I'm Back

After almost two years of being away from this blog, I'm back. 

During my time away, mostly during Covid, I kept my head down writing. I have now three manuscripts that I believe are ready to send to a publisher.  So I hope to get into the swing of publishing and promoting my work once again. 

I have also during the last year taken three long trips: 

1. Five weeks exploring Egypt and Jordan,

2. Six weeks trekking across Northern Spain for the third time, and then down into Portugal to Lisbon,

3. Ten weeks in Southeast Asia--Singapore, Malasia, Thailand.

It was exciting for me to visit these places while there are still relatively few tourists traveling due to the pandemic. I hope to be posting pictures and descriptions of my travels in the coming weeks. 

2/15/21: From Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage

“The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek…. It is a man-making religion that we want. . . . Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong . . . For the next fifty years. . . . Let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, Everywhere His ears; He covers everything. . . . The first of all worships is the worship of those all around us. . . . He alone serves God who serves all other beings.”  --Vivekananada  

4/10/20: Martin Luther and the Reformation

I’ve been reading Durant’s Story of Civilization V1, The Reformation. It seems there were two key figures that launched the Reformation in Germany, Luther and Erasmus. Although I admire Erasmus much more than Luther, in philosophy and approach, I must admit I found the following summation of Luther both enlightening and a beautiful piece of writing. 

Those years were among the most momentous in history, and Luther had been their strident and dominant voice. His faults were many. He lacked appreciation of the historic role that the Church had played in civilizing northern Europe, lacked understanding of mankind’s hunger for symbolic and consolatory myths, lacked the charity to deal justly with his Catholic or Protestant foes. He freed his followers from an infallible pope, but subjected them to an infallible book; and it has been easier to change the popes than the book. He retained the most cruel and incredible dogmas of medieval religion, while allowing almost all its beauty to be stamped out in its legends and its art, and bequeathed to Germany a Christianity no truer than the old one, far less joyous and comforting, only more honest in its teaching and personnel. He became almost as intolerant as the Inquisition, but his words were harsher than his deeds. He was guilty of the most vituperative writing in the history of literature. He taught Germany the theological hatred that incarnadined its soil until a hundred years after his death. 

And yet his faults were his success. He was a man of war because the situation seemed to demand war, because the problems he attacked had for centuries resisted all the methods of peace. His whole life was a battle—against the sense of guilt, against the Devil, the Pope, the Emperor, Zwingli, even against the friends who would have compromised his revolt into a gentlemanly protest politely heard and carefully forgotten. What could a milder man have done against such handicaps and powers? No man of philosophic breadth, no scientific mind restricting belief to the evidence, no genial nature making generous allowances for the enemy, would have flung down so world-shaking a challenge, or would have marched so resolutely, as if in blinders, to his goal. If his predestinarian theology was as repugnant to reason and human kindness as any myth or miracle in the medieval faith, it was by this passionate irrationality that it moved the hearts of men. It is hope and terror that make men pray, not the evidence of things seen. 

It remains that with the blows of his rude fist he smashed the cake of custom, the shell of authority, that had blocked the movement of the European mind. If we judge greatness by influence—which is the least subjective test that we can use—we may rank Luther with Copernicus, Voltaire, and Darwin as the most powerful personalities in the modern world. More has been written about him than about any other modern man except Shakespeare and Napoleon. His influence on philosophy was tardy and indirect; it moved the fideism of Kant, the nationalism of Fichte, the voluntarism of Schopenhauer, the Hegelian surrender of the soul to the state. His influence on German literature and speech was as decisive and pervasive as that of the King James Bible on language and letters in England. No other German is so frequently or so fondly quoted. Along with Carlstadt and others, he affected the moral life and institutions of Western man by breaking away from clerical celibacy, and pouring into secular life the energies that had been diverted to monastic asceticism, idleness, or piety. His influence lessened as it spread; it was immense in Scandinavia, transitory in France, superseded by Calvin’s in Scotland, England, and America. But in German it was supreme; no other thinker or writer cut so deep a mark in German history, and his countrymen loved him no less because he was the most German German of them all. 

