governor’s Mansion here in Raleigh? Oh, don’t get me wrong - I vote, I click and contribute my $3.00 or 5 dollars - several times - to the candidates whose positions are most harmonic with mine. I sign online petitions that support issues that seem to express a harmonious interaction among people and the fragile earth upon which we live, and on which depend.  Yet, I am not content to accept the notion that my single digital data point among millions in our internet driven “mentally of the herd” world is “the best I can do.” 

So, while realizing the minimal impact I have upon the globe, at the moment I am content to let “real personal impact” be my guide.  Political scientists and economists have, for decades, discussed “spheres of influence”. These are, to the best of my knowledge, the geopolitical areas whose policies and practices are guided by the most dominant nation  in the region.  The cold war was a tug of war between the US and the USSR to maintain and/or expand their “spheres of influence."

What, realistically, I ask myself, is my sphere of influence? What is the reach of my behavior? How can I maximize Harmony and reduce discord by Opposing Harm? If I restrict my “area of angst” to events and individuals that I can actually influence, the contradiction between Foster Harmony and Oppose Harm becomes less intense.  I have no real influence over the “haters” of the world.  To directly thwart ISIS, to move our government out of contentious gridlock, to reaffirm the value of higher education in the nation - these are goals beyond my meager efforts. But I may be able to exert a gentle influence over others - my students, my friends, those of you who encounter these ramblings on one screen or another. In those areas I will still give Foster Harmony precedence, I will still attempt to champion Harmony whenever possible. To Foster Harmony, through individual harmonious acts, is analogous to tossing a pebble into a pond. The harmonious act spreads out across the surface of the pond, replicating ripples that gently, eventually, fill the surface. It is chaos theory, with the wings of the jungle butterfly spawning cooling rains across parched deserts continents away.  This may be the nature of my "sphere of influence”, largely invisible to me, but of possible value to others.

Comforting as this conclusion may be, it does not entirely still my fear of leaving Oppose Harm a place among the four major tenets of Distilled Harmony.  The danger is that the haters of the world have often pried their violent manifesto from some minor passage in their “good book” and elevated it to a mandate for evil.  It would be foolish to deny that evil exists in the world. Stalin and Hitler in the history I studied; ISIS, and other terrorists - both foreign and domestic - in the world that unfolds around me today. These evidences of evil should not go unopposed. But that opposition must not subvert the moral dominance of Harmony, allowing some evil, violent, social contrariness to parade as “the real truth” around which moral discord may rally. 

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