love

February 19, 2023

A Message to Future Generations

Here is a thought experiment for you:

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

What would you say?

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

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

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

Talk about making a principled stand!

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

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

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

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

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

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

But even now, I’d say this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 12, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 8, 2023

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

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

I wasn’t that impressed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I tend to agree with Woody on this point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OK, maybe a kiss, too.

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

May 22, 2022

How to Become Your Own Best Friend

Who is the person closest to you?

You see him every day, talk to him and about him, sleep with him, clean him up, applaud his successes and analyze his defeats. This individual knows more about you than you will ever know.

Maybe it’s time to make yourself into your own best friend, given all that intimacy.

I’ve listed 30 suggestions to get you started.

  1. Be entertaining company on your own. Inspect your personality and how you view the world compared to others. Seek new ideas, and pass the unaccompanied time with enjoyment. Go places and do things beyond your usual comfort zone, including solo explorations. Perhaps concerts, movies, parks, museums, and tours.  Don’t sit alone in quiet desperation.
  2. Be kind to who you are. Your life emerged without a display case from which to choose the attributes you wanted. You began with raw and imperfect materials of external creation. Improve them as you can, but don’t diminish what you have accomplished. In the words of Epictetus, “...as the (working) material of the carpenter is wood, and that of (a sculptor is) bronze, so the subject matter of the art of living is each person’s own life.“
  3. Mistakes are inevitable. Master them. Please take steps to skip over their repetition.
  4. Putting others first must have limits. Decency doesn’t require one to be a human sacrifice. Self-compassion is not selfishness but the foremost necessity of life. You can only be helpful to others if you maintain the strength to do good. Generosity and kindness are not identical to placing yourself last in line. As a Christian colleague told more than one of her clients, “Get off the cross, we need the wood.”
  5. Become independent, assertive, and the best available defender of your ground. If another must serve as the guardian of your well-being, safety, and security, your dependency will be like an Achilles heel awaiting its fatal arrow. Be the advocate on your behalf.
  6. Pursue advice, so long as you don’t overdo it. Make sure of your advisors and how much to follow their suggestions.
  7. Look for excellent models. Those you admire might be appropriate, but celebrity should not be a necessary criterion.
  8. Read fine authors, the better to write with clarity and engage with all the great minds of civilization’s past. Recognize a book as a chance to uncover the author’s observations before you dispute them.
  9. Don’t overthink. Delay and avoidance offer no guarantee of improved decision-making. If you wait until you feel right and ready, don’t be surprised when speeding time stares down at you from a passing train, with your opportunity aboard. The next locomotive to the same destination could be canceled. Is there knowledge you must first acquire? Begin then to obtain it instead of waiting for divine intervention.
  10. Do not explain, excuse, or apologize because you believe someone else expects this. Such efforts betray insecurity. Discover when to wait and how to say no.
  11. Do not worry much about what others will say about you privately. They tend to be preoccupied with their foibles, not yours. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, “I have wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others...”
  12. Hold yourself to account. Look into the mirror. Do not turn away; instead, make sure to praise strengths and admit flaws.
  13. Allow love and kindness to emanate from your being. Live with both intelligence and an open heart. Those different from you also find existence challenging.
  14. Consider friendship with people unlike you as an opportunity. Hesitate before condemning the unfamiliar ones, those outside of your understanding.
  15. Learn, always learn. You will relearn the same lessons under new conditions with different solutions many times in any life. If you stay unchanged, you will be like a man watching history race by, missing the chance to be enlarged by time, thought, and experience.
  16. Pick your battles. When you swim in a pool of anger, you will drink its pollution, distressed when you could be joyful.
  17. Hold on to old friends. They share knowledge of your youth and lived through the trials and joys of growing up in the same place, at the same time, with the same teachers, and the same challenges. They alone have a personal recall of your parents and “the old neighborhood.”
  18. Misfortune and unhappiness will be overwhelming at times. Most of us eventually return to our usual level of well-being — to our set point.
  19. Contemplate whether you received more pleasure from experiences or things. Material objects tend to lose the boost they give us soon after receiving them. The new car smell fades, and the Christmas toy gets put away. 
  20. When hardship comes, remember how you survived earlier losses and what properties within you enabled you to bounce back.
  21. “But those who forget the past, ignore the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and filled with anxiety...Their very pleasures are fearful and troubled by alarms of different kinds; at the very moment of rejoicing, the anxious thought occurs to them: ‘How long will this last?‘” (Seneca, On the Shortness of Life).
  22. You will gain more from those who are learning more. Prioritize people who do not always insist on certainty but approach the world with many questions and are unafraid of complex answers.
  23. Disappointments needn’t always be someone’s fault. Expect ups and downs. Sometimes your frustrations are due to your mistakes. Often they are a function of a world where competition, another person’s trouble, the search for love, and simultaneous demands will pull you and the rest of humanity in directions no one expected, with collisions of your interests and theirs.
  24. Not everyone will love you, nor even like you. Accept that. Living means your heart will break, and you might bruise others’ hearts like a game of dominoes.
  25. You will not accomplish everything, travel everywhere, or “have it all.” Practice gratitude for what you possess, displaying generosity to those you care about and even strangers. Make the best choices on matters of importance.
  26. Remember, you are not a “thinking machine,” but your emotions will try to persuade you that you are. As Antonio Damasio reminds us, “We are feeling machines that think.”* Make an effort to recognize this and enlarge the scope of your rationality.
  27. Laugh at the absurdity of the world and yourself.
  28. The world will test you. Then and only then will you know who you are. Fate is a hard teacher. Before your turn comes, be careful who you judge. Knowing yourself has value, not despite but because of the high price of its instruction.
  29. Empty your being of all your power, imagination, and grit. Use it up. To live a full life is to leave it with nothing undone or held back. In so doing, you can look back with satisfaction and a smile.
  30. Finally, Seth Stephens-Davidowtz offers this “data-driven answer to life,” only half-jokingly: “Be with your love, on an 80-degree sunny day, overlooking a beautiful body of water, having sex.” You can do much worse.