Thoughts from The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

“The only mythology that is valid today is the mythology of the planet—and we don’t have such a mythology. The closest thing I know to a planetary mythology is Buddhism, which sees all beings as Buddha beings. The only problem is to come to the recognition of that. There is nothing to do.  The task is only to know what is, and then to act in relation to the brotherhood of all of these beings.”

The USA was the first nation to be founded on the basis of reason, by eighteenth-century deists who believed in a God but not the bible. They did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God. The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God. Reason puts you in touch with God. Consequently, for these men, there is no special revelation anywhere, and none is needed, because the mind of man cleared of its fallibilities is sufficiently capable of the knowledge of God. All people in the world are thus capable because all people in the world are capable of reason. And because all men are capable of reason, everybody’s mind is capable of true knowledge, you don’t have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

Notes from Destination Earth: A New Philosophy of Travel by Nicos Hadjicostis

While preparing for my five-week trip to South America, I've taken some time to review my notes from Nicos Hadjicostis's wonderful book on traveling:

-As Sri Aurobindo says, there is a universal principle at work by which the difficulties one has to solve are proportionate to the things one must learn. The rarer and novel the difficulties, the more precious and long-lasting the gifts they bear. Every difficulty can teach us something new about ourselves and our relationships with other people. Through tangled and complicated situations, we are forced to become more awake and muster the totality of our energies and capabilities channeling them into new fields of action and play. In doing so, we come to touch the world at points we never knew existed. 

-The more the world-traveler explores and knows our planet, the more he comes to feel that he is an integral part of one huge human family. The human qualities and traits he shares with this family are felt to be stronger than all the differences that apparently set him apart from other people. 

-Stunning landscapes exist as such because of their contrast to boring or uninteresting ones. Beautiful cities and villages are judged as being so because they are compared with the ugly cities and non-picturesque villages that outnumber them. 

The mutual dependence of ugliness and beauty, pleasantness and unpleasantness, makes our world what it is. Interdependent origination is actually one of the central tenets of Buddhist philosophy. It is the notion that nothing possesses its own irreducible self-nature, but everything depends on something else for its existence. These inter dependent opposites are the building blocks from which our world is constructed. It is meaningless, if not impossible, to attempt to shy away from the negative pole of reality. That said, most things in the world lie between the spaces defined by the extreme opposites and include qualities of both. One may thus cultivate the ability to see qualities of beauty and harmony in things that seem ugly or imperfect. 

More notes from Destination Earth: A New Philosophy of Travel by Nicos Hadjicostis

Equality

For the universal soul all things and all contacts of things carry in them an essence of delight best described by the Sanskrit aesthetic term “rasa,” which means at once sap or essence of a thing and its taste. It is because we do not seek the essence of the thing in its contact with us, but look only to the manner in which it affects our desires and fears, our cravings and shrinkings, that grief and pain, imperfect and transient pleasure or indifference, that is to say, blank inability to seize the essence, are the forms taken by the Rasa. If we could be entirely disinterested in mind and heart and impose that detachment on the nervous being, the progressive elimination of these imperfect and perverse forms of Rasa would be possible and the true essential taste of the inalienable delight of existence in all its variations would be within our reach. –Sri Aurobindo

It is difficult to bear the unpleasant sensations that violently attack our senses, such as a foul smell, a disturbing sound, or the urban pollution that steals the air we breathe. When it comes to sights, unpleasant sensations exist on an even grander scale: A street full of uncollected garbage in Naples; a poor shantytown in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro; the ugly, overdeveloped waterfront of a Spanish coastal town set against an otherwise pristine backdrop of crystal-clear waters. All of them are disturbing and painful sights, the unfortunate results of human actions.

