Category Archives: writing

Love without right action

Love without right action is as useless as an expensive friendship card with a handwritten note expressing how important your love is.

Right action reassures those we love of our intentions. We take immediate steps when we see they’re hurt, to comfort them, to protect them.

Love that can’t listen patiently but jumps in to interrupt and object, defensive, deflecting, anticipating hurt, is not the kind of love that can heal anybody’s hurt.

You can declare your love with a torrent of heartfelt words, and with complete sincerity, but only love you demonstrate by compassionate action is worth more than an expensive Hallmark card and an impressively pricey token made of gold.

Note to a hurt friend who will not talk

Two old friends come to a painful impasse, each blaming the other for causing the hurt and extending their deepening  estrangement.  Everything that happens between them afterwards seems to confirm their view that the other person is a hurtful asshole, probably hurtful beyond redemption.   

This pain between them, and the corrosive blame they place on each other, will resolve either into eternal silence, that resolute death during life, or they can learn things they don’t really know how to do regarding friendship:  how to make amends, how to forgive, how to heal after an angry, traumatizing conflict.   

These lessons must be learned by both of them before there is any hope of fixing their mortally wounded friendship.  Silence, whatever comfort one may take in sheltering in it, may not be the best way to learn these difficult arts.

The world at war

We sometimes find ourselves in the middle of wars we don’t understand.  We can be under siege long before we even find out about the attempt to starve us into surrender.  Sometimes surrender is not enough, only by offering our lives will the blood debt be settled, if the enemy is implacable enough.  This has been going on for thousands of years, among Wise Apes, homo sapiens. 

At one time, within tribes, there were wise elders you could go to when you found yourself under attack by someone intent on destroying your good name and erasing you from society.  These elders would listen carefully, ask questions, pose other questions and broker peace, except when peace was impossible, in which case they’d render a judgment.   If you lyingly assassinated a fellow tribe member’s reputation you would be censured by the tribe, or sometimes sent packing.

Today we have a different system.  Nowadays we must rely on self-help.  Sometimes, we are told, we just have to suck it up if we find ourselves on the wrong end of somebody’s undying need to prevail, no matter what.   We either pretend everything is fine, or so much the worse for us if we still have the childish need to remain in pain, just because we were treated roughly, unfairly and told to suck it up and stop being a fucking baby.

Mel Brooks’s timeless truth about empathy comes to mind, when I think about others on the outskirts of the war, quietly taking the side of the righteous aggressor by taking no side:   Tragedy is when I break my fingernail.  Comedy is when you fall into a manhole and die. 

I can’t stop communicating

Some people, when they are hurt and in turmoil, keep themselves occupied every minute of the day, programming even their breaks so as not to allow time to reflect.   Reflecting means only more hurt and turmoil to this kind of person, so it makes sense to squeeze in an hour of strenuous exercise in between work and a social evening, and then whatever is next on the program.

In contrast, there are people like me.  If something is torturing me, I cannot stop my thoughts until I’ve worked out some way to make the pain stop.  The process involves communicating, with myself and others, to understand as much as I can about my predicament.   This is done by thinking, writing, reviewing and running it by people I respect.  It involves getting advice, feedback and insight from others, unless there is a privacy issue involving another person’s shame or anger that prevents me from sharing it with someone who knows them.  In that case I seek out someone who doesn’t know the party, and run it by them.  It is a very helpful, healing process, I find.  You hear things you never thought of, you see things from other perspectives, you learn new things, you get other things confirmed.  Importantly, you listen to things you may not want to hear sometimes.   Those things are sometimes the most helpful.   All of these things are the result of communication.

The thing I‘ve never been able to do is keep myself so busy, so programmed, that I don’t have time to focus on what is eating me from the inside.   I had a friend I’ve known since we were eight.  The guy loved me and told me frequently that I was his very best friend, that there was nobody else like me in his life.  I had fond feelings for him, having known him since we were boys.  His impulse to bend the truth when in a tight spot never bothered me, because I knew he couldn’t help it and his little untruths never unduly affected me.    Like his mother, who I know well (and God bless her sharpness at 95), he always runs what my father used to describe, referring to the mother’s frantic life, as a “full flight pattern”.  He meant that since so many planes were constantly taking off and landing in her mental airport it was impossible to concentrate on any one flight for more than a moment.

A full flight pattern prevents being present, you can’t be present, it’s too dangerous, all the planes will start to crash, thousands will be killed, it will instantly become an international scandal and all the fault of the distracted flight controller.

I called this guy a few months back, after a long period of estrangement.  Told him a few revelations I’d had since we last spoke three years earlier.  He told me I’d never left his life, that, odd though it might sound, he sees me in dreams quite regularly.  It’s truly like I never left.  He was happy to hear from me and promised to tell me his revelations next time we spoke.  It took a while.  About five or six weeks later, when he had an opening in his schedule, I asked him to tell me about his new revelations.

