With or Without You

We are at a disconnect. You go your way, I mine. Life goes on. Your life has details, a daily dictum of diurnal delectables. So too for me. The dictionary of life gets heavy; keep it simple.

But we may forget one another. How ‘light’ is that? How very watered down picayune memory can become; or is that: the memory of picayune matters? Still, it’s not quite like forgetting Schroedinger, let alone the name of his cat. Ask Pavlov. Names can no longer ring a bell.

Let me not remain obtuse. Of what significance is the name of another if not knowing or recalling how it makes richer your life? Yet place names are often based on people. We do not necessarily know the origins. And all places have significance to someone. Some are generic: Peter’s Drive Inn; Andy’s Gonna-Bar; Carol’s Care Centre. To whom might these, specifically, refer? Yet, how can we possibly stay aware of the myriad milestones such names have left in people’s hearts? How may they demarcate any given memory? Places or people, we know so very many in our lives. And each, in some measure, has an impact. Indeed, others have learned lessons from us (as we have, from them) in how to be, (let alone how not to be!) We each glean from life according to our own proclivities. Surely, it’s better to keep as aware as we can of our impact on this world? A single phrase can be so upsetting. A small act can appear so puerile.

Letters to friends reveal much. When we do not refer to their last intimations it as though they remain unheard. So, in losing another’s letter, or accidentally misplacing it in the waste, or in inadvertently deleting it from one’s email account, the details disappear! Memory does not necessarily serve (me). Especially if not answered almost right away. And if one has very many friends, the recall of another’s details, especially for me, can be altogether too fragmenting. I shall surely get things wrong! As for my own immediate details, reporting them can be like a child’s; they can absorb so much of the here and now, excited only by the instant: “I wore my new blazer that I got from Tailor Maids, and my shirt that you saw me in the last time we met, and we went to the new movie, Momentary Madness; it was brilliant. So, as I was coming out there was this accident on the corner of Blind Spot and Intersection, but no one was hurt too badly, thank goodness! Next week we’re flying off to Tie-land, and I shall celebrate my birthday there. A pity you can’t come!”

So it goes. Manufactured truths can extend into reality. (How to be forgiven if, hoping that my recollection is right, I hazard at calling your brother, “Roy”?) One tends predominantly to be left or right brained. Left is rational, sequential, concrete. Right is abstract, metaphorical, random.

Point is, either way, maturational insight takes time. Compassion take time. Awareness is not always immediate, and like enlightenment, it is not so much a product as a journey. And so the details (for a right brainer) evolve predominantly into feelings (“which is all,” according to the poet, e.e. cummings). Yes, sparse details can devolve into the smudge of forgetfulness that mangles our clarity with each other. We each have so very many things, so very many other friends, so very many thoughts. And as the awkward dictum goes: talking (predominantly) about things is shallow; talking (predominantly) about people is hollow; and talking (predominantly) about ideas can be pompous. Best to incorporate a little of each; better to be comprehensive, inclusive, and integrative. (N’es pas?)

With or without you, life goes on. If you’re reading this and we have not personally connected over the last long while, then believe please that should I see you (given that we both may well still be alive) .... believe that I shall feel warmth and care and interest and well-wishes for you and yours, for your endeavours, for your proverbial hopes and dreams. But of details of your past, specifically, or even mayhap the recall of your very name, I shall perhaps be found remiss, forgetful, and abstract. With or without you, or me, life goes on. But.... is that enough?

Incremental Intimations

Incrementally, we incriminate ourselves. The tabla rasa of birth, research shows, is no longer a blank slate. That old biblical indictment, "the sins of the forefathers shall be visited upon the sons," is a continual catch-clause in our family constellations. Yet at which juncture might one say that the buck stops here, and might the evolution of an individual, let alone a species, surpass all that clings to the heretofore? How do we ever overcome our great great great not so great grandfather, some three hundred years ago, whose weakness and selfishness and sickness may still be seen to plague us? And on the other side, how do we live up to our great great great grandmother who endured and triumphed over the inestimable odds of her time and race? When do we find ourselves sufficient unto ourselves, such that no anchor of the past, no shoreline or habitat or involvement holds us back from peace with ourselves at this present moment, or is the very vessel in which we travel always built up by the bulk of the constituents of our psychic time and place, let alone our geographic and genetic makeup?

