There's No Reason to Be Hard

Three Dog Night

Three Dog Night sang "It's Easy to be Hard."  Easy, maybe, but unnecessary. That's a perspective that has become clearer to me as I see the big 8-0 looming a couple of years away on the horizon.

The Bard, in As You Like It, famously declared there are seven ages of man, which he defined, in part, thusly:

“Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness . . . “ As though that were a bad thing. Those of you who hustle off to check the quote will realize I chopped off the more pessimistic ending of the line. But that is because it would detract from the narrative I'm exploring - and besides, we have been twisting Shakespeare for 500 years to frame our preferred narrative, so why stop now?

Let us consider this “second childishness” that the brash bard Bill asserts awaits us all (assuming that the seven ages of man, applies to women as well) at the tail end of our lives.  As I observe my fellow Baby Boomers - we started in 1946 - it seems to me that this second bout of childishness tends to diverge in a wood - Frost's two-pronged fork in the forest road. [Being born in 1874 Robert Frost  was part of either The Missionary Generation, The Lost Generation or The Progressive Generation, depending upon to whom you listen.]  It seems that you can either take the hard turn to the right that leads to a selfish childishness, or choose a smoother glide to the left that encourages a more selfless childishness.

The hard right turn to selfish childishness takes us, most publicly these days, to the Trump White House. One might be tempted to point to the high number of middle-aged members of the administration as evidence that the administration is years away from a second bout of childishness. But that would lead you astray.  First, it is in the middle of Shakespeare's seven ages - so maybe 30, 40 maybe 50ish? - that we find "the soldier" who wikipedia interprets as "Full of fierce oaths, looking like a leopard, quick to fight, and seeking a short-lived reputation even in extreme danger." But Trump's aggressive young leopards are fully aware that their current power depends on total fealty to an 80-year old president who seems to be shuffling down the road to a selfish childishness. And it is he who directs their aggression.

So what does that mean? Selfish childishness? Well, check out any examples in your own life - children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Whomever you have access to. What are the characteristics of the selfish kids? [Of course, not that any of ours are 😉] Well, everything is about them. Me, me, me. My toys, my TV show, my favorite foods, my cloths, my battleship, my hotels, my golf course, my ballroom, my triumphal arch, my names for bodies of water, my reflecting pool - which, no matter what the contractor says, was torn up by vandals. Oops. I seem to have drifted off into the Oval Office there. But you can't really make that stuff up. He is the poster child for selfish childishness. You may have a similarly afflicted friend or relative that you observe when you visit them at Shady Rest or Golden Acres or some other padded retreat for those in the throes of selfish childishness. You know what I mean.

So who are the poster children for selfless childishness?  The headlines don't provide a lot of names here. Dion also sang about Abraham (Lincoln), Martin (Luther King, Jr,) and John (Kennedy), but they were all young 56, 39, 46, when they were killed - so long before what should have been "the last scene" Shakespeare describes. 

True Mahatma Gandhi was 78 years old when he died. And Mother Teresa was 87 years old when she died. But reports of their renowned selfless childishness do not grace the screens of contemporary media - no matter how praiseworthy. So I will look for less celebrated, but more personally important models. 

For me I will stick to "the ages of man" because three men come most quickly to mind when I think of selfless childishness.  They are my Dad, F. James Schrag who passed at 100, my Uncle Calvin O. Schrag died at 95, and Merle B. Smith, aka "Smitty" who expired at 94. All obviously in Shakespeare's “Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, [ending in] second childishness." I knew them all. Obviously my father all my life, my uncle almost as long, and Smitty for his last couple decades. What they had in common was that they could never do enough for you - or for me. And they did it with a genuine smile. They were all focused on the "other."

That is not, perhaps, unusual for me to see my father and my uncle thus - I was obviously "blood kin" - and their Mennonite upbringing contributed to their pacifistic, caring, outlook on life. Which was something they both brought to their college students in over a combined century in the classroom. I hope my 50 years were a worthy contribution. As I said, the defining characteristic of both Dad and my Uncle Calvin - aka "Kelly" - was that they were always focused on the "other" as opposed to themselves.