“I have no idea what those revelations could have been,” he said, the 6:02 coming in perilously close to the 5:57, with the 6:05 already on a dangerous trajectory.

A lie is more powerful than the truth, if needed

When someone is desperate, they will cling to a lie with the religious fervor of a martyred saint.   The lie, you see, is their rock and their foundation.  Without it, they are humiliated.  The lie protects their good name, their true intentions, their very value as human beings.  The lie becomes essential to their integrity and they will defend it as though their life depends on it.

Take the example of a woman married to a criminal.  She has been shocked and angered over and over by his criminal acts and the lies he told her to conceal them from her.  It is humiliating to her that he has never acknowledged being wrong — every “crime” he ever did was for her sake —  or asked for her forgiveness, even when his crimes, and the lies surrounding them, destroyed her dreams at the moment they were about to come true.  

Think about this scenario for a second.  If she ever said aloud what I just wrote above, how could she live with herself?  She couldn’t.  So… the lie!  It’s not her husband, it’s her fucking brother the self-righteous, unforgiving prick who is judging and torturing her entire family, always a threat to blow the lid off decades of carefully guarded shame.   He can’t keep anything secret, his mouth is an open faucet, he doesn’t care who he hurts with his pernicious moral uprightness.   He self-righteously hides behind “truth” when all he wants is to hurt people and feel virtuous being a sadistic piece of shit.

How do the sister and brother retain a relationship in this hostile situation?  They talk about books, movies, a little celebrity gossip, dogs, some commiserating about the political cesspool we are all bobbing in, their health.  Everything else, everything personal and important, is off the table.  The lie that her brother is a liar remains undisturbed. 

The brother tolerates this the best he can, which often is not very well.  His name is assassinated, since he is a threat to the children if he starts fucking blabbing and telling his precious “truth” to the kids.  The kids must be kept away from a destructive agenda-driven fuck like that. 

On the other hand, the brother must remain eternally patient, hopeful and generous.  If he ever shows frustration, or, god forbid, anger, he has shown his hand, proved the case against him and that’s the ballgame, ladies and gentlemen.

And so it goes.  You could say that a lie, if desperately needed, is more powerful than the truth.

Making amends

Making amends is trying to fix something that’s broken. If a guest’s bone gets broken, as a result of you accidentally placing a stumbling block in a place that resulted in a fall and broken bone, making amends might be contritely driving the person to the hospital to have the broken bone treated. It might be helping the person while they are hindered by the broken bone. It should include assuring the person that you will do your very best to make sure never to put a dangerous obstacle where they can trip over it and get hurt.

It doesn’t seem to me that making amends with somebody you have hurt is all that hard. Unless you consider that you must take responsibility for the pain you caused, which makes you vulnerable, which puts you at risk of being rejected by the person you are trying to make amends with. Making yourself vulnerable is the price of trying to make amends. It is also the price of meaningful friendship.

I understand it may seem a fearful price to some, but it is hard for me to understand how to retain a facade of friendship with a person who is incapable of acknowledging the pain they cause. Fake friendship with people I can no longer trust is not for me.

It is particularly hard to do during this time of year when we Jews are instructed to make amends, to speak the truth, to move beyond lies that people tell to make themselves feel righteous, instead of ashamed, when they are wrong and continue to act badly.

I understand that some people are weak, damaged and desperate to be right at any cost. If the cost is my friendship, so be it, I suppose. As long as they refrain from assassinating my good name among mutual friends. The inability to behave with emotional maturity confers no right to kill.

כל עכבה לטובה

Every pause is for the best.

This was written on a pocket-sized card in a small meticulous hand by the paternal grandfather of an old friend of mine. He’d write down these aphorisms to remind himself of things that he wanted to remember.

One thing was this phrase. If you are upset and thinking about doing something decisive, a bit more delay is rarely a bad idea. If you are thinking of doing something that will hurt somebody, and you hesitate, that little mercy is a good in itself.

I suppose it’s a good thing to remind yourself of once in awhile, if you don’t know what to do, if you’re in turmoil, if you feel hurt, in a tight spot, it’s not a bad idea to hesitate rather than take an action or say words that you might not be able to take back.

What you can tolerate will depend

We have different thresholds for what kind of treatment we can tolerate from others. One person’s tough, challenging, funny wise-ass is another person’s humorless abuser sometimes. It all depends on our personality, our experience, our other relationships and what we feel comfortable with.

To some people periodic displays of intense anger are fine, providing the person quickly calms down and becomes reasonable. It’s not hard to understand or identify with anger, we are all subject to it from time to time. We are able to tolerate different levels, displays and durations of anger, depending on the circumstances and our tolerances.