Thing is, the journey of our cognizance can be repeated, like living within a perpetual loop, and we will see something new every time. (For myself, having driven an 1800 km journey back and forth, for several times a year over the course of 30 years, I still notice and discover and remark on things I never noticed, discovered, or remarked on before.) What if, like the AI, or artificial intelligence robots in a TV series called West World, we are in a perpetual loop of reincarnations in which we relive our circumstances, incrementally, adding to our conception of life, but also forgetting the past, except for those undeniable provocations of déjà vu. Hm? Certainly there are sufficient promulgators of such stories. What creative imagination! To what end? And were we here to insert that The Singularity is encroaching in order that we all may achieve a more coherent and effective symbiosis, then indeed, it would seem that the individual is entirely to be subsumed by the collective; there is no goal other than to contribute toward the health of the whole.

Yet, whose whole are we talking about?

"You want to make God!" was once levelled at Ray KurzweiL, the foremost proponent of artificial intelligence. He lifted his chin. "Isn't that what mankind imagined in the first place?" Yes. It's all very confusing, very disturbing, very unsettling. Yes, it's all out there, in some distant future. Yes, some of us may not live to see its inheritance, let alone its generalized inception, but we all, will he, nil He, are already in the grip of its sway. Incrementally, it advances. Skype. Wifi. Internet. Cell phones. Talking cars. Self parking cars. Self driving trucks. Replicators. Cloning. What would grandmother have thought! Imagine our great great forbearers in the cave!

Incrementally, we make mistakes. But we also learn. And if evolution may be defined as the ability to adapt to new survival needs, and intelligence may be defined as the ability to adapt to new challenges, then we are almost always at some new point on the continuum of the bell curve, caught up in the mass of mankind of our time period, or lagging behind, or perhaps even prodding at its forefront, edging on and egging on and egregiously hoping to do well. But how very different 'doing well' can be defined!

"Are you at peace with yourself," Morrie Schwartz asks, "are you trying to be as human as you can be?" It's a tall order. We seldom measure up. We are so very caught up in the increments of our existence, incriminating ourselves with 'faults', quite sure that somewhere out there, beyond here, lies yet more peace. Peace, when realized, is so very momentary. Rather, we are forever yearning, seeking, wanting, and exploring yet more and more and more. Thing is, how to be at peace with that. At peace with one's incremental incriminations; an attainment to have, indeed.

Comments

Tracy B. Loeppky “This is how we completed the past.”
Was one of the phrases I learned while training in Family of Origin Therapy.
Acknowledging that which has been hidden.
Love those who were so human they forgot their humanity.
Sitting in our own work and to always be aware that we are never done our own work.
Feel the trauma of ancestors so we may learn and see it in ourselves.

And so much more.
Not easy, and, simple.

Our human existence and incarnation is to experience both the yin and yang of this earthly plane.

Thank you for sharing. 🙏🏻 ❤️



Derek John Jooste Great thoughts, soon all the current inventions will be routine, it's our consciousness that matters, are we kinder, less inclined to war? A I is like the wheel or the chipped rock..... and still the beat goes on, I think development is when people enjoy live music rather than when amazing things, preparing a meal for friends rather than winning an argument, writing a philosophical blog, like you do, rather than getting a bonus



Richard Michelle-Pentelbury Derek, should you ever be in Canada do let me know. It'd be good to reconnect after all these 45+ years. And thanks so much for taking the time to write such a caring response. We can go to 'message' mail for more private reconnection, yes?



