What I Learned from My Dad that He Never Knew He Taught Me: We Never Know What an Experience Will Teach Us

When we’re in the middle of anything, we of course don’t know the ending. But even more, we never know what it might teach us. We just don’t know.

 

My Dad died when he was 96. For the last 4 years or so of his life, it was often painful or frustrating to be with him. Luckily, beautifully, he remained mentally sharp right until the end, but physically, it was a different story. It was painful to see his pain, and frustrating because he took so much time to do anything, from the smallest details to the largest.

 

And he wasn’t always good tempered about it, either, or good tempered with other people. He usually started very polite and upbeat. But if anything didn’t go as he thought it should, like in a restaurant with a server, he’d get annoyed or angry. Maybe he was as frustrated with his own physical slowness as I sometimes was with him, and he let it out instead of restraining it. Maybe he just didn’t have energy left for restraint.

 

He had difficulty accepting his new limitations, as many of us do as we get older. We retain so clearly this image or feeling of when we were younger. When we’re a teenager or in our 20’s, we might be more focused on the future then the past, or on images of what we dream of becoming. When we’re 50 it might be of being 20 or 30. When we’re 70, it’s of being 35 or 50, maybe. But what is it when we’re 96?

 

We carry this conflicting sense of ourselves in our mind and body, a conflict between image and reality, memories or thoughts of other times, and NOW. We think and often feel like we’re much younger than we are, until a medical issue makes itself felt; maybe we have a pain we never had when younger, or we can’t hear or see as well. Or when, like my dad, one minute we can do something seemingly like we’ve done it for twenty or more years. The next moment, it takes us so long to do even the most basic things.

 

And there were days my dad called us to say he went to the ER that morning; and I wondered if he had to do that, or was he just frightened by his aging body.

 

One time when my wife and I we were visiting him, we were awakened by a noise in the middle of the night. We got up and saw my dad getting dressed to go out. He said he was about to call an ambulance to take him to the emergency room. We asked him what was wrong and if he was in pain. I think he was feeling short of breath, but I don’t recall his exact symptoms. He said don’t worry; he’d just go to the ER on his own, and we should go back to bed.

 

I thought the ambulance unnecessary and said we would drive him; we wanted to be with him. We argued about it for a few minutes. And then he started to sound more normal. The more he talked with us, the more his symptoms seemed to subside. He paused for a moment, apparently thinking it all over. And said he felt better. We should all go back to bed.

 

And now, for me, in my later 70s, these images of my father come back to me, almost like a message. When I have back pains that make walking difficult, I see my father walking slowly with a cane or walker. I understand better how he might have felt back then. Or I have a sharp pain in my chest and have trouble breathing and can’t tell if I should go to the ER, and I remember my dad. I wonder if what I felt was being exaggerated by fear and the unknown⎼ or was I having a heart attack?

 

And I remember how our talking with him, our show of love, seemed to soothe his pain….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

Freeing Ourselves in the Infinite Right There on the Horizon: I Wish the Sky was not Cloudy All Day

Just look at the sky on a clear day. Just look. Unfortunately, I can’t do it right now. Aside from 2 minutes today, I haven’t seen a clear sky, haven’t seen an unobscured sun for over a week. Even today, it was more a glimpse of blue I saw, not the sun. Haven’t seen more than 5 or 10 hours of clear sky for a month or more. Snow falling, yes. Not big storms, not like the ones that were common years ago, but just enough to paint trees and bushes gray and white. Clouds, mist, fog, rain⎼ this we’ve had in abundance.

 

Sometimes, with the snow, there can be a sense of getting lost in it, enveloped. The whole sky seems to be falling. The sheer number of snowflakes is impossible to fathom ⎼ a mystery pushing aside my attempts to understand it and leaving me as silent as the snow itself. Fog and rain have their own beauty. But they can also create a sense of being locked in, claustrophobic, isolated. People experience SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. And now, maybe, we have CCAD, Climate Change Affective disorder.

 

A clear sky is dazzling. It’s hard to feel bad when we have that rare sunny winter day. And I think it’s not just the light that makes us feel good. It’s the composition of the sky. It’s the spaciousness. It’s so different than the earth, the trees, buildings, mountains, more like the oceans and rivers. It’s the infinite right there on the horizon waiting for us.

