What It Means to be an American with Help from Robert F. Kennedy, University of Kansas 1968

Timeless words about values and what it is to be American – worth a read on the eve of our Nation’s 239th birthday…

“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.  Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product – if we judge the United States of America by that – that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.  It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.  It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.  It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.  It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.  Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.  And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

RFK, Address to University of Kansas,  March 18, 1968

So Freud was walking down the street when he saw a banana peel….

Freud and the Banana

The other morning I had a Freudian slip that got me thinking a few funny thoughts about my Main Man of Neuroses.  As you might gather from this blog, I have a whole Hell of a Lot of random thoughts, including thinking up the beginnings to jokes- a HUGE time sink.  As I’m sure you’ve noticed in jokes as in life, the setups come fast and easy – it’s the punchlines that are always the killer to create.  When a setup does come to me, I typically go to Google Images and type in my thought.  Inevitably someone – like the guy behind the above t-shirt image (That Web Design Guy)  has already produced some similar take on the idea that is amusing enough to satisfy.  It’s a nice quick way to process the thought so that I can move on with the important stuff in life, like penning a grocery list or picking up the dog poop, rather than sitting around for the many hours it may take to flesh out the joke.

So, back to the morning’s slip – because let’s face it, aren’t Freudian slips the ultimate punchlines?  As the blip occurred, I was thinking to myself, “Already? It’s only 7:42 AM and already I’m doing this?” The trigger?  A new post on Facebook from a Professor friend, Jeff Nunokowa. (*More on Jeff below) Well,  Jeff was making the point that in his teaching, much of what he accomplishes is to help his students “fill in their blanks. ” But, as a mother of a son soon to start the college process, I brought a certain listening to this post and instead of their blanks, I read it as saying that he helped kids, “fill in their banks.” A Sigmund moment if ever there were one.  Oh, the ever-present subconscious worry of a parent breaks through again.  At 50, if there is one thing that I’ve figured out, it’s that life plays out over a lonnnnngggg time.  This realization has led to my biggest concern: Have I done enough to help my children sustain their efforts, or have I been helping them train for one isolated sprint. High school to college is of course a very public sprint — one that we cannot ignore.  However, as anyone out there knows who has ever run a 10K or a marathon, sprinting only takes you so far.  Doing well over longer distances requires a whole different set of mental and physical skills (managing BOREDOM being one of them – more on that topic later this week.)  Aware of the worry behind my mis-reading, I took consolation in my breeding retriever who does not even seem to recognize her puppies when she meets them again only weeks after they’ve left the whelping box. And I paused to ask myself, are robins at all worried when their hatchlings fledge? Certainly we have all heard that the lilies of the field don’t share our concerns.  Maybe I just need to plant more lilies.

Lilies of the field

* You can read about Jeff Nunokowa in Fast Company and then buy his new and acclaimed book, entitled: Note Book* with its cornucopia of literary life lessons and philosophical insights.

Grief’s Shadow

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow…or reflection… I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

C.S. Lewis

Grief separates – like a great gate of heaviness that comes down and forces us from them.  I have vivid memories of sitting in a limousine looking out, but unable to savor the bluest of sky and the whitest of clouds on a perfect mid-week morning. What cruel fate that this was my first limousine ride – an event that should be saved for a prom or a wedding – some joyous occasion.  I remember thinking that we should banish the limousine.  Mourners should request a Chevy Malibu or Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme when we accompany the dead – in a tip of the hat to that deadened feeling inside — a plain, sensible, somewhat disappointing model is a far more fitting ride for the bereaved.

What you do notice is how unfair it is that all the others on the road are hastening elsewhere: to gather groceries, or in a rush, zooming by on their way to pick up a child from the nursery school around the corner.  Meanwhile you sit frozen, like a captive zoo creature, looking out forlornly and hoping they will take just a moment from their mundane day to recognize from their view of a hearse that they are passing fellow humans who must be in grief. There is a magnificent distance from us to them. They are but strangers passing totally unaware of the profound hole that the bereaved find themselves in.  At least in small towns in the South, people still stop respectfully and avert their gaze when a funeral cortège passes through.

Wellesley has had its fair share of grief this spring.  So, I invite you to choose a time where you can wait idly for a moment or two in the next couple of days –  maybe just slow down and join me in pulling over onto the side – be it while running an errand or in the driveway – just a pause and a thought about our neighbors’ and friends’ gates of grief.  It is a simple and reflective way to honor that magnificent distance we know our neighboring grievers are feeling.

Why Caves?

Entombment of Jesus, Mosaic, Church of Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem

Someone asked me recently: why caves?    Before starting this blog, I spent some significant time reflecting on imagery that would hold up over time and give me ample literary, artistic and philosophical territory to explore.  Caves kept coming up.   Why would the cave as metaphor hold my attention?  Well, for one, caves are the source of endless material in our modern culture. They are after all where most of us think we began.  Caves are depicted as a source of transformation – from the solemn image of the cave as a conduit for Jesus between His descending and ascending to the pop image of the cave as the safe-house for the quick change antics of Bruce Wayne as he transforms from citizen to Batman and back again. 

DC04

Caves are the source of earth-shattering discoveries: from the cryptic paintings of the hunt at Lascaux to the writings that the Gnostic Christians produced during the 1st to 4th Centuries that were found quite recently in a series of Egyptian caves.  Caves are the place of mystics.  They are where bears and other animals go to retreat and hibernate.   Let’s face it, caves are also kind of creepy.  Much as in life, one often cannot see around the twists and turns of the cave – it is a place where you never quite know what you may find next.  Caves serve as a common metaphor for the locality we return to in order to connect with the after-world; all the while seeking strength to tough it out in the current life we’ve got.  Caves inspire and shock – they are a conduit to our deeper selves and our collective past.  As such, caves seem to work quite nicely as the platform for midlife musings.