In order to confront these unpleasant sensations of the world, we must adopt the attitude of equality toward all sensations. We must force all of our senses to experience everything in its raw form, without any interference from the analytical and judging functions of the mind. Yogis have been practicing equality toward all sensations for millennia now. The idea is to capture the rasa, the substance, the existential quality of each and every sensation, without the mind immediately superimposing a judgement on it. All sensations are equal as sensations in as much as they are variations on an infinite spectrum of sensations. Yet from this infinity of real or possible sensations, we encounter and experience only the very few that cross our path in the limited world we live in day to day. Each new sensation that appears sin one’s life when on travels, whether pleasurable, painful, or neutral, becomes a new valuable acquisition in our library of experiences. By forcing our mind to stand back, we may return to the primal mode of experiencing our world, like a newborn, who sees and feels everything with ta freshness and intensity, unblemished by the clouding of mental judgments. 

It is not easy to smell a foul odor and not react in disgust, or make the characteristic involuntary grimace. Yet it is only by refraining from reacting in this way that one may experience the foul smell in an unmediated, direct manner. A foul smell is still a smell of a very special kind that is interesting exactly because it is new and unique. It is only through a willful exertion that one may begin to see the world as it truly is and not through the filters of one’s upbringing, prejudices, and already formed tastes. 

The Traveler-Hermit and the Inner Journey

It might be strange to compare the life of a world-traveler, who is on the move and interacting with thousands of people, with the life of a spiritual hermit. Yet, paradoxically, the two have more in common than meets the eye. 

Just as a hermit, the world-traveler is “alone” most of the time. Not in the ordinary sense of the word, for he is almost always surrounded by people. However, even while he interacts with the world, he does so more as a student of life than as a participant in the everyday socializing in which the majority of humanity is immersed. Thus, although the traveler is fully in the world, he is not of the world. His interactions have the character of those of an explorer and they do not really take him out of his state of aloneness. But time-wise, these interactions are only a part of his life. When not traveling and interacting with people, he spends many hours a day reading and studying, just as a hermit does. Then he has to gather all his experiences, make sense of them, and reflect on their meaning and significance, just a hermit meditates on the meaning and significance of his inner experiences. Finally, he has to allow all these new elements to act upon him and transform him into another person. 

It is this element of inner transformation that makes the traveler and hermit so similar. While moving in the outer world, the traveler also works on his inner world. For the journey is always twofold—it has an outer and an inner aspect. The outer journey turns out to be an instrument that serves the much more important and central inner journey. Although the outer aspect is more easily communicable, the true content and meaning of the double journey becomes clear only when the inner dimensions sheds its revealing light on the whole endeavor. Only after the outer events become part of a greater reality and find their place in the grander scheme of things does the traveler feel that something new and fresh has been gained. 

Doing and Becoming

The dichotomy of the outer and inner journey is mirrored in another bipolarity that sheds further light on the travel mode of being: sedentary life pertains to Doing, whereas travel life pertains to Becoming.

A person living a normal life with regular regimented timetable, a fixed place of residence and work, a routine taking care of family matters, and occasional holidays once or twice a year, is preoccupied with doing things. He does work, he does shopping, he does socializing. His daily program is full of things to do. Even if some time is put aside or stolen from other activities for a hobby or for studying and self-improvement, these activities are, as a rule, not central to a life immersed in society—they are a footnote in the margin of one’s life. 

Travel life is very different. The traveler has nothing to do. He may choose to sit on a bench in a park all day and simply observe the world pass by. Even while he explores places or interacts with foreign cultures or studies, there is nothing compulsory about these activities. There is nothing  he must do or accomplish by some deadline (apart perhaps from some self-imposed but flexible date he may have set for himself to complete his exploration of a country.