Pirkey Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, is found in the back of many Jewish prayer books like the ones that are usually at the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs I’ve been forced to sit through over the years. So as the congregation is rising and being seated, (please rise, please be seated, please rise), and praying in unison, I am scanning Ethics of the Fathers, the whole short book is in there, after all of the prayer services. I used to read Pirkey Avot looking for little bits of eternal wisdom from ancient times. There’s one about anger I’ve been greatly influenced by. It describes the four kinds of temperaments with a beautiful, clean logic.

There are four kinds of temperaments when it comes to anger and peace.

One type of person is quick to anger but quick to be pacified. His loss is offset by his gain.

Another type is slow to anger but slow to be pacified. His virtue is offset by his deficit.

Another type is slow to anger and quick to forgive. This is a virtuous person.

The fourth temperament is quick to anger and slow to forgive. This type is evil.

I always thought the Father’s (whoever the hell they were) laid that out profoundly and indisputably. My cousin Eli was quick to anger, and I made him angry many times. But because he loved me he was also very quick to be placated and we would soon move on from the thing he was so angry about a minute before. It was a beautiful thing about our relationship.

My mother had the same kind of relationship with him before I did. She would fight with Eli hour after hour, day after day and when they said goodbye they hugged and kissed and had big smiles on their faces and couldn’t wait to do it all again soon. It was beautiful to see.

If Eli didn’t like you he had no qualms about making a face, turning away and closing a door on you, or, if needed, making a great display of his purple faced anger, which was terrifying to see. As a young man he had no hesitation to punch somebody in the face, if it came to it.

But in spite of his fierceness, his face deadly as a springing jaguar’s, teeth ready to bite, foam on his lips, his face purple, his white hair trembling on top of his head, neither my mother nor later I, ever backed down from his terrifying displays of dominance.

We would say “come on Eli, you have to be honest, if your daughter said that to you you would be pretty pissed off too.” And Eli would rage a bit more, give a few last groans and cries and flashes of teeth, but then he would say “fine, but I have to tell you what happened after that” and he’d continue until the next fight.

After a few fights it was time to go get dinner, take a long time-out, to talk about other things, eat and have coffee in peace and drive back to his place. Only once we were settled comfortably back in our chairs would we resume the fights, which would sometimes go on until late in the night. Every time I left Eli we hugged and kissed and agreed to talk soon and make plans for the next time.

Eli didn’t have that kind of relationship with any of his estranged children or grandchildren. Or really anybody besides my mother, that I knew of. I certainly didn’t have that relationship with my father or mother, I mean we fought all the time but there was none of that hugging and kissing and laughing at the end of it. I guess I was lucky to know somebody like Eli, who could be infuriating, and furious, but was at the same time very easy to get along with.

Strange are the blessings and curses of this life.

A happy, healthy, sweet 5783

The first day of 5783, the new Jewish year, dawns after a night of plentiful rain.   The garden is looking very lush after its long, refreshing drink.  Tomorrow we join a group of old friends for lunch and a walk to the river to symbolically throw away our sins, our bad thoughts, our hurtful deeds, the times we gave in to our baser impulses.  Thoughts percolate in my head as every year at this time, maybe more so today than most years.

Today is the first of the Ten Days of Repentance, a traditional time of introspection for Jews, a period when we are supposed to make amends, let go of hurt and anger and repay debts.  In my experience, few people have much use for introspection.  It’s not hard to understand why.  It makes people feel like shit to spend too much time thinking about their real motivations, confronting the demons that make them act with (justifiable) brutality toward others.  We would rather feel right, just and loving than wrong, unfair and punitive.  If you think I’m wrong, unfair and punitive I’ll show you who’s fucking wrong, unfair and punitive!

Some people pray at this time of year.  I’m with Ricky Gervais on this: pray, by all means, it’s fine, but do not cancel the chemotherapy.  Prayer is between you and God, if you have that kind of relationship, have a deep, prayerful talk with your Maker.  Not for me, though.  Prayer does nothing for me.  If I talk to God at all it’s as an equal, made in the All-Merciful’s image, as we all are.

The arrogance of humans can be seen in a hundred variations, in every direction.  If you are ashamed, crush whoever makes you feel ashamed.  If you have hurt somebody, it’s their fucking fault for being an asshole.  If you are caught in a criminal act, blame others, wail about being persecuted by ruthlessly unfair enemies.  

Religion can ordain certain actions, but it cannot cause a greater truth to enter the heart unless people allow it to.  We surrender our own will to a higher will and feel righteous doing so, some of us.  Others try to live a life of fairness, expecting no more of others than we ourselves are capable of.  Then we will have a war, where both sides fervently believe God has our backs during the righteous slaughter.  Pathetic earthlings.

Best to you all for a happy, healthy, sweet 5783.  May it be much better, in every way, than 5782.