It occurs to me…

“We hear only half of what is said to us, understand only half of that, believe only half of that, and remember only half of that.”  Mignon McLaughlin

Okay, here’s my analysis, but feel free to do your own.

I hear only 50% of what is said to me.  That seems low if it truly means “hear,” but if what is meant is “listen to” or “take in,” then that 50% seems high to me.  Here, I must quote Simon and Garfunkel – “A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest.”

I understand only 25% of what is said to me.  That seems a bit low.  But if it means “really understand,” as in I comprehend fully the message that the speaker is intending to give to me through the speech (that is, I understand the message, not just the words), that 25% seems a bit high.

I believe only 12.5% of what is said to me.  While I have no empirical proof, that sounds about right, unless the speaker is a politician, a salesperson, or a weather forecaster, in which case that 12.5%  seems high.

I remember only 6.25% of what is said to me.  Time would, of course, be a crucial factor here, and I guess, context.  In the ten minutes it takes me to get to the store I forget at least one thing on the four-item grocery list (25%) my wife tells me.  But then I can remember the lyrics to the theme song from most sitcoms from forty or fifty years ago.  Go figure.

Still, with all the lack of hearing, misunderstanding, disbelief, and forgetfulness, life goes on.  It’s a miracle!

“The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.”  Mignon McLaughlin

I don’t know if that is the “hardest-learned lesson,” but it damn sure ranks up there in the top five or so.  It occurs to me that much of my conflict and angst is generated by my expectation of the response I want, not the one the other has to give.  Somehow, what comes to mind here is that instance where I am due change from a cashier who, being out of or low on quarters, gives me five nickels in change.  Okay, it is not what I expected, not what I wanted (as if carrying the four additional coins is a burden), but I have not been short-changed.  I was given what the other had to give.  And it occurs to me how frustrated I get standing in front of a parking meter that wants change when I don’t have any to give.  I have bills, I have credit cards, but no change.

Okay, she may be right: “The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.”

This settled in my soul after reading it today.  It is, I suspect, best understood by Catholics who spent some time as children in and waiting to go in a confessional.  That said, it seems to be universally instructive:

Teaching a Child the Art of Confession – David Shumate

“It is best not to begin with Adam and Eve.  Original sin is baffling, even for the most sophisticated minds.  Besides, children are frightened of naked people and apples.  Instead, start with the talking snake.  Children like to hear what animals have to say.  Let him hiss for a while and then tell his own tale.  They’ll figure him out in the end.  Describe sin simply as those acts which can cause suffering and leave it at that.  Steer clear of musty confessionals.  Children associate them with outhouses.  Leave Hell out of the discussion.  They’ll be able to describe it on their own terms soon enough.  If they feel the need to apologize for some transgression, tell them that one of the offices of the moon is to forgive.  As for the priest, let him slumber a while more.”

That could have been useful knowledge to me back in my grade-school years at St. Anne’s, but in reality, it would have gone over my head.  Some things can be learned only looking at my reflection in the mirror and noticing what is behind me.

Things stick in our heads.  I don’t mean the things we TRY to remember.  A spouses’ birthday, the PIN for my bank card, our Social Security number or driver’s license number.  Those are things we have to remember, or used to before we had all that on our phones.  But no, I am talking about those things we remember for no reason — maybe things we don’t even want to remember – yet we do.  Why?  Why, out of all the information that is passed before me in an hour, in days, weeks, months, years, decades, why do some things stick in memory, and others (many I want to remember) are as elusive as (here’s another one) “the bright elusive butterfly of love.”

So today is the day I think of this each year, all because:

“It was the third of June, another sleepy dusty delta day.  I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was bailing hay.  And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat.  Momma hollered at the back door y’all remember to wipe your feet.  And then she said, I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge.  Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”

Curse you, Bobbie Gentry, and your Ode to Billy Joe!

More from the poet, Jack Miller, this from Failing and Flying:

“Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It’s the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake.  That everybody

said it would never work….

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.”

