To thine own self be true

“80% of life is just showing up.”–Woody Allen

Much of whatever is remembered fondly and appreciated has to do with personal sacrifices, the care shown for others, and, often, the simple fact of being present and positive for others.

Someone wants or needs you in a time of crisis. A simple thing, but the proof of your essential unselfishness and caring for others. The extremes of this type of response is well-known ranging from the newspaper stories of heroism and complete strangers jumping off bridges to help others to the simple fact of dropping whatever one is doing (including work or one’s job) to be there for the need. Simple presence itself.

I can remember my old next-door neighbor coming to look in on me when I was 6 or 7 and sick at home alone. Or the fact that my mother basically raised me for much of my childhood and teen years. She was always there regardless of my errors to protect me and see that I got a decent education, three meals a day, and money if I ever needed it for some opportunity, despite our relative poverty.

Looking back, there is a long list of good, kind people who ‘did’ for me, who were ‘for me’ who saw the better sides of me along the way. In retrospect, I suppose that’s one thing I wanted to do in my 30 year career as a teacher– ‘to do’ for teenagers. And daily, that was a bottomless giving and caring which required later on an early stepping away from teaching. I had always been there when I was really needed or someone was lost and needed help or advice.

There was much of that same love and caring in my textbook work,–imagining and creating a body of work which would help teachers and students to do their respective work. Too, presenting at conferences–much the same–being there for others, sharing information, knowledge, and whatever experiences and, possibly, wisdom.

As a parent I had occasion to do the same–teaching my own kids to read, write, organize, and appreciate music, drama, and the arts. And, of course, the myriad other parental responsibilities of being there for them on parent-teacher evenings, concerts, or other times of need–learning to ride a bike, moving days, a wedding, the birth of a grandchild, etc.

Yesterday was one of those unexpected needs and accompanying proofs, There was parental sickness necessitating a quick trip across town and then feeding and looking after my grandson. I was, as (old, but intact) person suddenly needed, jumping into action as I have long been wont to do. Simple live in-person presence all over again. Someone who could be counted on and who did a pretty good job considering my charge did not want to have lunch and also needed entertaining and some guidance for a few hours. My abilities and talents of old coming into play literally.

I was reminded yet again of The Inner Child (Wordsworth`s “Ode: Intimations on Immortality” before the shades of the prison-house close in on my grandson`s life. And my own recovered child in order to successfully relate and play with him, communicating with voice, touch, and gesture to share and uncover new possibilities in his play and learning. At his level. In his world.

Fascinating. He has mastered all but one of the activity centre activities. He now gives things back to the person who has given them–the beginnings of sharing. He now pushes his truck back to me and puts the little Fisher-Price man back in the toy car. He enjoys playing Peekaboo both ways more than ever. He enjoyed the new toy– a raccoon which he quickly learned to pull by cord across the floor.

His life and time is going by with all the daily, weekly, and monthly changes. And he has been lucky to have me and I am lucky to have him. We are there for both, for each other.

……………………………………………

Not only the matters of meaning and purpose and being needed, there is also the Toynbee matter of challenge-response. Life lasts as long as long as the former are there and one can respond to the challenges in one’s life.

“If you don’t get everything you want, think of the things you don’t get that you don’t want.”

…………………………………………..

(I wouldn’t change it a bit.)

-Life is not perfect. People are not perfect. There are many dualities (e.g. appearance and reality, good and evil, individual and society) built into life, individuals, and relationships. For this reason, there will be mixed feelings and conflicts in many situations and about people.

-Because of the multiple levels of experience (e.g., physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), there will be many more mixed feelings and conflicts. In the search for order, organization, structure, patterns, meaning and purpose, there wiil be much frustration and people will often find that there is simply too much to manage, control or manipulate to one’s satisfaction. This, in turn, leads to limits, limitations, restraints, and a lack of freedom/s. Complicating matters is the fact of change–something that is implicit in process,context, and furthered by choices and changes within the individual, situations, and others. One of the great human problems is simply change and the lack of stability or permanence and anxiety that it produces. Willy Loman’s “I’m feeling kind of temporary about myself.”

-In addition to the fact that one can never step into the same river twice is the very basic problem of communication, complicated somewhat by the influence of other languages and cultures, such things as different accents and different word meanings. More and more, we live in a Tower of Babel in which basic understanding has become a major problem. Add to that, that individuals hear what they hear and want to hear, poor listening skills, decreased empathy and sympathy, and it is no wonder that meanings and understandings have become blurred–alienating people from one another more than ever.

-Because of the way we are biologically built, we see the world mainly in terms of ourselves, and whatever common sense, information, past experience, upbringing, values and beliefs we personally have. We are each of us very unique and separate from others to begin with from birth. (Death performs the final separation.) All of this makes communication even more difficult from the get-go. To communicate clearly and fully we need to actually listen, to pay attention, to be empathetic and sympathetic, and to try to imagine who others are, what their personal experience is–where they are ‘coming from’.

