Halfway, He Said With A Smile

I am going to do yoga tonight, which means I will embarrass myself once again in front of a few svelte twenty-thirtysomethings as they gracefully lift themselves, like mere feathers on a breeze, off the floor while barely standing on one athletically-bent leg, while I collapse in a sweaty pile, panting, and cursing years of carelessly-ingested cheesecake and roast beef. Apparently I have not yet aged sufficiently to understand that I will never be young again, and am willing to spend a few shekels to at least partially further harbor that illusion. Any cursory inspection of my physical being will tell you otherwise, of course, but it is either the curse or privilege of Baby-Boomers in the early part of the 21st century to believe, against all reason and evidence to the contrary, that they will live forever. As such, I'm trying to be consistent with my culture and follow in lockstep, blinders firmly in place, as we march like lemmings to the onrushing Cliff humming Dylan's "Forever Young." Happy idiots, indeed, as we struggle for the legal tender.

At 58 years old, I see things through different lenses. 3X readers, to be precise, but that’s not what I mean. My second grandson was born a couple of years ago to my eldest son and his wife… So now, there are amongst us two healthy, sweet-tempered little boys whose long fingers no doubt presage world-class piano or guitar players, or possibly, as my son insists, professional quarterbacks. I shall naturally surrender this outcome to the Creator and my son’s desire to sire his very own NFL line-up.

For me, however, lying on a smelly, black rubber yoga mat, watching an instructor bend herself into a pretzel (I, on the other hand, am more reminiscent of soggy foccacia bread), for me, the view is different. The sight of my son holding his son is an undimming promise of continuance, of enormous blessing from what, for lack of a better word, I call God. It's a gentle kiss of love and forgiveness that whispers tantilizingly of future years, new generations of babies with names I’ll never know, all running off, laughing, in a thousand million directions, just barely within earshot, like an old memory after too much wine, of lives yet unlived but still there, held like small yellow flowers in the eager grasp of a young hand. My father’s face suddenly swims into view, lined and saddened by years of unspoken grief, his life snatched away prematurely by alcohol, a vibrant personality changed and twisted by chemistry, his lion’s heart bowed by disappointment, his gentle warrior’s spirit weakened by the cruelty of too many betrayals. Yet, he says quietly, here is hope. Here, once again, is love. Why, my son, do you weep?

Suddenly, I cannot see. There are angels everywhere.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

The Bush administration elevated the art of Orwellian "Newspeak" to new heights... or depths. Rather than actually deal with anything, we merely redefined our issues into less politically-charged terms, spinning our language so that hunger became very low food security, domestic spying became terrorist surveillance, wholesale theft of our rights was called the Patriot Act, and imperial adventurism was called, without a hint of irony, the War On Terror. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and almost 5,000 Americans have killed in a war based on deliberately falsified information, trumped-up charges of Weapons of Mass Destruction that insiders knew never existed. The national debt has swelled trillions dollars in only a few years, with most of that going to a few wealthy Republicans in the defense and finance industries, while the middle-class is left to pay for this fiscal debacle - one of the largest single transfers of wealth in the history of humankind. The professional paranoia crowd kept us stupid and afraid by blaring the word "terror" every chance they got, and at the same time we were told that we were safer than we ever were, so shut up and shop. Our educational system has been deliberately degraded by a wealthy plutocracy that wants us capable of working, but not capable of independent thought - critical thinking is not a component of an educational model that teaches to the test. A university education, which has the potential to teach people how to think, is now all but out of reach of reach for the common folk unless they're willing to assume crushing debt, and credit laws are tightened to the point of ensuring the non-wealthy a life of fiscal serfdom.

The recent election put a bit of hope back in the picture, but remaining skeptical is a healthy point of view. Big corporations still own a good chunk of Congress, and their agenda will always remain the same. Ironically, an old Cold War-era phrase popular with the right wing now comes to mind..."Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." Never has it been more true than today.

Getting There is Half the Fun

I am noticing a disturbing trend in our society, one that has, I suspect, unintended consequences in molding our perspectives. I’m speaking here of the current obsession with ‘results,’ the idea that if something doesn’t produce quantifiable results, it is somehow not worth the effort. These results need to be expressed with numbers, it seems, so that a graph or bar chart be constructed to compare results with somebody else’s results, which will then inevitably lead to conclusions about who ‘won’ and who ‘lost.’

In some instances, of course, results are needed. If you are producing widgets, and you need to produce 1,000 widgets an hour to make a profit, then your production process had better crank out at least 1,000+ widgets/hour or the business will eventually fail.

Life, however, is not a business, and those that attempt to recast the meaning of human existence into what are essentially economic terms are, I think, the true lost souls of our times. It is comforting, when faced with the myriad uncertainties of being alive, to try to find certain benchmarks, certain criteria, by which one can measure things. One has so much in the bank, or makes so much per month, or has a house with so many square feet. To some, these are the benchmarks of what is called ‘success,’ an illusive, poorly-defined term meant to convey an aura of credibility and status upon the person referred as such. In terms of results, what does that mean?

Upon examination, however, a human life is, in fact, not so easily quantifiable, and in our rush to attain ‘results’ we can measure and compare to others to determine the winners and losers (for what end, one may ask), we have lost sight of the value of the journey, the process of living, that teaches us the lessons that gives us patience, wisdom, tolerance, and character. Education isn’t worthwhile because it produces x-hundred thousand children a year who can all read at such-and-such a level, solve these kinds of math problems, and score that level on a standardized test. For some children, finding their own way around on the bus system is a mark of success. For some, it’s being able to simply stand without help. For others, it’s saying “No,” to peer pressure, addiction, and hopelessness, and yes, for others, it’s the PhD and the beemer. The process of education, the journey through learning, has become side-tracked into seeking measurable results – test scores – at the expense of the joy of knowledge, the seduction of deep inquiry, the pleasure, excitement and challenge that seeking the truth brings. Yes, remember truth, from the old books? The term that fired the souls of human beings since time began, and urged our adventurous ancestors out of their trees and caves and prodded them to migrate over the ridge, the mountains, or the seas to see if life was better over there? We are, by nature, curious beings who wish to know about this world we live in, and our willingness to seek, experiment, question, invent, and look beyond is one of our greatest strengths. It must therefore follow that our recent propensity towards narrowness of societal vision, subjugation of basic human values to material desire, and submersion of almost all that elevate our species into the venal is not a healthy, sustainable trend, and needs to be reversed before we forget that it is our higher nature that has brought us even this far.