Category Archives: Gratitude

Better This Than That

I know people who meditate daily.  They recommend it even as they acknowledge it doesn’t seem to help much with the thousand tiny horrors that gnaw at them on the average day.  Others, to my surprise, use religious rituals the same way.  Same results.  There are no two ways about it– this world is a challenge.

I sit here tapping out a few words, the fewer the better.  The effect is about the same as meditation or a religious ritual, I would think.  I focus on writing clearly.  The world is work enough without writers flexing, flourishing their pens and making the point a little harder to grasp.

So, to be clear– these few moments of clarity are often the better part of my day, like meditation for others.  I sit and the keys clatter.  I watch the words on the screen, change a few, go back, read it from the beginning, make a change here to make it more clear, there to make it less clunky.

Unfortunately, I can’t do this all day.  It’s time to get back to the biting tics.

meditation

There are small kindnesses, everywhere, that are very easy to do and yet are beyond us.  We may even see them laid out for us, ready to be picked up and given like the precious gifts they are, but not do them.  After all, our day may have sucked with sharp teeth and nobody did any small kindnesses for us.  We may even be dealing with monsters all day long.

The person you love the best may say “yeah, you’re real gentle,” letting the sarcasm ring without a hint of poetry.  The thought that she says this because she thinks you should have been kinder to her, no matter how else you’ve tried to be gentle, may make you feel like snarling.  You don’t snarl, but that look on your face, as you stare at the road ahead, will do nicely.

“See?” she will think to herself, and feel absolutely just to think this.  She will even be right to feel that way, though it will burn you in that moment.

Any of a dozen small kindnesses you could have done earlier could have softened it, even a second or third if the first wasn’t appreciated.   Gentleness must be endless, or it is not really gentleness.

Fucking hard, though.  I know.

What Should Be and What Is

I would sometimes tell a judge, if I thought she had a sense of humor, or of irony, “‘Should’ is a word one should not use when speaking of Adult Protective Services.”  I was sometimes mistaken in my assessment of senses of humor and irony, but the point remains, and even the grimmest, dullest, most literal and judgmental judges got it.  

There is what should be — the state of affairs that logic, efficiency, mercy, justice, honesty, fairness and other convincing factors suggest is the way things ought to go– and the way it actually is:  just the world, how it will sometimes kick you or a loved one in the face, or the ribs, or the groin, how sometimes it does it by accident, sometimes on purpose, with passion or dispassion, personally or impersonally, and sometimes just because.

The healthy runner who dies of a massive heart attack, the good man struck down by a quick, sharp, relentless cancer, the person who least deserves advancement, getting all of it, plus untold wealth, while her more deserving colleagues scramble for the last bed at the homeless shelter, go mad and stinking without access to mental health care or a shower. 

The examples are too many, and too treacherous, to detail in a short post.  They are too tedious and draining to set out in a long post.  Everybody has their own list: things that should have been one way but instead were another way.  A friend I should have been more of a friend to, now dead.  A family member reduced to the sum of his faults and neglected.  Music that should have been played, but only silence instead.  A hand that should have reached out turned into a fist.  A conversation with a dear friend on the edge that should have been gentle and helpful, turned into a zero sum game.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, my friend.  You should fix your own life before you try to fix mine.”  

“I’m not trying to fix your life, I care about you and I’m expressing my concern.  I want to make sure you’re OK.”  

“That’s what you say.”  

“Who else am I to speak for?”  

“Clever, as always, Mr. Rhett Oracle Question.”  

“I’m sorry.”  

“Yes, you sure as hell are.”  

“I’m serious.  I’m worried about you.  Are you OK?  Is something going on with you?  Talk to me.”  

“I’m fine, worry about yourself, better.”  

“Are we stuck in a loop?”  

“Speak for yourself, Glue Man, I’m the Rubber.”  etc.

I find it particularly sad that I am giving any thought at all to the statistical book-keeping of the website that allows me to post these words.  Two people, one who liked and the other who began to follow this blagh today, two people I’ve never met, are not being included in my stats.  I was shut out today when, really, I should have had at least those two scratches on my tally.  One more person liked the previous post about the shutout while I was tapping out this post.  Where are those three tallies?   