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The photo is A Warm Winter Pool, 2020, by Laura Hedien, with her permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

*Thanks also go to Brewdun for pointing out the Antonio Damasio quotation in No. 26.

March 27, 2022

What is Your Legacy? The Simple Answer is Within Your Reach

The future is like a taxi driver awaiting our direction. “Where to?”

What we leave behind at the end of our trip — our legacy — attempts to answer the question, “When I pass the baton, what will the next runner receive?”

Does emphasizing personal success, outsized ambition, and individual prosperity leave something worth a lifetime?

Will a career of stature make the best life and legacy?

Here are two alternatives routes worth considering. The first is the path one woman pursued searching for “the good life.” The second adds you to the picture.

Really.

To begin, please read this eloquent description of the female I mentioned:

Legacies are hard things. As a teacher, you have no idea, usually, what’s going on on the other side of the table, and you won’t know for 20 years, 30 years, 50 years — you probably will never know what the lasting effects are, so I wouldn’t claim much. But I’ll say that Amy was an absolutely masterful teacher.

I was pretty good, but she was fabulous. And she was fabulous because if a student asked her a question, she turned it back on them. She didn’t feel obliged to give answers. She was there to make them think and think harder.

A student would say something, and if it was halfway good, she would say, “Another sentence …,” and it was flattering to the student to think they had another sentence in them, besides the best that they’d give you.

They searched for it, and they found it.

The other thing to say about her is that the women students, especially, saw and treasured in Amy the fact that she integrated naturally and easily a beloved life of teaching and learning, and a beloved life of marriage and family.

She wasn’t proving a point. She just did it. The students were invited into our home. They saw all aspects of her, and a lot of the students gravitated to her for this reason.

I am sure you realize the last sentence identifies the speaker as the husband of this remarkable educator. Amy Kass died in 2015, and the quotation comes from her mate, Leon Kass. If I listed all their combined achievements, you would be humbled, but they include books, civil rights activism, medicine, and much more. Concerning what her husband highlights, she was an instructor in the humanities at the University of Chicago.

What else do the words from the man tell us about his wife, the direction of her life, and the possibility of one’s own legacy?

He underlines a grace in her interactions with the young people who wished to learn from her. She lifted them by evoking their best — thoughts unexpressed but for her attempt to provoke their self-questioning, careful reading, and rejection of easy answers.