 

But even on sunny days, how many times do we allow ourselves to simply stop and focus on the sky? We spend so much of our time with our heads down. And we don’t realize sky is not just that blue or gray stuff way up there, but it’s that clarity right in front of our eyes. We spend our time too caught in the human-created universe. And so, we get claustrophobic. Feel clouded in, isolated. Not so aware. Maybe deprived.

 

This is true at night, too, although I wonder if more of us look up at night, at the stars and the moon, than during the daytime ⎼ if we don’t have trouble seeing the night sky through city lights or other pollution, or fog, clouds, rain, or snow. But if we can see the sky clearly and go beyond naming the stars we see or giving words to how the moon shows itself to us, the infinite sky is there for us.

 

One evening 50 or so years ago, I had a big argument with my father. I had returned from serving in the Peace Corps a few months previously, had applied and been accepted to graduate school, even had a scholarship. But I did not have a job. It would be six months before college began. And I was thinking about hitch-hiking across the country. My father was appalled. Angry. How could I waste my time like that?

 

He was a successful accountant, a survivor of the depression and World War II. He just couldn’t imagine not working all the time to build an impressive resume or to accumulate financial resources. But as soon as his anger subsided, he became very real and honest. He said that when he went out at night and looked up at the stars, he got lost. He didn’t use the word frightened, but he described it. The night brought the infinite, and maybe death, into his heart and it scared him.

 

He said that the only way he could face the night was to work. Was to have a schedule. Was to devote himself to his job.

 

I was silenced….

 

*To read the whole article, pease go to The Good Men Project.

To Enjoy Life When Young, Honor What It Means to Get Older: To Value Aging Is to Value Life, To Value Ourselves, and Human Life In All Its Stages

Yesterday, I was going to a local movie theatre and a younger person held the door for me. I was surprised. I had the same questioning response when someone gave up a seat for me on a bus or called me “Sir.” I am in my mid-seventies and in apparently good physical shape. Were these gestures just politeness? Or was it an assumption or a stereotype of the physical capabilities of those with gray hair and wrinkles?

 

Or was it respect? How do people see me? Do younger people see me in any way like I see myself? Does my age make me seem dignified? Knowledgeable? Or fragile?

 

It’s difficult to believe, to really feel and acknowledge, we’re getting old or older. In my mind, like almost everyone I know who’s near my age, I’m 30 or 40 years younger than I am. Our psyche hasn’t caught up with our body. To ourselves, on the inside, we might feel young. Vibrant. But others see us from the outside.

 

We’re always aging, and we’re always aging together. So, if we don’t value all phases of life, even being old, even being sick, we cut ourselves off from ourselves and others.

 

In the 1960s, I remember the talk about not trusting anyone over thirty. As a sixteen to twenty-year-old, I couldn’t imagine being thirty, let alone sixty. Sixty was a time of frailty. I’m constantly astonished that I’m now not anything like I once imagined a person of seventy-plus years to be.

 

And it’s not because we’re boring that older people talk so frequently about their medical conditions, pains, and doctor visits. It’s partly a way of us saying, “Can you believe I’m going through this? Me?” We might suddenly feel we’re becoming the parents we’ve lost.

 

And we don’t want to waste time faking the reality of our lives. We want to speak of meaningful things. We want to share and feel in sync with others. And one thing most of us share is pain and wanting to know how to deal with it. How to deal with life and face change and dying.

 

As we get older, we realize the deep meaning of change and impermanence, but it’s a difficult lesson and can be hard to accept. After a heart procedure, I was told I had to temporarily stop intense or long periods of exercise. So, I did. I cut back drastically, taking only moderate walks on flatter ground. That lasted one day. Then I started counting steps again, or imagining long walks up steep hills and the views I could get. Or imagining exercises I could do.

 

Imagining I could die from exercise (or at all) was just too difficult. I mean, I could feel all this life around me⎼ the crickets, birds, wind, friends⎼ things, and places I enjoy. I mean, consciousness, except for when sleep (and somewhat even then), has always been there; luckily, no pain or illness has dimmed it for me. Slowed, maybe. But how do we imagine it ceasing, permanently?