Some believe that starting tonight God is reviewing a giant ledger where all of our deeds, and the actions we should have taken but didn’t, are recorded.  According to this tradition He is considering who shall be rewarded and who shall be punished, who will wax rich and who will be poor.  We have little more than a week to make right whatever debts we have failed to acknowledge, thank whoever we have failed to be grateful to, apologize to and soothe anyone our hasty words, deeds or failures to act may have hurt.  At the end of the Ten Days of Repentance God will finalize His notes about the course each of our next twelve months of life, or death, will take.  He will inscribe His will in the Book of Life, our permanent record, and, at the end of the day of fasting when even the great Sandy Koufax did not pitch, will seal the book, and the fate of all inside.

Of course, many also believe that God is dead, or a concept by which we measure our pain, or a figment of human fear, ignorance and superstition, or many other things besides a divine being who created the universe and takes a keen interest in human morality.  

I remember at eighteen thinking that God does indeed exist, and that He looked down upon the way the humans He created treat each other, His heart broke and He went mad in His grief.  And gave us the host of ongoing plagues, in His sorrow and superhuman madness, that are visited upon us each time things are the way they are, instead of the way we know they should be.

The Puckish Nature of the World

I wrote here a while back about a friend I’d lost touch with who has the annoying habit of writing a witty email every few years, engagingly asking for feedback or a favor.  The feedback is given, the favor done, and then years pass without a peep from him.  It has earned him the enmity of more than one person I know and I’ve been fairly disgusted by it.

He was recently in town and I mulled over responding to his insistent, twice sent email seeking to get together when he was in town.  I replied, mentioned surgery around the time he’d be in NY, he replied, uncharacteristically, and said he’d write more soon.  A few weeks passed, then his itinerary arrived, which I treated with a healthy dose of silence.    

A few days later I had a voicemail from him, arrived in NY hours earlier,  posing as my surgeon, inquiring about my recovery, trusting it was smooth and pain-free, then pleasantly telling me that he and his wife were at my service and would come to me at any time and place convenient for me.   I took another oxycodone and drifted off without calling back.   Seven hours later his next message arrived.  I mulled over listening to it, decided against it, watched TV, wrote a few emails, took more drugs, drifted off again.

“I can’t believe you didn’t listen to the message yet,” a friend said the next day.  I really wasn’t that curious.  I knew over time the messages would be tinged deeper and deeper with the hurt tones of someone forced to keep drinking their own medicine.  I thought about it, when I did think about it, as the 8 year-olds in Harlem used to, when a bully met someone who hurt him and was crying.   “Good for you,” they’d call out to the crying kid, while hiding their identities.  

I eventually sobered up, decided that my sadistic inaction, pleasant though it was, and justified as it might have been, was not of a piece with the gentle stance I have been trying to maintain.  I called him back, informed him that unfortunately I wouldn’t be able to get together with him and we proceeded to have a pleasant chat.  It turned out the infinite flexibility would all occur on a certain day, the day before they left, and that was a complicated day for me.  If there was any question of exerting myself to get together with them, the limited time frame made it impossible.  

But all this tedious background is for this.  He told me at one point, as we discussed my animation program that has just crept its first fins on to land and is about to close up the gills and breathe air for the first time, that he’d been in a one-day animation workshop in a summer program in a San Francisco art museum as a boy and had never forgotten it. 

“I remember almost nothing from before I was about 14,” he said, “but I have vivid memories of how cool it was, at ten, to draw these crude things on cels and then see them played back as animation.  I remember sitting in the auditorium at the end of the program and watching the animation I’d done on a big screen, and how amazing and exciting it was.  I remember it 45 years later, and almost nothing else from that time in my life.  So it made a huge impression and I’m sure the kids lucky enough to be in your workshop will have a similar experience.”

Wow, I thought.  What a great little sound byte to record and use to promote the program.  