Amy Kass must have been the type of instructor you encounter once or twice in a lifetime — if you are lucky.

The kind you never forget.

Her partner mentions more than her professional attainments. He highlights how she lived, emphasizing her love for him and their family. She opened herself to other relationships out of her love of people.

As a professor of classics, she not only talked with her students about how thinkers in antiquity valued nobility of character, but she provided an effortless illustration in her everyday actions by being generous, eager, honorable, devoted, strong, and considerate in the classroom and beyond.

Now, the second answer I promised follows from the first. To leave a fine legacy, you needn’t become famous, make tons of money, or raise heroic children.

Attempt to match the guidance Marcus Aurelius, the ancient Roman emperor, gave himself:

No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, ‘No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.’

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.15

This much — to be good — we all control. There is no need to listen to all the bullying or tempting voices which diminish or entice you.

The word legacy might sound too grand for such a modest approach to each day, but it is also brave. You will touch many lives and leave behind invisible traces of yourself by taking the advice of this statesman and Stoic philosopher.

Virtue is possible now, this instant, and all the time ahead of you. It is yours if you make it so. I’ll bet Amy Kass would have agreed.

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The painting is called School Teacher by Jan Steen. It is followed by Holger Ellgaard’s photo of the Carl Milles sculpture, Guds Hand (The Hand of God). They are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

March 6, 2022

Recapturing the Joy of Childhood

Do you remember back when you were nine years old? How the prospect of turning 10 stood like a skyscraper, a monumental achievement, a towering number in two digits? You — yes, you — transformed into something larger, more important, closer to grown-upness?

For small children, imagination and reality exist on the same level. When you play a soldier, you turn into one. When you put on your Superman outfit, the fake muscles become real, and your thoughts take flight. A princess costume creates enchantment and elegance.

The magic mirror confirms, “You are the fairest of them all.”

Playing these parts is unselfconscious, the pleasure joyous, the movements spontaneous. Summers seem endless, and the friends of every day never imagine a future without you.

Mom and dad demonstrate how to do things, read stories leading you to master the skill yourself, and are lovelier, brighter, and stronger than others who use the same pronouns.

The idea of illness never enters. The body housing you heals minor injuries in the time it takes for mom to give you a hug. Chicken soup and kisses serve as unfailing elixirs.

Limitless destiny carries the belief everything is achievable. Life (with the help of parents) offers gifts, birthday celebrations, prepared meals, and treats you like royalty. The guarantee of your guardians’ immortality and your own is never in doubt.


Gradually something happens. Imagination loses some of its footing while reality claims more of the ground. Spontaneity and uninhibited joy no longer arrive with the sunshine. Yet, the far side of childhood needn’t be as challenging as this sounds.

Yes, the magical healing power of mom’s touch has passed into yesterday, but other affections offer compensation.

Once middle-aged, long-standing friends don’t expect you to prove yourself. If you’ve done moderately well in pursuing your goals, achievements don’t insist on so much attention. Aches and pains may not be fun but are just the cost of living, companions reminding you to relish each instant.

Without childrearing responsibilities, more time exists to admire the sky and salute the moonlight. Meanwhile, experience has taught you the value of nature’s poetry and human kindness, evoking your gratitude. If you’ve largely escaped harm’s way, you recognize the life-enhancing necessity of giving something back, as well.

The delight of early life grows out of parental love, the dazzle of “first times,” and mastering the new world. In a sense, it also depends on the ignorance of life’s demanding adult future.

For those on the far side of youth, reclaiming joy requires something different. It asks for knowledge, not naivete: awareness of the inevitable end of things.

Recognizing that truth, all our remaining abilities and opportunities can grow in importance. We have the chance to learn and laugh, treasure precious friends and those we love even more, and savor nature’s beauty anew. They enlarge gratitude in what remains, so much of which was taken for granted before.

Life will never be perfect, but its imperfections provide perspective on what is essential at the day’s end. Chicagoans who remember Studs Terkel’s name will recall his gift of eliciting the best from the thousands he interviewed, the qualities we must seek for ourselves with age.