Derek John Jooste That would be good Richard!



Paul Smulders Well said. Worth putting some effort into thinking about what you have articulated so nicely!



Sharon Barker Interesting essay. I heard a scary thing about AI the other day, and that is that as things progress, the best ones to continue to develop and design AI are the AI themselves. Humans can't keep up.



Jessie Greenlay Peters replied · 2 Replies

Brittany Nichol Well said. Beautiful Mr P!



Carolyn Courtright For you my dear daughter in law!



Guido Guidetti Something we cannot see protects us from something we do not understand. The thing we cannot see is culture, the thing we do not understand is "chaos". If the structure of culture is disrupted unwittingly "chaos" returns. We humans will do anything to prevents that return! As humans we have to move or act in the world. This requires us to make choices. Making choices (good or bad) means that we use our value system in order to select that move or that act. Its this movment or action which gives us meaning. Our culture and our value systems from which it is derived will determine our trajectory both as an individual and as a society

A Prodigal's Para-Bell

"I have returned!"

"We are at peace with that!"

"Have you been... well?"

"Well enough. We have aged. We have changed. But we have accepted the things that have happened."

"The things?"

"Things happen. While you were away persons you loved have died. So too did some family. And jobs were lost. Choices were made. There were heart-attacks and strokes and financial setbacks, but we learned through it all, doing whatever we could, what we were able to do."

"Yes, well, I am back now, and I'm sorry to have missed all that, but I had to go."

"Yes, you had to go."

Yes, I had to make my own way, discover my own journey, become my own person."

"Yes. And are you at peace now?"

"At... At peace? Well, I am successful. Have been! Got lots to show for it. Books I've read. Things I've done. Places I've seen. People I've met. Achieved. You can be very proud of me."

"We always loved you. Your very person. But while away, did you purposefully deceive anybody, use anybody, harm anybody, rob or steal from anyone? Did you lie, cheat, or self-aggrandize? Were you selfish, and self-serving? Greedy? Did you manipulate and connive and contrive? Were you false? Did you seduce? Did you betray? Did you...?”

“Well.... Yes. But only here and there, in small measures.”

“And in doing those things, however small or big, did you learn to forgive yourself?”

“Well... Yes. But only here and there, in some measure.”

“And in those measures, have you learned to forgive others for their measures too?”

“Well.... Yes. Mostly.”

“Mostly? Well then, we forgive you the lessons you've learned. Are learning. Just as you're learning to forgive us the past that might have propelled you into those lessons, for we each take on our paths pushing off of the impetus of that which seemingly impels us. We are proud of you.”

“Seemingly?”

“Perception is all. Compassion itself grows by altering perceptions. Forgive, as we live. Forgive, as we take our leave. We now can hear the bell toll. It rings too, eventually, for you too.”

Micromanaging Moments

Mother, at 76, peered up from her guest-bed in my home and asked, “Those six books up there, with the spine with the gold pillar that crumbles a little more each time; what are they?" I did not need to look. “That’s Gibbon's Decline and Fall of Rome," I answered. "A pity," Mom responded, "everything must die." Some six weeks later, she was dead.

Our memories die too. We open them up, like flipping through a photo album, but we do not necessarily recall the details. And slowly but surely our recollections crumble. Precision of phraseology goes. Recollection of the other's shape and mannerisms and voice inflection alters ever so slightly, here and there, until one retains the essence of one's feelings for the long-lost friend, or relative, or loved one, but much of accuracy fades. Like those pillars, the crumbling ensues, no matter how often we may prop them up. (A now-a-days absent friend once said that memory is like opening up a document in a computer, and alter so much as a comma, and one saves it as a new document.) Add the strokes and sighs and contemplations of a lifetime, and one is bound to have the memory-file alter quite substantially from the original, of say, 40 years ago!