 

We all need to learn, and schools to teach, the psychology of human development and aging. Larger public schools especially are islands of youth and as such are highly artificial and developmentally problematical. Children need to be around people of various ages, who can serve as models and provide care and support. It’s so easy for them, or anyone, when so isolated from other age groups to over-value youth, the example of their peers, and of what’s new and popular. And we can carry this isolation over to our later years….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

Feeling Discombobulated: When the Universe, Time and Space, Wears Us As A Hat

It’s so easy to feel discombobulated or unbalanced. We might rely too much on one person’s advice and lose sight of ourselves, or care so much about other people’s opinions we no longer know our own. Or we worry so much about a future event we lose touch with the present. We might get sick, anxious, afraid and doubt our ability to recover or face a threat. We might try to check emails while texting or do any two tasks requiring mental focus at the same time and can’t accomplish either very well.

 

Einstein described how space and time were not separated in two but relative to each other. Each needs the other to fully describe either. As far as I can understand it, since light, or the universe is always in motion, describing the distance between any two objects ⎼ or to describe any place anywhere we need both the where and the when. The apple tree by my front door on this gray spring day is so different from what it was last January, or yesterday.

 

If we try to do the impossible and hitch ourselves intellectually or emotionally to only time, then space zooms by. We always need a where as well as a when, the context or the whole of a situation to understand any part.

 

Such is true with any duality. If we consider just one half of any such linked pair, they both disappear. Try describing above without below, a parent without a child, or separating mind from body, self from universe. Or similarly, we might lose touch with ourselves by mentally dividing now from a wished for soon or a lost then. Or when it’s raining, we make ourselves feel even wetter and more miserable by imagining we could’ve been dry.

 

Yet, when we feel chilled, for example, it can be helpful to imagine a warm mini sun above our heads⎼ and its comfort spreading, inch by inch, down through our body. Or when it’s just our hands that are cold, we can picture and feel we’re holding a smooth stone, warmed by the sun cupped in our hands. Visualizing is one thing, but wishing or blaming doesn’t warm us at all.

 

A Zen Master from the 13th Century Japan, named Daito Kokuji, wrote:

No umbrella, getting soaked,

            I’ll just use the rain as my raincoat.

 

I don’t think I can put into words exactly what this means. 13th Century Zen Master Dogen might have done what I couldn’t do, when he recorded his insight that time is not separable from being; that everything and every being is time, or “being-time.” The spring flower, this finger on the keyboard, this beating heart is time. We make a gigantic and painful mistake by thinking of time as only a phenomenon that ebbs and flows, or flies away from us, something we can divorce from beings and things. Dogen shows that when we realize this essential truth about the nature of time, the moment is absolutely alive, present, whole….

 

*The anecdote at the heart of this blog was published before by my own website and The Sunlight Press.

**To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

A Strange Illness: Reflecting on What Plagues Us and What Links Us to Everything

Since COVID, it’s clearer than ever that illness is a lot stranger than we might think. Illness isn’t just a matter of catching a bug or being a victim of a pandemic or exposure to environmental pests or pollution, or of aging⎼ although pandemics, bugs, aging, and the environment are certainly involved. So much seems to be involved.

 

When I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa, I caught a bug, or a few bugs of different kinds. And when I became ill and had to leave the village and country where I lived, I found out the people I left behind felt responsible for my illness. Not that they thought they should have taken better care of me. They believed someone in the village had caused me to get sick. For them, the germ of all illness was bad thoughts and intentions spread from one villager to another.

 

And in the U. S. many feel illness is a sign of weakness; that we or the sick person is somehow deficient, not strong enough to fight it. At work, we might denigrate someone who stays home to treat an illness ⎼ or we used to before COVID. Now, we hopefully just wish them to get well.

 

Ill can have several meanings and connotations, most are relative or comparative. To be ill is to be in an abnormal, unfavorable, undesirable state, and that we’re hurting, threatened, suffering, or have some defined condition called a disease.