“Anyway,” he said, “it’s been great talking to you.  We’ve missed you and are sad we won’t get to see you, but we understand, it’s a short trip and your operation and all.  But,” and his voice got very tender and sincere “let’s stay in touch.  You know, we should email and talk on the phone once in a while.”  He sounded, for all the world,  like a person who actually did these kinds of things and I managed to say “sure, that would be nice,” instead of laughing in his face and telling him how hilarious he was.

“Oh, listen, send me your latest animations, I love them.  And I’ll send you feedback and stay in touch,” he said, and again I managed not to spoil the mood by guffawing like a donkey.

The next day I sent him the latest animations with a short note about his great story of being a ten year-old animator for a day.  I told him the story would make a great promo and suggested we get a recording of him telling it.   I let him know how nice it was to hear from him.  

That was only two weeks ago.  It’s not that I expect to hear back from him, I just think it’s another great example of the puckish nature of the world, if you look at it the right way.

We go to war with the army we have

And so we embarked, on a boat, into an atmospherically perfect morning.  That I had slept less than two hours was not even on my mind as I let a comrade drink what would have been my second cup of coffee.

We go to war with the army we have, and the armaments too.  We went into battle armed with a guitar, two ukuleles, a small portable keyboard and a tiny external speaker.  And we put up a hell of a fight there on the beachhead.  Hell of a fight, boys.

Be The Change You Want to See in The World

Gandhi is thought to have created that idea, although maybe it comes from one of his beloved texts.  (A writer skillfully straightens out the whole feel-good coffee mug aphorism industry here)

Whatever the source, or whoever coined the pithy bumper sticker, it is on a recycled nylon bag I have used dozens of times and also on the banner of my youtube channel (here) where you will find the opinion “nice work, if you can get it.”  “Be the change you want to see in the world” is a short phrase that encapsulates a lot about the work I need to be doing.

As the writer cited above wrote:   

The closest verifiable remark we have from Gandhi is this: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”

If we would like to see less violence in the world, and are constantly in fist fights because we react to insults with fists, teaching ourselves how not to throw the first punch is a big step in the right direction.  The world isn’t going to magically change from violent to more peaceful if we stop the preemptive face-bashing, but the change in ourselves is a necessary precondition for being able to convince anyone else to stop fighting.  Plus, the violence in our own life is likely to decrease as we change our behavior.

The default settings of life are what enable complex human societies to function in a more or less automatic way in a complicated and demanding system set to default.  But if you have a dream of doing something to influence and change the status quo, the default settings will not help you accomplish it.  If that dream involves doing your part to change the world in the direction you dream of, you are going to have to transform yourself into an effective role model for what you’re talking about.

As the eminent philosopher Moms Mabley postulated “if you do what you always did, you’ll get what you always got.”  

I need to think no further than my father on his deathbed to reinforce for me the importance of being the change– becoming the kind of force you’d like to see in the world.   He died full of regrets, largely related to his fiercely held belief that people can’t change in any significant way.  “The world’s not black and white, Elie,” he told me with the great sorrow of a decades-too-late revelation, hours before he died.  “I think now how much richer my life would have been if I hadn’t seen it as a battle—good versus evil.”

Good versus Evil thinking simplifies the world in a reductive, and frankly, often stupid way.  Of course we can see the difference between good (helping someone in trouble) and evil (torturing someone in trouble) but that’s not the point I’m slogging toward.  Human motivation and behavior is famously complicated –suppose the person in trouble you’re helping or torturing is not a victim but a vicious person, a terrorist not a freedom fighter?– which is the greater good and the greater evil is a topic for endless debate.  

But, for example, if we are hurt every time we feel rejected, and never miss a chance to express that hurt, whether the rejection was actually intended or inadvertent (as much perceived rejection turns out to be), we are trapped in a syndrome caused, largely, by our own reaction.   If our goal is to create a classroom where kids learn to deal gracefully with failure and rejection, we have a good deal of work to do first on our own reactions to what feels like failure and rejection.

Otherwise, we will find ourselves building a lousy model, in a room with kids slugging away with bullies, fighting perceived rejecters on their behalf but teaching the children nothing about the proper way to respect yourself and your work and not be unduly put out by the negativity or silence of others.  The project will fail unless the teacher has first figured out how to keep negativity and fighting out of the space.   That work is on the teacher, if the teacher has a goal larger than imparting knowledge of a particular skill or subject.