However, although he is not working in the sense of having a conventional job, and is not doing anything by the usual standards of society, something else is actually going on: With every contact, event, experience that comes into his life, he is transformed. Even by simply wandering effortlessly between countries as a vagabond and interacting with the various peole of different cultures or passively enjoying new landscapes, he opens himself to change. This is because just by moving from place to place, he is by default in the school of life. Almost every interaction and experience of a traveler is unique and thus holds a power and value that surpasses anything a sedentary life has to offer. By being in the journey, the traveler ceases to do and is becoming. 

A Quote from Will Durant, a Pulitzer Prize Winning Historian

While reading the introduction to Will Durant’s book, The Greatest Minds and Ideas of all Time, I found the following quote from Will Durant particularly interesting: 

In 1968, shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize for literature, Will Durant and his wife, Ariel, gave a television interview in their home in Los Angeles, CA. The interviewer, who fancied himself an intellectual, posed to Durant the following question:

If I were to ask you to name the person who has most influenced the 20^thcentury, would it be Karl Marx?

Durant paused for a moment and then replied:

Well, if you use the word in its largest sense, we would have to give the greatest share of influence to the technical inventors, like Edison. Doubtless the development of electricity has transformed the world even more than any Marxian propaganda. Then, if you think in terms of ideas, I think the influence of Darwin is still greater than the influence of Marx, but in a different field. The basic phenomenon of our time is not Communism; it’s the decline of religious belief, which has all sort of effects on morals and even on politics because religion has been a tool of politics. But today in Europe it ceases to be a tool, it has very little influence in determining political decisions—whereas 500 years ago, the pope was superior in influence to any civil ruler on earth. 

I find this fascinating on many levels, but mostly when I see how the Church’s influence has declined over the last two hundred years. To think that people were still being burned at the stake for heresy in the eighteenth century, and now the Church has almost no influence on most people’s lives. I hope I live long enough to see the Age of Enlightenment finally bury Christianity and all it’s bastard cousins once and for all.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While reading a volume of The Story of Civilization by Durant, I’ve spent the last few days reading about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the greatest poet of the eighteen and nineteenth century. I’ve found most of his writing quoted by Durant as fascinating as any I’ve read. And I also was taken with the following poem:

Let man be noble,

Helpful and good.

For that alone

Marks him off

From all beings

That we know. . . .

Quite unfeeling 

Is Nature:

The sun shines

Upon the base and the good;

And upon the lawbreaker

Gleam, as upon the best,

The moon and the stars.

Winds and streams,

Thunder and hail,

Roar on their way,

And snatch up

And sweep before them

One after another. . . .

By eternal, ironclad

Great laws

Must we all,

Of our existence,

Fulfill the round.

But man alone

Can do the impossible;

He distinguishes,

Chooses, and judges;

He can to the fleeting moment

Give duration.

He alone can

Reward the good,

Punish the bad,

Heal and save.

And to the erring and straying

Bring wise counsel.

Let the noble man

Be helpful and good.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While reading a volume of The Story of Civilization by Durant, I’ve spent the last few days reading about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the greatest poet of the eighteen and nineteenth century. I’ve found most of his writing quoted by Durant as fascinating as any I’ve read.

At his death he left a confused mass of writings which were published as his Opus postumumin 1882-84. In one of these he described the “thing-in-itself”—the unknowable substratum behind phenomena and ideas—as “not a real thing . . . not an existing reality, but merely a principle . . . of the synthetic a priori knowledge of the manifold sense-intuition. He named it Gedankending, a thing existing only in our thoughts. And he applied the same skepticism to the idea of God:

God is not a substance existing outside me, but merely a moral relation within me. . . . The categorical imperative does not assume a substance issuing its commands from on hight, conceived therefore as outside me, but is a commandment or a prohibition of my own reason. . . . The categorical imperative represents human duties as divine commandments not in the historical sense, as if [a divine being] had given commands to men, but in the sense that reason . . . has power to command with the authority and in the guise of a divine person . . . The idea of such being, before whom all bend the knee, etc., arises out of the categorical imperative, and not vice versa. . . . The Ens Summum [Supreme Being] is an ens rationis [a creation of reason], . . . not a substance outside me.