And, as if to remind us how to live, Studs always signed off his radio program with the words, “Take it easy, but take it.“

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I am sure many of you have been moved by the human tragedies unfolding in Ukraine. Read more on how you can help Ukraine here.

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The sculpture is called Joy by Bruce Garner, located in Ottawa, Canada, as photographed by Jeangagnon. Beneath it is The Joy of Playing Together by Rasheedhrasheed. Both were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

January 23, 2022

Of Clocks, Weddings, and Getting Cold Feet

It could have happened to you but probably didn’t.

The young man was 28 years old and in love with a 21-year-old beauty. His prospects were not great, but he finally landed a steady job at the Post Office near the end of an economic downturn.

Marriage was now possible; his intended said “yes,” and her parents gave their permission.

The next step was getting a marriage license.

The betrothed pair agreed to meet in downtown Chicago at Marshall Field and Co., now known as Macy’s. That block-long edifice faces State Street on the west, Randolph on the north, and Washington on the south.

The time was set. From “Field’s,” they would make the short walk to City Hall to obtain the legal document.

“We’ll meet under the store clock,” he’d said off-handedly. She quickly agreed.

The day came, and he arrived at the appointed time, right below the clock at Randolph and State as promised.

Only she wasn’t.

What happened? Why the delay? Was she injured?

Perhaps, she got cold feet.

Meanwhile, a lovely woman aged 21 stood at the corner of Washington and State.

She thought to herself, “What became of Milton? He’s so punctual. Where might he be? I’m standing under the clock as we agreed!“

You see, a slight misunderstanding occurred. Marshall Field’s had two clocks, one at each State Street corner.

It wasn’t long before one or the other figured things out and walked toward the corner opposite. There was an embrace, a kiss, much relief, and the lovers proceeded a little late. The marriage license in hand, the wedding followed later that year.

Nineteen Forty, in case you’re wondering.

Both the bride and the groom showed up on time and in the right place.

My parents’ wedding.

How easily it could have gone wrong, in which case, you wouldn’t be reading this because I wouldn’t have written it. I’d not have been the product of “a twinkle” in my father’s eye, as he sometimes referred to me.

And my wife couldn’t have married a man who didn’t exist. Our kids and grandkids: “poof,” along with my brothers, their children, grandchildren, etc.

Casio W-86 digital watch electroluminescent backlight (i)

Standing alone is hardly unheard of, whether at landmarks, dates, or the alter.

Take the 2005 media circus surrounding Jennifer Carol Wilbanks, who disappeared to avoid wedding bells, later falsely stating (to explain her absence) she had been abducted and sexually assaulted.

The worst tale I ever heard from one of the people involved concerned a “high society” ceremony. Big money, a glorious setting, gifts galore, newspaper photographers, and tons of people.

Everyone came other than the groom, who didn’t call ahead to cancel or apologize. Not by letter, e-mail, phone, or text, and certainly not face-to-face. Not ever.

And then I encountered an internet story of a young man who went through the wedding ceremony, only to startle the assembled crowd of well-wishers upon completion of the union.

He informed them of his intention to get an annulment the next day because of his new wife’s recent sexual escapade with the best man.

Moreover, the groom then whipped out photos to verify his report.

Now some would say, “everything happens for a reason,” and everything turns out well in the end.

I am not one of those people. I believe in accidents, lucky and unlucky, which seem to be randomly distributed despite our effort to avoid adverse events.

As far as happy endings are concerned, they happen, although not everything ends happily.

Still, we must make the best of things.

The humiliated young woman of the “high society” wedding did marry a man who loved her to pieces and showed up on the right day to prove it. They’ve been married forever, glued together in love. Sticky, I guess.

And, it’s hard to argue the fellow who promised annulment would have been better off attached to his temporary spouse.

Let’s hope they both learned something and went on to find happiness elsewhere.

In the end, when you are young, most setbacks are relatively brief, no matter how long the endless time seems.

Of course, whatever children might have emerged from the last two ill-starred matches never came to be.

A good thing? Not a good thing?

Did we miss the next baby Beethoven (who was born of a miserable marriage)?

I can’t say.

All I know for sure is that I’m glad my folks had enough confidence in their love to stick around and that one of them walked down the block in search of the other.

If not for that — well, you know.