That 99% of teachers, 99% of people, will not submit themselves to this difficult work, or have the kind of larger goal I give in the example, has nothing to do with it.  Most people work in default mode, protected by their rationales, encouraged by their successes and taking pleasure and pain where they find it.  This is the way of the world.  

I am talking specifically about those who wish to change the world.  It’s a job that demands upheaval.  The person who would attempt it has some hard work to do before they can even think about being the change they want to see in the world.

That’s all I’m saying.

Inspired to do the milder thing

Had a call just now from a friend who has her ups and downs.  She was up today, yesterday had apparently been a great day.   When she began telling the story I thought we were heading towards the delicious coldly-served revenge scenario she’d been sketching out for a while in regard to this particular person.

Instead she’d had a revelation, the person who’d hurt her was a damaged, suffering soul who was sorry for the behavior.  They’d spent a surprisingly lovely day together, spoke of and laughed about the various revenge scenarios that would have been richly deserved.  “I tell you, I feel light as a feather today, letting all that anger go,” she reported happily.

Inspired by our conversation I decided to call back the person who is the subject of A Puzzle for You and Psychic Role-play.   The puzzle was solved– be mild, direct, no need to bring up the guy’s worst, most annoying side, even when he says, with apparent conviction, that we should stay in touch.   I have nothing against staying in touch.  We had a few laughs and talked for a good while.  It was a most pleasant conversation.

Better to be mild than punitive, when the offense, in the larger scheme of life, harms only your perception of the other person.  It’s easy to reduce someone to the sum of their annoying faults, but there’s also a baby, probably worth saving, in that stinking bathwater.  

I shouldn’t really use that metaphor, though, I don’t have much use for babies.

My Wish for You

If I had the power to change one thing in the people I meet, it would be to calm the reflex to make an angry reply, or to retreat into the easy fortress of silence.

My parents, both of them very bright, nonetheless fought their whole lives.  My mother was more given to crying in frustration, but she was also good with the cutting remark when she felt it was called for.  My father, also a very sensitive person, used most of his great intelligence to keep the world around him off balance, he was prepared for combat even in his sleep.

After they died I had a realization.  Although I had not fought with either one in the years before their deaths I realized I do not want to fight with anyone any more.  I don’t want to be quick with a tough, barbed comeback.  I don’t want to argue, or win.

I want not to fight any more.  I am trying to practice mildness every day.  It is not always easy to see progress, but it is always there anyway.

That is also my wish for you, whatever version of peace feels right to you.

Howie Gravy’s Dream

Howie told me to make sure to check out the beautiful tile work in the WPA public bathroom built on the beach a block from his new house by the Pacific Ocean.  The bathroom building stood just across The Great Highway, which you could take out of town and through the eucalyptus trees and the fog, over an orange bridge to beautiful Marin County.  I don’t recall if I ever saw that tile work, but I clearly remember Howie’s enthusiasm, which was characteristic.  The man loved life.

When my mother was dying her long, slow death I had a lot of time to think about what would happen to her children after she was gone.  Her children, my sister and I, were in their fifties, but it would still be a first for them, living in the world without mother or father.  There was some terrible drama a month before my mother died, a Florida hospice trying to cover its ass hospitalized her against her will, sent her home eventually on a gurney, with her ass hanging out of her backless gown and soon covered in her own feces.   So much for death with dignity.  

It was on the first day of this unfolding treachery by Vitas Hospice in Florida, during a series of increasingly aggravating phone calls to Florida, that I had a call, not from the director of Vitas, but from an old friend I hadn’t heard from in a while.

Howie, who seemed to be in great shape and excellent spirits, and loving his new house in the Sunset, had stopped for a red light in Berkeley, driving one of his employees home after a convention.   The light changed, the passenger said “Howie, it’s green,” but Howie was gone.  Like a candle blown out by a whisper.