The Inch-by-Inch Development of Humans

Human history may be viewed as a gradual education of mankind. Every religion was, and still is, a phase along that step-by-step path to illumination. Religion was not, as some have supposed, a scam imposed upon credulous people by self-seeking clergy; it was an evolutionary theory intended to civilize humanity by instilling virtue, decency, and social unity.  Some religions (the Old Testament for example) sought to make men virtuous by assuring them worldly riches in a long life. In another phase (the New Testament) it tried to overcome the disheartening discrepancy between virtue and earthly riches by promising rewards after death. In both cases the appeal was adjusted to the limited understanding of the people at the time. 

Supernatural religions, like Christianity and Islam, are only a phase of evolution of the human mind. A higher phase comes when humans learn to reason, and when men and women grow strong and clear enough to do what’s morally right because it is seen to be virtuous and reasonable, rather than for material or heavenly rewards. That phase has been reached by many individuals; it has not yet come to the race. But it will come as man’s education develops. Just as the average individual recapitulates in his growth the intellectual and moral development of the race, so the race slowly passes through the intellectual and moral development of progressive individuals. 

Religion has been an immense aid to morality, but it has also been the cause of much pain and suffering and death because it separates people into them vs. us. Who’s right and who’s wrong…. Hopefully, the human race can soon move beyond a system of dogmas demanding acceptance on pain of sin, punishment, and social obloquy, and become compassionate, moral beings simply because it is the moral way to live, and causes the least amount of suffering for everyone.  

Interesting Words From Frederick The Great

While reading about Frederick The Great’s reign over eighteenth century Prussia, I came across the following quote:

Superstition, self-interest, vengeance, treason, ingratitude, will produce bloody and tragic scenes until the end of time, because we are governed by passions and very rarely by reason. There will always be wars, lawsuits, devastations, plagues, earthquakes, bankruptcies. . . . Since this is so, I presume it must be necessary. . . . But it seems to me that if this universe had been made by a benevolent being, he should have made us happier than we are. . . . The human mind is weak; more than three fourths of mankind are made for subjection to the most absurd fanaticism. Fear of the Devil and of hell fascinates their eyes, and they detest the wise man who tries to enlighten them. . . . In vain do I seek in them that image of God which the theologians assert they bear upon them. Every man has a wild beast in him; few can restrain it; most men let loose the bridle when not restrained by terror of the law. 

He was the first avowedly agnostic ruler of modern times, but he made no public attack on religion. He felt that the uneducated, unenlightened masses need the yoke of religion to keep them in their place.

Frederick also concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be disastrous. A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments, a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by a minority. Frederick thought like Napoleon that “among nations and in revolutions aristocracy always exists.” He believed that an hereditary aristocracy would gevelop a sense of honor and loyalty, and a willingness to serve the state at great personal cost, which could not be expected of bourgeois geniuses formed in the race for wealth. Indeed, Frederick liked to picture himself as the servant of the state and the people, and he lived up to that claim. The state for him became the Supreme Being, to which he would sacrifice himself and others.

Words to Live by From Catherine The Great

While reading about Catherine The Great’s reign over eighteenth century Russia, I came across a list of her resolutions, written by her shortly after taking power. With ideas like these, the world can hardly doubt her good intentions in the early years of her sovereignty. She wrote:

Study mankind, lean to use men without surrendering to them unreservedly. Search for true merit, be it at the other end of the world, for usually it is modest and retiring. 

Do not allow yourself to become the prey of flatterers; make them understand that you care neither for praise nor for obsequiousness. Have confidence in those who have the courage to contradict you, . . . and who place more value on your reputation than on your favor. 

Be polite, humane, accessible, compassionate, and liberal-minded. Do not let your grandeur prevent you from condescending with kindness toward the small, and putting yourself in their place. See that this kindness, however, does not weaken your authority nor diminish their respect. . . . Reject all artificiality.