 

In Buddhism, the word for suffering is Dukkha, although the translation is debated. Zen teacher Steve Hagen, in his wonderful book Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware, Right Now, Every Day, says Dukkha is in opposition to Sukkha, or satisfaction, so instead of suffering we get unsatisfactory. But more accurately, he says, imagine a bicycle wheel out of kilter. Every time the wheel spins around to the “off” spot, there’s a bounce or wobble that’s bothersome, produces pain, and makes us unhappy. Suffering is being out of kilter. Another Zen teacher, David Loy, analyzes suffering as the sense of something  missing, lacking, in ourselves, in life.

 

We can see suffering all around us. In Buddhism, the first of the four noble truths Buddha realized in his enlightenment was Dukkha, recognizing suffering, being out of kilter is just part of life. The other three are that there’s a cause of suffering, a way to let go of or cease suffering, and a path to that cessation. So, is all life tied to illness? Is suffering the same as illness? Or a response to it?

 

Part of me says, “you know what it is to be ill.” But do I? I know when I hurt and something in my body is off.  But when I try to define illness, I can get lost in the complexity. And sometimes I am ill or in pain, but I’m not suffering. The pain sort of reassures me I’m alive.

 

There are conspiracy theories, exaggerations, lies about illness, especially the pandemic⎼ but there’s also science. The mind and body, despite having separate labels are never separate; they are two words for ways to view one reality. When we feel powerless, or depressed emotionally, for example, we’re depressed physically. Likewise, when we do things like mindfulness meditation, we improve immune response, digestion, heart rate, etc. and the breadth of our awareness. We don’t suffer as much, depending not on what’s happening but on our response to it….

 

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

We Need More Creative Drama in Our Lives: Arts Education Might Not Cure Society, but It Can Help Heal Students

Even before the COVID pandemic, arts education was being cut in school districts throughout the country. This was extremely shortsighted then, even worse now.

 

Our children are suffering. According to a report by the American Psychological Association, 71% of parents said the pandemic has taken a toll on their children. Nearly half of LGBTQ+ teens and over 25% of girls have recently contemplated suicide. Many feel hopeless. Anxiety levels are skyrocketing.

 

According to MedicalNewsToday, 75% of youth feel the future is frightening. Although the American Rescue Plan passed by the Biden Administration was a great first step, providing $170 Billion for mental health services for school children, more is needed.

 

And it’s not just the pandemic, not just children missing in-person instruction. It’s our response to the pandemic in the past and the lack of a coherent cultural response now to the environmental emergency, to mass shootings, to injustice and the threat of hate, autocracy and what DJT represents. It’s the GOP attacks on education itself.

 

For many children, the arts could provide motivation to get to school and a doorway into learning itself. It can make school something more than mere work, but a place where they can come alive and see their concerns reflected in the curriculum. They can feel a sense of meaning when so much of the reality around them seems hopeless.

 

According to a study called Champions of Change, arts education can level the playing field, and improve student performance in all areas of learning. This was particularly true with students from low-income backgrounds.

 

The arts provide a more direct entrance into understanding and caring about the experience of others than any other discipline. As such, they provide one of the best ways to embed compassion into the curriculum and to empower young people to take action in all areas of life. This won’t cure society but might heal a student.

 

In 1969, I was in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and got a chance to witness a ceremony of spirit beings emerging from the jungle to dance a story about the responsibilities of adulthood. The spirits were villagers wearing carved wood masks and raffia from their neck to their feet. After the dance, spirits walked amongst us and then returned to the jungle. I didn’t realize then that I was seeing an early form of theatre.

 

In Ancient Greece, the poet Thespis was supposedly the first to have an actor step on a stage and turn choral recitation into drama. Their culture was amazingly social and public. Unlike us, who view our emotions as individual, personal, and essentially hidden, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly claim that for the Greeks, “moods were public and shared.” Emotions were visitations by gods. This was not like movies and tv today, not something to view isolated on a home computer, but shared, in a group, with each spectator knowing the lines so they could join in the recitation…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

How Does the Wind Move Us?

The wind can storm, tornado, hurricane as well as breeze. It can frighten or comfort depending on what shape it takes, or we take in our response. It can also play tricks on our hearing.