And for Dad that "other" was often his students; he was always bringing foreign students home - I have a clear memory of a Japanese student showing us how to make a spider out of tin foil. He continued his "other-based" activities in town, serving on several local groups addressing race relations in the early 1950s. And then in 1959 he moved the family to Vienna, Austria for two years while he ran Quaker House, a joint endeavor with the Austrian government and the American Friends Service Committee to bring refugees from behind the then "Iron Curtain" into the West. As he moved toward the century mark I continued to be moved as I observed his continued gentleness and good humor, and his obvious thankfulness for my sister and her husband who were so much in his life until he passed.

I am not that familiar with how, directly, Uncle Calvin interacted with his students, other than the fact that he often attended our national communication conferences - as his research was well known and highly respected in my discipline. There our traditional "catch-up" dinners were often interrupted by students just wanting to thank him for his work. To me, he was always - in addition to his academic stardom - the young uncle who often came to our house for Thanksgiving dinner and took the time to play whiffle ball with me in the basement. Later, I came to realize that his nine books paved a path to an advocacy of gentleness, love and understanding. A message he continued to bring to his classroom well into his 90s.

Smitty was a different kind of guy. A businessman who eventually ran one of the largest hardwood flooring companies in the country, if not the world. Something I am reminded of every day as I walk over the beautiful floors he created in the home I share with Christine - Smitty's first wife, my second. Yeah, I know - seems a bit weird. But it isn't really.

Smitty and Christine remained good friends after their divorce and it made good, if unusual, sense that when Christine and I would come up from North Carolina to visit her wide circle of friends and family here in the Chicago area we would stay with Smitty. What was less likely was that Smitty and I became close friends. We cooperated on crossword puzzles, played an informal version of "name that tune" with songs he grew up with, which were also the songs my mother had taught me from between the world wars and up into the 40s and 50s. Smitty and I would breakfast together each morning at Blueberry Hill Cafe, feeding any leftovers to his much-loved black lab - named named Vido Musso after an influential jazz tenor saxophonist who was one of Smitty's favorites. Vito was a most convivial lab who would occasionally share the tail end of Smitty's nightly martinis - with a preference for the olives and the ice cubes.

Smitty's "others" included his business acquaintances with whom he was generous to a fault. But, without a doubt, the others he held most dear were his family. Whenever we ate out with his extensive family in the area, he would take offense if anyone else pulled out a wallet. A family outing - maybe a dozen of us - to the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulfur Springs, WV for a week, was all on Smitty's tab. It wasn't just that he did those things, he loved doing it - and confided to me once while sitting before the fireplace, over those martinis that Vito shared - that he was worried that he couldn't do more for the family. And it became clear that Christine and I were considered part of that family when Smitty's will, after generous bequests to his kids, declared that while his home would eventually revert to the trust he had established for his family, until that time Christine and I were granted permanent residency until both of us had passed. Complete selfless childishness.

I would be remiss in this discussion were I not mention my mother. She died, way too early, at 72 - so a couple decades shy of the guys I discussed. But she was another example of "selfless childishness." When too young to be in her final chapters, she started the "Friendship Toy Shop" in our basement in Ohio. While I am fuzzy on the details, I think she wanted to sell toys made in the Third World to give those artisans access to markets in the West. The endeavor, again as I recall, was short-lived because of her blithe inattention to the tax implications of running a retail outlet. However, I do clearly remember "The Flower Cart," a sheltered workshop for developmentally challenged young adults that she founded when Dad took them off to Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia for the final years of his teaching career. Hence, with those two influences in the home my bias for the "selfless childishness" perspective is unavoidable.

So those who turn down the path of "selfish childishness" spend their final chapters harshly seeking to increase their wealth, property, and power; those who take the road - perhaps less traveled - to "selfless childishness" seek to give to others that which makes life easier for those they love, and often to others they may not even know, but who are in need.

It is encouraging to note that some names from the news are taking the "selfless childishness" path. The Gates Foundation springs to mind, as do the Lilly Endowment and the Ford Foundation, and those contributors who march across the screen after PBS programs. But sadly they most often appear with far less public attention than the blaring reports detailing the latest boondoggle from the "selfish childishness" path favored by those in currently in power.