Do not allow the world to contaminate you to the point of making you lose the ancient principles of honor and virtue. . . . 

I swear by Providence to stamp these words into my heart.

What a world we would enjoy if the politicians of all nations would stamp these ideas onto their hearts and live every day by them.

My Aim in Life

Deprived of the comfort of religion by my ability to form ideas and opinions based on my experiences rather than folklore, I have struggled to find something to fill that void. Along the way, so many decades, I tested everything from Tolstoy’s nihilism to Voltaire’s cosmic laugh, to my parent’s sad version of Christianity, to Buddhism, to Transcendental Meditation, to New Age philosophies. I found them all wanting.

In the end, only my art, my storytelling, consoles me.  My aim in life is to write stories that express what I feel is my truth, which I freely admit is a moving target. And write those stories as well as I can. I no longer care so much if they get published or not. My reward is in their creation, in the day by day, word by word crafting of ideas into actions and characters and emotions.

At the end of my life, I hope to pass away not hoping for some divine intervention, but looking back with love and tender regret, thinking, “Oh, the story I could have written about this!”

RIP Anthony Bourdain

Last week the world lost another celebrity to suicide. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to celebrity deaths but this one is different. For years Anthony Bourdain has been my role model. My guru.

He often said he traveled the world on his belly, meaning he traveled to one exotic place after another and indulged in the local fare. He only ate local foods, only ate at local eateries, only ate with local people, and was always fascinated by how and why people cooked their native dishes. He experienced the best and worst of each location, placing a high premium on experiencing its authentic cuisine—whether that was dining on Peking Duck in a Michelin star Beijing restaurant or scarfing down a bowl of noodles from a Bangkok street vendor. And that’s the way I travel.

“Move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” -Anthony Bourdain.

I both love and emulate his low-key traveling persona, willing to experience out of the way places, dirty places, places tourists don’t go. To him and to me, you don’t experience a place by taking in the postcard monuments and museums. And you don’t travel to a location in order to have fun. Traveling is not about seeing the top sites and having fun. It’s about merging with a different culture, and the more different the better. Travel is about learning about humanity in all its many varied forms. Travel is an eye-opening, live-changing, curiosity-appeasing quest. 

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you... You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” — Anthony Bourdain

I travel from four to six months per year. Most of my destinations are outside the U.S. I’ve visited over sixty countries over the last twenty-five years. I dare say there were few places Anthony Bourdain showcased on his travel show that Herman and I have not visited, which gave us both a feeling of connection with Mr. Bourdain. We shall continue to travel in the style that he epitomized, but from now on we will travel with a slight sense of loss. 

I Value Good Manners

Nothing brightens my day more than meeting a young person who speaks clearly, looks me in the eye, calls me “sir” (yes, I’m that old), and uses terms like “thank you” and “please” and “excuse me.” I feel better about the person speaking, and about myself. It also gives me hope for these younger generations. I try to encourage good manners with everyone I meet by setting an example. However, more and more—or perhaps I should say: the older I get—I find young people simply ignore me, or give me a clipped response and try to move on to something/someone else. So that when I do come across someone who displays good manners, it really shines out.

As the sign says, manners cost nothing, but they can mean so much.

I feel the same way when I meet someone who takes genuine pride in his or her work and who goes the extra mile. It seems like so many people simply want to get by with the least amount of effort. Nothing makes me cranky as quickly as standing in a long line at the DMV or the bank or a department store with only one window open while a bevy of three or four workers chat among themselves in full view of the waiting customers. I’ve always had a high work ethic, which in my view means giving everything—work and play—a hundred percent effort. Back in the day when I earned a salary, I wanted the bosses to know I earned every penny, and I wanted the customers to realize that as well.

If I sound like I’m being a stogy old man, so be it. I sound that way to me as well. At my age, it should be expected.