Forty years! That's how much time has gone by without my seeing friends that meant the world to me, that formed a fulcrum in my own journey, so long ago. And when considering the vast amount of persons one meets along the way, it becomes natural, year by year of losing them, of no longer staying in contact, not as intensely to care, to love, to extend those intimacies of a vital connection. The past is the past. Focus on the moment. And so love and care can become a thing of the moment, a sort of safety guard, paradoxically, because one can be (like swapping life-stories with a stranger in an aircraft) attenuated to the moment, and then forget it. Next?

Rolling stones gather no moss, goes the idiom. (Mick Jagger by now has well disproved it!) Yet the image sticks. Rolling, there is little longevity established with friendships, with settling into dwelling places, with attending the schools or the workplaces or even the pleasure-places one has visited. Like being on very many little holidays, in which one meets variously interesting people and sees variegated interesting vistas, there remains a distinct sense of impermanence when going forward. Looking back, the story of one's perceptions is in the immediate. The recollected appreciation can be intense, but replaceable. There is always a new place, a new friend, a new occasion to be had. And in memory, truly, it's amazing how things change.

Not all of us have great change. Some of us stay and stay and establish friends and families and zones of familiarity that seem impervious to non-obvious change. Yes, we lose our pet and our grandparents, and we lose others too. Dear ones. And subtly, around us, things change. (Or do we change from within?) We lose jobs and health and possessions and interest. We both accommodate and wear down. We stop venturing and voyaging and experimenting. We grow staid and can be overly comfortable. Why rock the boat? And so we let go of the anxiety over moments, become untidy, (or else grow yet more anxious, and get uptight.) We adjust into the ripeness of our age. It is the human condition! "I am too old to do that!" (Been there?)

Yet growing old gracefully and letting go the things of youth is rather Biblical. Even Desiderata advocates that much! It is to be expected. All those physical things can pass, may have to be given up, can even be forgotten. But love, moment for moment; care; and interest in another, and in the world around oneself, remains a choice (one hopes) to be managed; breathing, breath for breath. Or does one simply allow oneself no longer to feel at all?

Mother noticed my books. And in her question was the universal drive of the human spirit expressed: "Why? What? When? Who? And how?" Moment, for moment.

Mice, Mankind, And Marvellous Moments!

Nellie McLung's great-granddaughter sat in the aircraft seat beside me as we waited for takeoff from Vancouver Island's main airport. I did not know her, then. Around my age, she wedged down in row 6B. A young man eventually arrived from amidst the turgid stream of boarders, plonked down beside her, his earphones in. The woman looked over at my script. "You're reading a play?" she asked, pleasantly. "Tuesdays with Morrie," I replied. "Loved the book," she said. "Yes," I said, and I got on with visualizing my lines. Possibly because of the slight weaving of my hand as I internalized a monologue, she offered: "You're learning lines! You've got to be Morrie!" I smiled and looked out my window as the plane began hurtling down the Victoria airport runway, then responded, "Canmore production. Mid-month. I'm off to meet my fellow actor for the first time. Rob Murray. We have a week to rehearse." She seemed surprised. "A week! Well then, let me help you! I'll play Mitch Albom." Whereupon she took the script from me, and we began my recital; she reading. All the 90 minutes to Calgary we flew over mountains and lakes and wondrous scenery; I spoke into the window pane; she had her eyes glued to the script. And she was good! Her being 'Mitch' was fluent. And just before we landed, we finished!

And so, naturally, we fell to introducing ourselves. "Rosemary," she said. Only later did she make reference to Nellie McLung.  Now, I knew of The Valiant Five*, as far as Canadian History is concerned, and I knew there is a school named after her, in Calgary, and that she configures in the downtown statue of those five radical women, of that time. But to confess, I was not clear, then, as to when 'that time' really was. Rosemary took my card. "This is going to make for an interesting entry into my journal tonight," she declared. And with our landing, she was gone.