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At the top, one of the two State Street clocks of the old Marshall Field and Co. store in Chicago, now known as Macy’s. The Macy’s photo is by DDima.

The second image is a Casio W-86 wristwatch photographed by Multicherry. Both of the pictures were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

October 10, 2021

Finding the Balance between Effort and Surrender

Wisdom turns up in unexpected places. Who said, “Life exists somewhere between effort and surrender”?

The legendary and still active 44-year-old quarterback in the National Football League, Tom Brady, might be the most recent.

Many discovered this before him, including Danielle Orner:

Life is a balance between what we can control and what we cannot. I am learning to live between effort and surrender.
I imagine the Buddhists came up with something similar long ago.

How does this apply to therapy?
 


The most distressed of my patients — the joyless ones — inhabited one end or the other. Those who took the effort to an extreme sometimes achieved material or professional success but almost always encountered repeated frustration to obtain it.

Their singular focus also entailed costs for marriage and family.

A number of these, usually men, tackled life as if on the playing field where the domination of the opposition demanded mastery. They viewed problems as a series of obstacles to be overcome to the point of relentlessness. Such individuals were formidable but not easy to live with.

Openness, they believed, revealed weakness.
 
Serenity lay beyond their reach, leading to treatment.
The ones who specialized in surrender gave in to fear out of a lack of confidence and a punishing history. The human beings they encountered fell into the category of potential deliverers of harm, a kind of enemy army. Intimacy and emotional risk lived in the same category.

The safest way of surviving, as they believed, was to trust no one. Pets frequently provided warmth people didn’t.
 
In each of these cases, the counselor’s job is to ask the patient the cost of their favored strategy. If they identify the price, treatment goes forward. A bumpier path lies ahead if the individual has not reflected on the downside.

More than a few continue to defend their preferred choice. They will, perhaps, encounter more emotional pain or disappointment before choosing to make necessary alterations in their style of living. They might require reflection upon why they decided to be the person they are. However, a clear decision might not have occurred since none of us know our motives in every detail.

Many of my clients found their approach to life as children or teens. The solution appeared as the best available choice for the circumstances of the time, place, and people who surrounded them. I’m speaking of parents, relatives, schoolmates, and teachers. Keeping your head down and avoiding attention developed into a necessity for survival.

Time and experience reveal less satisfaction in the course of their lives. To the extent they become aware of the limitations growing out of their existing style, a search begins to remedy their discontent.

The world had changed around them, and the behavioral choices of decades past came to provide less profit and more loss. It was as if the new tires they put on their human vehicle years ago became threadbare.

With enough pain, the motivation to seek a better way ahead emerges.
 
 
But what of the balance between effort and surrender? That idyllic place is a moving target. Always.

I once asked Rick Taft, who managed investments for a living, whether he believed the stock market would rise or fall. “It will fluctuate,” he said.
 
This is true for stocks and most everything else. Just as the weather changes, we retain no promise of health, happiness, wealth, or much else. But if we can stop depending on a smooth life course, we have taken the first step toward emotional balance.
 
Without a single, permanent, satisfying spot between effort and surrender, what then? Here are ten suggestions:
  • Take opportunities where and when they arise. Doors open, but not always more than once.
  • Recognize the only unchanging experience in life is change. You cannot freeze the planet or our bodies in place, as the climate reminds us. Learn to become a tightrope walker on a windy day.
  • You do not have to take every opportunity, but take more than are comfortable if your nature is hesitant. Pull back instead if those instincts tend to push you to jump without looking.
  • Life will unsettle you, as it does to all of us. Resolve to reach for joy in small things, lest the inevitable unfairness of some days wrecks your disposition.
  • No one thinks about you as much as you believe. Others spend too much time with a miniature version of themselves buzzing around their brains. The focus outside of themselves emerges less often, except in moments of outsized feelings like love, hate, and fear. Therefore, don’t worry endlessly about looking foolish and making mistakes, lest you recall embarrassment long after the crowd has moved on.
  • You’ll grow more if you do more and find some exhilaration in daunting moments, balanced or not.
  • Learn to meditate, beginning in a calm and quiet circumstance when possible. Daily practice centered on your breath (as the top video suggests) reduces your chance of being swept away by a stiff breeze or worse.
  • No one figures out their life. Few of us fully display our pain and confusion. Do not be fooled by appearances.
  • If you can find a tender and consoling hand, reach for it. If you see a needy soul, extend your own to them.
  • Smile and laugh. Most of our worries don’t become a reality, and among those that turn out as we feared, a remedy might be found with time and effort.