-If communication breaks down, things will go awry. Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies are full of examples of this sort of thing, likewise, of how appearances and reality are not the same, and how appearances can be majorly deceptive, misleading, tragic or comic.

-If communication is flawed or imperfect, and people tend to view the world in terms of themselves, then it is not surprising there are as many separations and divorces as there are. What has been called by some as “the fundamental incompatability of men and women” as well as many researched biological and social differences suggest the odds are great against any kind of permanent happy, lasting relationship. Those that last require that the couple accept as each others as individuals, warts and all, recognizing there may be many things which cannot be changed, managed or controlled. (This is probably moreso in the cases of freer spirits, destructive personalities, or more intelligent types.)

-Relative to life experience further, much there is that is a matter of luck, timing, or opportunity. These three can cut both ways with some being luckier or not. In a lot of experience, there is little equitability or fairness across the board for the many.

-Taking care of oneself is basic and necessary. Autonomy is a quality which can be a life-saver. To be able to function on one’s own without others is basic since one’s life is one’s life and that the choices one makes apply to or reflect oneself first and foremost. In this there is a common sense as in matters of health and moderation. One needs to look after oneself and not assume that someone else will do that. Likewise, it will be hard to live life fully or to do for others and loved ones if one is run-down, ill, or stressed out.

-Though humans are mortal (cf. previous blog entry) and process being what it is, it will be necessary as some point to make big changes, to downsize, to be prepared to deal with loss of favorite people, activities, or lifestyles. These are inevitable acceptances at some point. In particular, simple mobility and ‘having enough’ to get by or live become basics later in life.

-Attitude is central to the process of one’s life and how one views his or her own life. In a real sense, bad attitude is the only disability, and whether the individual views the glass as half full or empty, relatively speaking, will determine much of what happens to people and how life and changes will register on the person. Life is what you make of it in that sense. Humor, irony, and a sense of the absurd are completely necessary to live in our world today. The human comedy, indeed. The hardest parts of the end of one’s life is when the spirit, the will to live, and one’s unique humor go. (It is all really over then.) In my experience, humor is key to living the contexts and process of life. It makes that which can be tough, awful, unbearable, or crazy tolerable and cope-able. Humor is the imaginative, creative action to keep the keep the glass half-full and then some.
-In particular, friends, mates, and family become supports, stabilizers and grounding forces.

-Nature plays an important role as backdrop and context to our many changing moods and life situations. It is certainly far more important and potentially beneficial than the myriad screens of our screen-bound culture. There is a huge difference in any case between what used to be called real life and screen life or cyberlife. This is somewhat supported by our recurring need for the live in-person presence of others, real, physical, tangible individuals who colour and support our lives.

-One related acceptance is that of human need for inner nourishment–every bit as real as our three-times-a-day-need for physical nourishment. Human beings have souls whether latent or consciously realized. There are many elements that go to feed that essence including love, nature and the arts.

-Though there are always limits and limitations on us (on our souls and spirits as well), freedom becomes an important, key experience that humans want and need to experience (some even dying for it or from a lack of it). Individual freedom on some level/s is good and necessary, but so are larger freedoms experienced through one-on-one relationships, for specific groups of people, or across nations.

-Two elements not experienced or applied enough are imagination and creativity–these are keys to freedom and love, incidentally. The imaginative, creative life or love knows few limits and experiences the glass as brim-full or brimming o’er. It is in many ways the most self-actualized, personally fullfilling, and enriching form of life that a human being can be fortunate to experience.

-Lastly, one must also finally accept (among all those things one cannot control) certain “repulsive” (Virginia Woolf’s word) qualities about human beings including ‘show’, greed, materialism, making money, blind ignorance, stupidity, manipulation and control of others. Viewing others as means rather than as ends makes countless millions mourn. The blight of advertising everywhere tells us that everything is up for sale and there for the buying. Anything not protected or bolted down is literally stolen or poached. People and things are portrayed as mere ends, something to be exploited. That too much is done, exploited, and abused for business, Mammon, The Economy (sacred buzzword), and the sake of making money or “entitled” personal profit is the central flaw and common practice of our time.

…………………………………………………………………………..

There is always much to be said, but sometimes the clear-headedness of perspective while taking stock affords the opportunity to record some personal observations and significant conclusions within this blog. In a nutshell, I would add that if one wanted to know what I thought, believed, or valued, it is mostly here in the concise summary  above of the various things I have come to accept in my life and personal experience.