"The Nellie McLung school is just across the road from here," Jessie Peters informed, gesturing from her armchair, two weeks later. The wife of Vic (whose horrid disease of ALS over two plus years, back in 06/07 had taught me how physically to portray 'Morrie',) Jessie had yet again driven the 80km from Calgary to see my performance. This time she’d brought Vic's brother, Bill and his wife, Lorna. Last year, when I'd performed the play in Victoria (with Perry Burton as ‘Mitch’,) Jessie had flown out to see it with her daughter, Sharon. Their bravery in facing death, and in encountering ALS head on, has been for me such a model of endurance and love and care. Yet like the mouse in the closet in the middle of the night with the hosts where Jessie and Vic once visited deciding to empty all the closet-contents in order to find that mouse, “right there and then, in the middle of the night,” one can allow for the brain's inevitable ramble and chatter and distraction of what's the matter and where exactly are my thoughts now leading?

Distraction! That's what happened, opening night. I fell in front of the audience! For the first time in over ten years of performing the play, in the fifth act, instead of tipping my wheelchair forward, it lurched sideways and slid out from my behind, and whump!, I landed with several jolts of pain immediately coursing through me. 'What's my next line?' my brain chattered. "Mitch," I called, rather desperately. Thing is, Mitch was supposed to be nattering away, distracted. (‘Morrie slumps over’ was a move designed by the playwright, Mitch Albom.)  Eventually, Mitch (the empathetically gifted actor, Rob Murray) did save me, and hauled my supposedly limp body back up onto my chair, and then, when my limp arms and feet had all been replaced in proper position, he at last says, "what happened?" I pause, breathe, and announce, "I was playing hockey!" And the audience laughs. Always. Their relief for Morrie is palpable. They did not know that right then, given my lack of fluid between my vertebrae, I was in quite a crucial state of discombobulation. My brain raced through alternative scenarios; paralysis was a real fear. And the instant chatter of ‘what's the matter and what's the next right thing to do’ coursed through me like a squeaking mouse, scurrying in the corridors of my mind. But I persevered, and the audience, none the wiser, thought it all part of the act. Yet the fifth act was only half way, there were five more acts to go!

The decades we have mount up quickly. All the while we struggle to be at peace with ourselves. We try to be fully human, but our concentration is indeed confounded by the distractions and insecurities and particularities of circumstance and advent. And so we scramble at times for the next right thing to do. Often, someone is watching us. Yet inside ourselves, we are mostly alone, the captain of our thoughts. Marshalling our reserves, counting on experience, and directing our responses becomes the very art of living. Or does one simply withdraw from life and shrivel into old age, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans ears, sans everything? Ah, the plays (with life) are the very thing by which we may capture the real essence of living! To contribute to the health of the whole; or what is one here for? Such are the marvelous moments among men and women, and the course of our thinking and feelings too. Connected as we are. Bring on The Singularity! Or does my brain now chatter with "what's the matter with that," or even this? Anon! "Next?"

*See: http://everydaytourist.ca/2013/2013/9/18/the-famous-5-at-olympic-plaza

A Guard at The Gate

Here at my castle there's a guard at the gate. In my castle I hold the keys to all my past, and to my present, and wonder about the future. Given the Internet, and my computer, and social media, I can see or look up and find the 'friends' and family of days gone by. They do not see me in my dressing gown, my coffee beside me getting cold, nor do they feel the tears I at times have at the fond memory of this one or that. I am preserved, digitally, as are they. And each to each we no longer are actual realities, shaking hands, seeing into each other's eyes. We can but assume tone from text. We can but hope that the love and hugs and kisses are meant with sincerity. We can but harp on old feelings, old memories, and recall the details or feed the need to add yet more. Yet who really cares how many laundry-loads I do today? Perhaps the devil is in the details. Almost every phrase can appear narcissistic, self-reflective though it (and this) may be.