My Take On The American Dream

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to our country this year, trying to understand why a man like Trump could appeal to so many Americans. I keep coming back to what people want out of life, what the American Dream looks like in 2017.

In my year of reflection and study and talking to people, I’m sorry to say no blinding insights materialized. If anything, I was wowed by how modest people’s hopes seem to be. And although it is impossible for me—a reasonably affluent, gay, white man—to understand the challenges of other races, sexual orientations, and income groups, I’ve developed a strong opinion that these modest hopes hold constant across race, region, religion, sexual orientations, and income groups.

What I’ve come to believe is that it involves to six critical areas:

1) Economics: The idea that anyone willing to work should be able to hold a job that pays a living wage. 

2) Health insurance: The notion that nobody should have to file bankruptcy simply because they, or someone in their family, got into an ancient or became seriously ill.

3) Education: Every parent wants their child to have access to a good education, and that means they should be able to attend college even if their parents are not rich. And in these days of dizzying technological change, adults also need access to colleges so they can remain competitive in the marketplace. 

4) Safety: People want their families to walk streets free from criminals and terrorists. To go to church or a concert without needing to worry about some psychopath with an assault rifle.

5) Environment: People are rightly concerned about the world we are passing on to our kids. We all want clean air, clean water, and poison-free food. And we want to protect wildlife environments. 

6) Quality time: Time to enjoy life with your family, and in old age, to retire with dignity and respect.

Yes, I know that if you ask people what they want, off the top of their heads they mostly want to be millionaires, drive Teslas, own a big house with an indoor swimming pool, and fly first class to the best destinations in the world. But when it comes down to real hopes, I believe they would be happy with the list above. 

It’s not much to ask. And it seems to me that these basic hopes are not just the American Dream, but what families the world over hope for. I like to think that most people understand the government can’t solve all their problems, but the flip side of that coin is that government shouldn’t stand in the way of people helping themselves to achieve everything on that list. And although government can’t do everything, they can, and should, help every American achieve these goals.

A Week of Expunging

At least once per year, usually around New Years, Herman and I do a house purging. This year it came early, because after the wretched news of another mass shooting, we needed a mental tonic.

We started by cleaning out our garage and shed, donating or throwing away everything we no longer need or use. Those two areas produced two truckloads of stuff. Then we focused on the inside of the house, the closets, which produced another truckload of donatables.

I don’t know why, but purging always brings me joy. I’ve never been a packrat, and the fewer possessions I have around me, the more liberated I feel. Possessions weigh me down, shackle me. They take energy, pull my attention to them, clutter my mind.

One of my happiest times in the last several years came when Herman and I first moved into our Palm Springs house. During the first two weeks—before the moving van arrived with all our belongings—we lived in an empty house. Only an air mattress and sleeping bags in the bedroom, a card table and chairs in the dining room, and our laptops. No pictures on the walls, no TV, no writing desks, nada. I felt so free. With nothing but white walls, I felt I could remake myself into anything I wanted. I could be someone new each day. Then the furniture and artwork arrived, and with it came all my personal history. And I was back to being that person again, anchor into that mindset by all those things.

I believe it’s true, that the things we gather around us do define who/what we are. It’s why people hoard. The more things you gather, the more tightly expressed you become. All those things are a visual manifestation of who we are, they define us, and that gives most people a great deal of comfort. Not me; I like existing with as few boundaries/definitions as possible.

Another Day of Mass Death

Woke up to another day of sadness. One shooter with an assault rifle, fifty-eight dead, over five hundred injured. My heart weeps for these people locked in this tragedy. I weep for all Americans who wish to live in peace and security, and who reject violence.

And I ask myself the same question I’ve asked many times over the years: How many innocent people must die from gun violence before the people of this country snap out of their inanity and outlaw assault weapons? Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?

How many parents must lose a child? How many spouses must lose the love of their life? So much loss, so much anguish, and for what? So a few million people can feel empowered? Can’t we find a better way to empower people? A way that lifts us all up, instead of taking precious life?