I am glad daily for whatever pleasures and engagements emerge  in the course of a day. I appreciate my consciousness and happilly become myself (cf main blog title) more every day. It is a privilege to think, write, and be alive. My vague ’60s  understandings of the word “consciousness” have come to a beautiful fruition in 2012 AD. Words and language have freed me beyond belief.

What Frankl wrote of–which interesting possibility will I bring into being today?

Paraphrasing a doctor talking to an overly anxious patient:                                                We’re all going to die. Some today, some tomorrow, some later, all eventually.

……………………………………………………….

Two points which set basic context always for how one approaches life, the day, and the choices one makes in a day.

All it takes are two spinners
to collect the unsuspecting flotsam
of long summer nights.
Apart in the same yard
we cast our respective filaments–
some to control, some to set free,
some in love, some from death itself.

Silver on dark,
I braid a net to enhance my loves
you–a snare for your gossamer schemes.
I follow impulse with fiber-like freedom,
the warp of odd honesty.
You spin charm like crazy
and admire a dead collection.

Snared in your own beguiles,
you measure success
by the material bodies around you.
I, by the spirits who sing
spinning songs
beyond our entrapments.

You connive and hatch.
I invent or enhance.
My designs, your makeshift.
My resolution, your madness.
My labyrinth, your skeletons.

Keep your intrigues to yourself,
the nightly feedings that have
kept you alive and dead for so long.
Though we may die this winter,
we have chosen then
and I shan’t be catching you later.

Alone now, I spin quite free
far from your threadbare joy.
I have been victim enough
to know the Sisyphus pangs
of starting each arc over.

Honest now, I cannot spin for you
and you are too busy with
your morning morgue
to taste of mercy or honour.

Centered, I will be fine in the autumn sun.
Improved, I will continue my passion
to teach and let go.
True, I shall weave like this, alone forever.

………………………………….

A poem about limits and limitations, contrasting lives, styles, and values. ‘Never the twain shall bond.’ A credo of honestly-earned experience. (Inspired by Dead and Gone–two large spiders who once took up residence on the garden shed and Frost’s poem “Design”.)

(based on Monet’s “Terrace at Sainte-Adresse”)

I am just such a man
who sits alone on latticed chairs
of afternoon terraces
considering the bay.

I don’t much mind being
the only tourist here
who truly notes the bobbing
white boats in Newport Harbor.

Overhead, a blue sky
and breeze flap flags
that salute red flowers
hedging my forever moment.

Pairs. Today’s word.

A couple holding hands
their backs against the view.
Two sweeping gulls stitch
their betrothal from left to right.

Almost everything fits, I think.
Even my absurd shadow.

…………………………………….

Shades of Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse, the writer takes the air at Newport, R.I. recording what others do not see or appreciate. A memory of two New England fall voyages in the early ’90s. Monet’s painting crystallized the moment.

No unicorns to follow
No princess left to save
The king looks o’er his wasted lands
With one foot in the grave
True magic is impossible
When Merlin just does tricks
To entertain his captor’s whims
And a curse he can’t unfix (ah-hoom…)

chorus: O, the days have turned to months and fled
The years to centuries are wed
Generations count their dead
Seasons sew us like a thread

Webs ensnare the rainbow life
A child is borne away
To grow up in a foreign world
Another castaway
As harpies gaze at mortals’ flesh
Illusion stalks the stars
And witches bargain for the souls
Of victims from afar (ah-hoom…)

chorus: O, the days have turned to months and fled
The years to centuries are wed
Generations count their dead
Seasons sew us like a thread

Eternity is lost at sea
The tides consume the ghosts
Of lovers passing like brave ships
That never reach the coast
The lilac wood is empty now
A prince has gone to pray
The dragon sleeps within his cave
The poets dream of May (ah-hoom…)

chorus: O, the days have turned to months and fled
The years to centuries are wed
Generations count their dead
Seasons sew us like a thread

…………………………………………………

A song from one score and ten years ago whose time has come. Just in time for the American election, the return of winter, and the forthcoming Hobbit flick.

(a 1st draft)

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy [and Jill a dull girl].–from Mother Goose

Many animals play: dogs, cats, horses, otters, monkeys, dolphins. People, too, play beginning in their first year of life, once they hit the floor. This process seems to increase exponentially in the first two decades, moving through the toys and games of preschoolers, through elementary school recesses, the playing of sports, the other kinds of play fostered by art, music, and drama, and via computer and screen interactions of secondary school right into college and university.

Something there is which wants, needs, and loves to play from the simple activities of peekaboo, hide-and-seek, to some of the older bygone pastimes of marbles, skipping rope, and hula hoops. Much of that desire comes from the Inner Child that remains with us from our childhood into adulthood. The latter being a period when parents and grandparents discover all over again the joy and spontaneity of play, its pleasures, engagements, and meanings.