A month later my mother died, as peacefully as possible at Hospice by the Sea, attended by angels, with both of her children by her bed.   After her memorial service my plans began coming into focus.  I would do what I’d long dreamed of doing, find a way to get back to working with doomed– “at-risk”– kids, helping bring out their creativity and ingenuity.  

On a friend’s recommendation I saw a movie called “Saint Misbehavin'” about a hipster named Wavy Gravy, a Flower Geezer, who prays each day, to every deity and noble soul he knows of, to help him be the best Wavy Gravy he can be.  And this former Hugh Romney has done a lot of good for a lot of people.  I left the theatre inspired to be the best Eliot Widaen I can be, to become the change I want to see in the world.  There was a lot of work to be done and nobody but me to do it.

Seven or eight months later I had the workings of my plan fleshed out.  A simplified system for improvising and animating short films for the web that children would be able to do themselves.  The children would learn, problem-solve, teach each other, with a few adults on hand to listen and lend support.  The program, set in a world where people don’t, as a rule, listen, particularly to children (unless they are the doting parents, and even then, it’s no sure bet) would create a place where children would be encouraged to speak, be heard and replied to.  Feedback is crucial to any kind of human growth.

It’s like having a catch.  You throw the ball, the other person catches it, throws it back.  Few things, it seems, could be simpler, but it’s not simple enough to happen regularly.  I think that’s one of the reasons there is this mania for e-mail, instant messaging, tweeting, blogging, texting, pinging– to get the feeling of this connectedness, a primary thing missing from so many lives.  

I know an agoraphobic, bulimic with ten thousand on-line Facebook friends.  He apparently has regular contact with many of them, but when I run into him, on the rare occasions he ventures out, he clings to my company in a way that tells me his ten thousand virtual friends may not be enough.

If you go to wehearyou.net, now a 501(c)(3) charitable organization ready to do business in the world, you will see a brief sketch of the intended program.  A link from there will take you to the youTube channel, wehearyoudotnet, where you can see examples of what the kids will do, and you will notice the name Howie Gravy as the proprietor of that site.

Howie, because he listened, never spoke badly of anyone, had a madcap curiosity about everything, because he was my friend and ready for adventure, and because he died years before his time.  Gravy because of another good-hearted soul, a man who, among other things, helps bring medical services to save the eyesight of thousands in impoverished parts of Asia and other places.  Howie Gravy, as good a name as any I could think of that night, my eyes tearing up, to think that, in spite of it all, I might actually succeed in setting up and running this program that would make my mother proud.

Howie’s wife, understandably inconsolable, felt largely abandoned by their large circle of friends in the weeks and months after Howie’s death.  First life had cruelly snatched Howie away just as they were beginning to enjoy their lovely new home by the ocean, then their many friends seemed to recede, make excuses instead of visiting, listening, helping with her loss.   It was no doubt painful for the friends, as it was for all of us, most especially Howie’s wife and kids, but still.

I listened with concern on long, late-night cross-country calls to the latest details of the group of friends taking her for granted, putting her off with platitudes.  Her hurt was palpable and all I could offer was my concern, my agreement that her friends were a pretty sad bunch.  And to observe how differently Howie would have acted in any of their places.  That her friends also had a difficult and painful job, trying to console this inconsolable woman, did not make them any less sad a bunch to my mind.  Friends do what is difficult, cry with us as well as laugh, that’s why they’re friends, why real friends are so rare.

My thoughts flitter and alight on my current board of directors.  Four old friends of mine who agreed to help out, one of whom is doing all the legal work to get the organization up and running.  He emailed me the other day with the great news that the IRS had given us expedited tax exempt status.  This means we can now begin applying for grants and tax deductible contributions, it is a big step forward.  I shared the good news with the Board in an email 48 hours ago.  

What I heard from the Board reminded me of why the change I have already undergone has been so important to me, why wehearyou.net may have such a crucial role to play in troubled young lives.  I heard nothing from any of them.  

Howie teaches not to judge these busy, preoccupied people, that there’s no reason to condemn them in any way in my disappointment.  Better to move on, following the dream Howie is no longer around to help me dream, except when I dream.