It occurs to me…

“If you compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons that yourself.”  Max Ehrmann – Desiderata

Every time I read this I think that Ehrmann left out something.  Yes, comparing myself to a “greater person” is likely to cause me to be envious, to “become vain and bitter.”   “I can’t _____ like _____ “ thoughts could do that.  But generally, I rationalize that away and convince myself that if I put the effort into _____ that _____ puts into it, I might be able to.  After all, I could learn to paint, to sing well, be a scratch golfer, but I just haven’t put the effort into it.  (I know these are not likely true, but they COULD be.)

But what it seems to me that Ehrmann left out is, I think, the effects of the greater risk – that of comparing myself to “lesser persons.”  That can cause me to become prideful and arrogant – or, as the case may be, more prideful and arrogant.

So there it is.  Comparing myself to others leads to “vain and bitter” or prideful and arrogant.  It occurs to me that Ehrmann is correct – Best not to compare.

Plans!  So I sit down for a nice weekend morning of thinking and writing and a few minutes into it I get the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on my computer.  I spend the next 45 minutes trying to resolve that, and ultimately do (but not without angst and a few expletives).  As I sit back down to write, now beyond my allotted time, I feel distracted, harried, and yes, frustrated that my projected arc across the universe has been interrupted.

Suddenly, uncharacteristically, I am able to rise above and see this as a critical point in my day.  To borrow from Frost, I am at the spot where “two roads diverge in a yellow wood” and I have a choice to make. Uncharacteristically, I choose to sit back and just laugh at myself – “My arc across the universe has been interrupted.”  In my dreams!  My “arc across the universe” looks more like a connect the dots game that ultimately produces no recognizable image.  The thought that it will look like anything recognizable is indeed laughable.  The term “whirling dervish” comes to mind, which the Urban Dictionary defines as: “A person whose behavior resembles a rapid, spinning object. These actions are often spastic fidgeting and incessant babbling. The actions of the whirling dervish are irritating and annoying, often exhausting other people in the immediate vicinity.”

Yep, that pretty much hits the nail on the head.  Today, I choose to not take myself too seriously, yes, even laugh at myself.  Two roads.  At least so far today (after the angst and expletives) “I took the one less traveled by.  And that has made all the difference.”  Of course it is only 8:17 a.m.

Argghh!  One wakes up on St. Patrick’s Day and thinks green beer and contemplates what green garment I have in my closet to wear.  (Do I have any green garments?  Green socks?  Anything green?)  But C. S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers will have none of that.  No, today they want to talk about heaven and hell, good and bad choices, and how all those decisions shape life.  Not a green shamrock or a leprechaun in sight.

From C. S. Lewis:

“I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before.  And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning that central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature….”

From Oswald Chambers:

“Is my master ambition to please Him and be acceptable to Him, or is it something less, no matter how noble.”

I suppose Lewis, Chambers, and George Jones are an unlikely trio, but what the heck – It is St. Patrick’s Day.  (Actually, the songwriting credit goes to Billy Yates and Michael Curtis):

“I’ve had choices, since the day that I was born, and I’ve heard voices, that told me right from wrong.  If I had listened, no I wouldn’t be here today.  Livin’ and dyin’ with the choices I made.”

I am going to look in my closet for something green.  Is it too early for a green beer?

C. S. Lewis reminds me today that “progress” is a tricky thing.

“We all want progress.  But progress means getting nearer to the place where we want to be.  And if you have taken a wrong turn, then to go forward does not get you any nearer.  If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

It makes sense that sometimes I have to go backwards to go forward.  Having “zigged” when I should have “zagged,” more often than not the solution is not to wing it from where I am but to own up to the mistake, make my way back to the point of the error, and “zag” as I should have done earlier.  Or as Lewis puts it: “The sooner I admit this and go back and start again, the faster I shall get on.  There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake.”

That bears repeating: “There is nothing progressive about being pig headed and refusing to admit a mistake.”

I am not a big fan of life philosophies that fit into a sentence or a few rules.  Life generally seems messier than that, more complicated than that.  That said, when I run across sentences like this I entertain the thought that I just might be wrong about that (among other things):

“Believe there is a great power silently working in all things for good, behave yourself, and never mind the rest.”  Beatrix Potter.

Always, after attending a funeral (sometimes between) the Always Go To The Funeral segment from the NPR This I Believe series comes to mind – go figure!  This segment, by Diedre Sullivan, is one of my favorites.  I can’t say it any better than she did, so I set it out below here:

Always Go To The Funeral – Deidre Sullivan

“I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.

The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. ‘Dee,’ he said, ‘you’re going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family.’

So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson’s shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, ‘Sorry about all this,’ and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson’s mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.

That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, ‘You can’t come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral.’

Sounds simple — when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.

‘Always go to the funeral’ means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don’t feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don’t really have to and I definitely don’t want to. I’m talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex’s uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.

In going to funerals, I’ve come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life’s inevitable, occasional calamity.

On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I’ve ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.

There is much power in this essay, but none greater than the thought that “while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture” life presents me with many opportunities to make smaller, seemingly mundane ones.  That is: “In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn’t been good versus evil. It’s hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.”

Indeed, it occurs to me that that those small gestures are the front on which the battle is typically waged.  There is often uncertainty, grey area between right and wrong, good and evil, and that often results in inaction due to the uncertainty.  Understandably, we all want to be at the right place and do or say the right thing at the right time.  Still, showing up and saying “Sorry about all this” is something, and it beats nothing every time.

I went to a funeral yesterday.  I am a slow learner.  I am pretty sure that if I attended a funeral a day for a full year, on attending and leaving the next funeral after that run I would still be surprised by the same two thoughts: 1) life is uncertain, and 2) life is for living – NOW!

It did not escape me as I looked around the room that each time I attend a funeral I am a bit older.  Now what were those two things again?

Note to self, intended to lower my frustration level (or at least help me understand it):

“A remarkable feature of virtues is that you cannot argue people into having them when they do not.”  Paul Woodruff from Reverence

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is one of my favorite columnists, and to that end I commend to you his most recent column, Living In A Time of Hatred, We Are All Called To Witness, which promoted my thoughts put to words here.

As long as I live and breathe, I am, like it or not, a witness. Particularly in this day and age of connectivity, where I  can stream live most anything anywhere in the world, the question is not whether I will see and experience things – I will witness.  No, as Pitts writes, the question is not whether I will see and experience things, but a different question —  “What kind of witnesses shall [I] be?”

The image that comes to mind is that of walking along a shore and finding a bottle, then finding the bottle has a message in it.  That is kind of cool, and I could simply take it home, clean the bottle up, and put the bottle on the shelf, message still intact, unread.  Every time someone visited I could show off the bottle with the message in it.  Or, I could….

I am coming off a bout with the flu (yes, I had a flu shot) that lasted the better part of a week.  During that time, it may have been “well with my soul,” but the rest of me, the physical part, would have begged to differ.  All of this served as a reminder (read “slap in the face”) as to how much I take wellness for granted. It occurred to me often over the past six days that failing to thank God each day for wellness, for the ability to get up out of bed and carry on with the day, no matter now “normal” and “uneventful” that day might be is…, well, is not good.