Some even get to play for prizes, competitions, and a living as in the case of professional athletes. Others get to play at different roles in plays, musicals, or as performers in concerts. Play permeates our lives and, indeed, the bored person in line at the bank playing Angry Birds distracts him/herself, as we all do with the play of various screen entertainment, be it on a smartphone, television, or bigger screen. Diversion and distraction similarly found by millions of others listening to their MP3s, car radios, CDs, and the like.

It seems in these distracted/distracting times, that much of what we do, in fact, is play or seek the latest gadget that will facilitate play of some kind. And yet much of adult life is awash in the seriousness of educating oneself, job training, working, careers, meetings, working for a living, working to maintain a home and family. Something people often take very seriously often for long periods of time. Until, in some cases, individuals may wake up to the seriousness, responsibilities, and heaviness of life which they have traded for, losing much of their personal freedom, leisure, and carefreeness.

In short, the missing play, inner child, and wisdom of both may get lost and forsaken, a ‘lost childhood’ and innocence described by Wordsworth in his “Ode: Intimations on Immortality” and recovered by Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. It is this freedom to play and engage enjoyably and simply that may not resurface at all if not for new love, retirement, or the joys of grandparenthood.

Life’s seriousness is guaranteed by all manner of things: divorce, illness, debt, bad luck, accidents, and so forth. At times, it may seem as if the glass looks half or mostly empty. But the return to/of the pleasures and engagements of play reveal some of the best of life– the possibilities of fun, and shared pleasure. In that, the recovery of the best and simplest of what one once was and can be again through will, attitude, and choice.

……………………………………………

There is much more to say about creativity, imagination here, and the Inner Child–an entity revealed through play and relationships….

 (for Remembrance Day, 2012)

My parents would never have reconciled, enjoyed a happy retirement, and died on the same date, one hour apart, nine years to the day.

I would never have finished grade 8, moved from the chikdhood home, or left my hometown.

I would never have gone to high school or university.

I would never have heard the Beatles, learned to play guitar, and played in several groups.

I would never have become a writer or written poems, songs, or books.

I would never have fallen in love and married.

I would never have had a family or grandchildren.

I would never have become a teacher, a nursing orderly, a letter carrier, or a film classifier.

I would never have had the many friends I have known.

I would never have taught and retired, living long enough to collect a pension.

I would never have become a serious reader, a fan of classical and jazz, a playgoer, and met many musicians I admire and look up to.

I would never have seen great art or enjoyed the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I would never have learned to drive a car or been up in an airplane or on a ferry.

I would never have lived in apartments, a condo, or owned a house.

I would never have owned my favorite movies, books, and music.

I would never have flown a kite.

I would never have owned a black miniature poodle.

I would never have become a gardener.

I would never have become a bird watcher.

I would never have seen the desert in winter or New England in the fall.

I would never have collected one issue of each of Classics Illustrated.

I never would have attended my grade 8 and high school reunions.

I would never have written about any on this on a blog in a cloud somewhere.

If Jack hadn’t proposed and Nikky accepted.

No, I never would have got this far.

………………………………………………………………..

title: the time and date the Cuban Missile Crisis ended and the world was not blown up many times over. “Jack”–J.F.K. “Nikky”–Nikita Kruschev.

We are a product of our context and are here today by the skin of our teeth. The crisis was the closest we came to doomsday as a species and planet. I am under no illusions I/everybody/everything else is here because of a fluke, luck, and the personalities, fears, and choices of two individuals. I am grateful to both men for their cooler heads and compromise that has allowed me as much as I have experienced and enjoyed thusfar.

As mind-boggling as reviewing my own luck and process has been today, I invite you to ponder how much history and things we take for granted now would not have occurred if Nikky had been ornery that fateful moment 50 years ago.

Consciousness of meaning, purpose, identity, and significant connection emerges from the information learned and expressed (or shared) via process, context, experience, words (or language), thoughts (or ideas), and choices.

………………………………………………………………………….

‘Tis the individual who is aware of and decides on the meaning, purpose, and significant connections of his/her life. Knowledge and wisdom are derived from information, but it is information derived from the above six things/sources listed.

Information is very much the stuff of our daily lives on a practical, utilitarian basis. But it is also processed in terms of personal relevance (curiosity, interest, need, or want), identity, and whatever unfolding connections.

In a sense, information is simply what we glean from life and our experience of it. What we do with that information determines the course of our lives, relationships, whichever Joseph Campbellian “blisses” we seek, and relative states of satisfaction, contentment, happiness, survival, success, self-knowledge, self-actualization, and personal fulfillment.

That “God” is, in a sense, in the details (or info) is true. Though the individual per se is the ‘determiner’ and filter of whatever information, knowledge and wisdom relative to his or her own experience/life.