It is almost, if not fully, impossible to be grateful for failure in real time.  As the birdie putt I played to breaks left breaks right as it passes the hole, it is simply not within my ability to be grateful as the ball rolls to a stop.  Mumbling expletives, wondering why I play the game, those are within my grasp at the moment, but not an appreciation of failure.  But then, as Miller suggests, it is merely an end to my triumph.  I am still out on a golf course and enjoying the day.  If I pull another ball out of my pocket, I may just make the putt – and there’s always the next hole.

I just like that phrase.  I have not failed, I have only, at that moment, come to the end of my triumph.  Yet, here I stand with another chance to triumph.

This, from Jack Gilbert’s The Lost Hotels of Paris, settled in my soul this morning:

“The Lord gives everything and charges

by taking it back.  What a bargain.

Like being young for a while….”

It occurs to me that that the referenced exchange is the ultimate bargain – yet one I don’t fully appreciate.  I get what the Lord gives me free of charge.  The only “charge” is that someday, I have to return it.  Say my next door neighbor has a lawnmower, and I don’t.  Every time I need to cut my grass I borrow his lawnmower.  One day, I neglect to return it.  He rings the doorbell and asks if he can have HIS lawnmower.  When, on God’s green earth (as my mom used to say) would I ever be justified in not letting him have HIS lawnmower back?   Or maybe I could think of it this way.  I go to the store to buy a lawnmower, but the salesperson tells me to just take it, free of charge, but I have to bring it back when he calls me.  Some decades later, I get the call.  Do I return with gratefulness?

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing….”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

In the pinball game of thought that plays in my head, this passage (used in a Byrds song, Turn, Turn, Turn) came to mind after Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle popped into my head.  (Boy, am I dating myself here!)  Croce’s song contains both a wish (“If I could save time in a bottle”) and a lament (“But there never seems to be enough to do the things you wanna do once you find them”).

Anyway, what jumps out at me today is the “a time to break down, and a time to build up” part.  It just occurs to me that we have had enough breaking down recently and it is damn well time to build up.  In life’s vending machine of response, when faced with the “break down” or “build up” choice, it is time to opt for the latter, not the former — if for no other reason than “there never seems to be enough time to do the things you wanna do once you find them.”

Memorial Day – not a time for mattress sales, but a time to remember those brave men and women who have given their lives in service to our country.  From the first time I heard Let Them In, John Gourka’s musical tribute to them it has stayed in my mind.  And while I listen to it year round, I always make it a point to listen to it more around Memorial Day.  I don’t need a new mattress, but I do need to remember those men and women for their sacrifice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCX1cULwal8 (This version by David Wilcox)

Let them in, Peter
They are very tired
Give them couches where the angels sleep
And light those fires

Let them wake whole again
To brand new dawns
Fired by the sun not wartime’s
Bloody guns

May their peace be deep
Remember where the broken bodies lie
God knows how young they were
To have to die
God knows how young they were
To have to die

So give them things they like
Let them make some noise
Give dance hall bands not golden harps
To these our boys

And let them love, Peter
For they’ve had no time
They should have trees and bird songs
And hills to climb

The taste of summer in a ripened pear
And girls sweet as meadow wind
With flowing hair

And tell them how they are missed
But say not to fear
It’s gonna be alright
With us down here

Let them in, Peter
Let them in, Peter
Let them in, Peter

I stumbled across a poem today — A Brief for the Defense” by Jack Gilbert – through a very indirect route.  I say that because it seems to add to the feeling that I particularly needed to hear it today – which is what I feel.  You have to read on with trepidation any poem that begins as this:

“Sorrow everywhere.  Slaughter everywhere.  If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else.”

But it gets better:

“But we enjoy our lives because that is what God wants.  Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine.”

And ultimately hits what I needed to hear:

“If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation.  We must risk delight.  We can do without pleasure, but not delight.  Not enjoyment.  We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world.  To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.”

It is, it seems, easy to “deny happiness, resist our satisfaction,” in remembering the suffering in the world, and thinking just how f’d up the world seems at times.  Being afraid to send your children to school, to eat out at a restaurant….  It becomes easy to “make injustice the only measure of our attention.”  But to quote from one my my favorites, Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann, Gilbert reminds us: “With all its sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.  Be caresul.  Strive to be happy.”