We live in transit — in a perpetual transition, no matter its static appearance. A man in a train moving at a steady pace has no sense of forward motion except when he looks out the window. An observer outside the train, however, wouldn’t be in doubt about the fellow’s progress.

With the above in mind, think of life as a series of alternatives. The midpoint between them should not always be your target:

    • Sleeping — waking.
    • Seriousness — laughter.
    • Learning — teaching.
    • Following — leading.
    • Being for yourself — being for others.
    • Head — heart.
    • Action — contemplation.
    • With people — alone.
    • Reading — writing.
    • Contemplation — spontaneity.
    • Being in the moment — being conscious of yourself.
    • Looking back — looking forward.
    • Listening — speaking.
    • Getting — spending.
    • Indoors — outdoors.
    • Accumulation of material things — reaching for experiences.
    • Assertion — passivity.
    • Diving in — waiting.

Are you disappointed I have not offered you a simple answer to this puzzle?

Sorry, I am too busy working it out for myself, searching for each day’s new balance!

———-

Beneath the top video are the following images, in order:

  1. An 1891 poster from Wikimedia Commons of Félicia Mallet by Jules Chéret.
  2. Tears of Blood  by Oswaldo Guayasami.
  3. An incredible view of Lake Misurina, Italy, from History Daily.
  4. The Example of One Choice Question, a screenshot simulation from the TV show Are You Smarter Than the Primary School Students? Taiwanese version. The picture’s author is 竹筍弟弟 (talk) from Wikimedia Commons.
    September 8, 2021

    On Adult Attachment to Children

    There is nothing like the wordless sadness of a beautiful face dear to you. I’m referring to the small, huggable, wide-eyed ones when overtaken by uncertain illness.

    “Mine!” is one of his favorite words, claiming property his bigger brother shows an interest in. The malady, however, offered nothing he wanted to keep.

    The upbeat mood of the smiling, sweet-as-chocolate cherub melts in a few minutes. Energy departs, spirit evaporates, words transmute into inexpressable discomfort. The flush of heat rises, but the body descends.

    The sick two-year-old loses his chatter.

    My youngest grandson does not reach for a hand — doesn’t lead you to a toy, or a place, or try to have you for himself instead of sharing you with his six-year-old brother.

    It must be tough to be a little fellow, hard to make your imperfect utterances understood.

    Now he wants the hugs only a mom and dad can supply — seeks their comfort and embrace, the safety he can’t describe.

    You watch this happen. COVID fertilizes your fear, growing like Jack’s speedy beanstalk. The concern is new, though other epochs had their own dangers — smallpox, polio, plague …

    The moppet slumps into slumber. You depart, but the precious person grips your heart, now shadowed by a cloud.

    The day passes. Your wife’s sleep is fitful.

    The golden boy holds the sorrowful power to instill worry.

    Daughter #2, his mother, sends a message early the next day.

    A long nap, his parents’ knowing, double-duty attention, food, and more sleep sweep the danger away. The tentative all-clear sounds.

    The news makes the sun shine brighter today. The superpowers of small children extend to the stars.

    Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.”

    What the writer didn’t say might have also been spoken about love. We are held fast by our loves, the closest friends, our offspring, and our grandkids, too.

    Those attachments can do far worse to us than the bit of concern we had that day. Much, much worse. Many near misses and joys await. Best not to borrow trouble.

    But this two-year-old deserves credit. His bounce-back brought the sky’s warmest blue. Only the dearest hearts inside you do this. He sprinkles fairy dust and doesn’t even know it.

    ==============

    The first photo dates from 1934 and was published in Modern Screen magazine in 1950. The two-year-old girl is Elizabeth Taylor, with her mother Sara Sothern and brother Howard.

    The second image was taken by Rita Martin and shows an unnamed child in 1912. Both of the photographs were sourced from Wikimedia Commons.