 

I was walking up a portion of our rural road that is forested on both sides, and suddenly I heard and felt a roar of sound, like thunder, or like a massive truck was headed in my direction. I looked around and there was neither a truck nor a storm. All there was to see were the trees, some bending, moving in their own way, and the sky, a clouded blue. But what a sky it was. And those trees, so stiff and yet firmly rooted. And my attention now so awakened by their thunder.

 

A road can become a funnel for sound. When I served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone,I lived in the bush off the unpaved main road. Between villages, huge trees covered the road on both sides. I could hear a truck coming from many miles away. Flagging down a lorry was the only way for anyone in the village to get a ride anywhere. So, if I was intent on going somewhere, I could go into my house, finish packing a bag, and walk leisurely out to the road in time to flag down the lorry for a ride.

 

Hearing, like smell, is a sense that spreads out on all sides. We can home in on a sound by moving our head. But unlike sight, which is mostly aimed directly in front of us, or touch and taste, hearing sweeps our entire 360-degree sensory environment.

 

Each part of the day has its own music. We hear the morning, for example, not just see it. In the spring and summer, birds, and in warm weather, cicadas welcome the rising sun. When I lived in Sierra Leone, as sunrise approached, the jungle awoke with an increasing volume and variety of sounds, culminating in a concert of insects, birds, possibly monkeys and other creatures. It felt like the earth itself was waking up, a mouth opening to speak. The dusk is another time the world clearly speaks to us. What does an eye or an ear opening and closing sound like? Is one sense a chorus for another or do different qualities of light have a specific sound component?

 

For some of us, yes. Synesthetes, for example, can see or feel sounds. A strong wind might be perceived as a specific color.  The word ‘synesthesia’ derives from the Greek meaning “to perceive together.” People who have the condition unite or switch sense modalities, hear color, or taste sound. The condition is rare, about one in 2,000 people share it. It is a biological condition, not a hallucination; it runs in families, and is more prevalent in women.

 

What is the weight of thunder? The shadow of a car horn? The taste of the words we speak?…

 

 

*To read the whole article, go to The Good Men Project.

 

What You Model, You Teach: The World Is A Miraculous Place, If Only We Can Imagine and Act to Make It So

One of the most important lessons a good teacher teaches, beyond the subject matter, is how to live a moment or a year of moments. On the first day of classes, you teach how to meet new people, how to start an endeavor, how to imagine what might be and yet be open to whatever comes. On the last day of classes, you model how to end something and how to say goodbye.

You model how to face freaky spring weather in winter and winter weather in the spring. How to face a test, sickness or other challenges. To share insights, listen to the insights of others, think deeply about questions raised, and fears and joys expressed. How to face evil with insight and violence with clarity.

In this way you create a community and you model the most important lessons one person can give to another. You model with your very life that a loving, caring community is possible and, thusly, create the seeds for a more loving and sustainable future.  Without such a model, it is nearly impossible for a young person to imagine that such a community, or relationship, is possible.

You think of teaching not as a job, not even an avocation, but just what you are doing, now, with your life. You think of each moment as an opportunity to learn, to expand your sense of self, to see others in you and you in others. All of us, in this world that we share, need this sort of gift daily.

Starting the School Day

So, before you enter the classroom, or maybe before you enter the school building, stop in a safe location, maybe near a tree or a place with a pleasing view, close your eyes, and take 2 deep breaths. You might then pick one area of your body to focus on ⎼ the area around your eyes or mouth, your shoulders or belly ⎼ and simply feel how the area expands as you breathe in, and relaxes, settles down as you breathe out.

You might imagine yourself in the classroom ⎼ calm, ready to listen to your students, emotionally strong. Then bring to mind your students. Imagine how they walk, stand, enter the classroom. If you feel tension with anyone, bring him or her to mind. Imagine how they might feel, and that they feel and think, in a manner similar to, yet different from, your own. Hold them in your heart for a moment.

Then take another breath in and out. Open your eyes and look around you, noticing how you feel….

 

To read the whole post, please go to Education That Inspires.

Dads

We never fully understand anyone. Who we are and what we think of those around us can change in unanticipated ways. But, although everything changes, some things are so deep they sway but do not shift. This is especially true with parents, who can play such a major role in our lives.

 

My Dad died seven months ago and this will be the first year in memory that I could not wish him a good father’s day in person, or on the phone. I miss him greatly. When I was a child, I knew my Dad loved me, but he was gone more often than he was home. He was off working, sometimes even on weekends. As a child of the depression, and a responsible father, financial security was one of his primary concerns. We never had too much but always what we needed.

 

When I was a teenager, we often butted heads. It was a struggle, as it often is with teenagers and their parents. He could be moody and critical, but also accepting, kind and generous. In our home, arguing was a common form of discourse, even at the kitchen table, and especially about politics. I was against the war in Vietnam. He was for it. But we did eat dinner and talk together; we could argue, and still love each other.

 

My Dad was staunchly moral. He always wanted me to do the right thing, even if that was not what I wanted to do. When I was in college, in Michigan, I attended many protests, including several against the war in Vietnam. Once, the editor of our college newspaper was arrested at a protest to secure for parents on welfare enough money to clothe their children. This led me, and about three hundred other students, to protest the arrest at the county municipal building. We, in turn, were arrested; police in riot gear dragged most of us out of the building. I watched my best friend on one side of me and a women with her daughter on the other being dragged out, but I was mysteriously left to walk out on my own. Snipers on the roofs of neighboring buildings shadowed the demonstration.

 

A picture of me leaving the building appeared in Life Magazine, and my Dad saw the photo before I could tell him about it. He got so angry he called and disinherited me. Two weeks later, he called again. He had researched the incident and decided I was right. He even said I had acted courageously.

 

That’s my Dad. He thought about the situation and changed his mind. He also changed his mind about the war in Vietnam and joined an organization of businessmen against it. He remained highly informed and thoughtful about politics for the rest of his life. During the disputes and discussions about healthcare over the last twenty years, my father presented the clearest analysis I ever heard of the waste in our health care system and the money that would be saved by a single payer system.

 

He lived a good life. He and my Mom, who he loved deeply, would often take trips to other countries. They would usually travel with friends or relatives. Several years after my Mom passed away, when he was 91 years old, he flew by himself to Athens, Greece, to meet his new girlfriend and take a cruise back to the US.

 

He had been a successful accountant and CFO of a large corporation, and up to the last year of his life, when he was closing in on 96 years of age, he continued to do his own tax returns. In fact, he felt a little sheepish about not doing them. The only reason he stopped, he said, was because he had moved to a new state. The laws were very different than those he knew, and he didn’t feel like extensively studying the tax codes. What stood out most from his work were the people he met and got to know. He was so touched that even 16 years after he finally retired, people he worked with still called and came to visit.

 

In June, 1969, I entered the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, West Africa. My parents didn’t really want me to be there. They were afraid of what might happen to me but recognized and supported my reasons for going. In late November, I was escorted from the country back to Washington, D. C. with a serious but not contagious illness. I was in no condition and didn’t have the time to inform anyone about what was happening.

 

After only a day or two, I insisted on returning to my parent’s home in Queens, New York, to surprise them. A friend drove me. It was late afternoon, so no one was there when I arrived. I didn’t have the key, but was able to get it from Selma, a neighbor. She insisted I call my mother right away, before she left work, so I wouldn’t shock her too deeply when she saw me. We weren’t able to find my Dad; no cell phones back then.

 

When my Dad came home, he parked the car in the driveway and went to the back door to enter the house. I got to the door first and opened it from the inside. When he saw me, he froze in obvious disbelief. “Is that you?” he said. “Yes,” I replied. My very rational Dad didn’t know what to do. He turned away and started to walk back to the car. Then he turned back. “Are you staying?’ “Yes.” “Good.” And he turned away again. It took him a few minutes to let me see his face and enter the house. I don’t think he wanted me to see him crying.

 

What remained throughout all these years was a love that I felt but didn’t always understand. My Dad loved absolutely. In our last real conversation, on the day before he went into the semi-coma that preceded his death, he was worried about how my brother and I would be when he was gone. He said to me, “You know, a father never stops worrying about his children.”

 

The world would be a much better place if more people could grow up with such absolute love and support. Who would I have been if I hadn’t had him as a Dad? He taught me that in the face of death, the only thing that helps is acting with love. He died at 96.5 years old.