Thing is, the guard at the gate needs a password, needs assurance that your missive to me is well-intended, is authorized. (It can be daunting to find, or to reach the other.) When last did we communicate? What are the details we recall, that we ought better to recall? Should someone have lost a mother or father, and I've forgotten about it, I may well be remiss in asking after their health! Then too, there are too many of our friends who face death and dying, it seems, far too early. And what of those far older than us? There are the effects of stroke, the results of which are the heart-stopping attacks that we fear. There are the aches and pains of a thousand natural circumstances. In sharing, some persons are happy to spare no details; others are most circumspect. A modicum of happy mediums, usually, is in the modifier. (Must one always be on guard?) But at least, when asked, and ensconced within the purview of my own castle, I am at liberty to choose just how much to reveal of my otherwise private ails.

Long-distance relationships tend to do that to us; they divorce us from intimacy, real intimacy, in which one can see, hear, touch, and smell the other. (Writing that much helps us to stay in touch, ha!) "Familiarity breeds discontent," goes the saying. And being with and around anyone too long can indeed strain at whatever romance, adulation, favour, and even respect one may harbour for the other. "Beware disliking the faults in others," the adage goes, "they are in you." (It often takes me by surprise just how comprehensive that ‘they’ is!) And in exercising compassion, in being aware of the need to be yet more integrative, one can grow and grow. “Don’t hide your light,” says Professor Morrie Schwartz. Yet still, there is the guardian at the gate. We choose our words carefully, or not. We consider and then act with care, or not. We try to assume nothing 'wrong' with another, yet we hold the other in abeyance with our judgement or appraisal, or not. And we certainly don't always do our best with whatever we've got at the given moment, for we are innately lazy. "Laziness is the original sin," says Scott Peck. So... I do not communicate with you as often as I 'should'.

Guarded, and careful, I allow you the news I think you'd like to hear; or worse, I take in and recall only the news from you of interest to me. (One does not necessarily listen to the other.) We are creatures unto ourselves, each moving about with our own interests. Birds do that. Utterly focused on what each hopes to find in someone else's turf; only at the provocation of alarm do they flock off. "Birds of a feather flock together," is Holland's Theory. It is the guard at my gate that disallows the looky-loos. That guard has me kept safe. And when you attempt to visit, or to come find me, or to drop in (unexpectedly), that guard can find curt phrases and intellectual sophisms with which to dissuade you, waylay you, and even discard you. Sorry!

"Every man is his own castle," someone wrote; meaning 'hu-man'. Thing is, the mote around us does have crocodiles or orcas or bug-catchers or biting dogs, and we do have a drawbridge. And unless really, truly, all alone, we do not even have to answer to anyone saying, "who was that knocking at the door?" Yes, truly, one is never really very much alone to do exactly as one wishes at all. The guard at the gate knows that; one is watched over. Always.

Winsome Words

Somewhere in all the words are real people. We write with care and love and hugs and affection and phrases that can sound trite, or not. We write that we may connect. We write with a sense that the other will chew on our words; (will masticate.) Ha! We hope that we will reach the other. We trust that they will understand. (Diction matters.) And thereby, in the solipsistic stylization of our affect we hope the effect will be enduring. We write to send love, care, thought, and well-wishes for the others' welfare. Yet we care not too much about spelling or homonyms or phonemes. We trust all will be forgiven. Because somewhere in all the words are real people.

Death brings on that bereft feeling of never hearing from a person again. Little deaths occur month after month as time slips into years and one thinks about the loss of contact from so and so, or him and her. We are creatures of the moment. And so, we tell what's happening 'now'. That we were in Ottawa once is interesting, to me. We saw the Canadian History museum, visited the Houses of Parliament, and went to a maple-syrup farm. Yet the more detail, the less you may identify. My words may lose you; though somewhere in there is the real me. We are mirrors of each other. We reflect that which we know. And we keep behind our backs the things the other does not see. Death is like that. It takes away the chance yet once more to be able to peer into the other's eyes, and to see the soul. (When shall one never again hear the (last) words of the other? Hm?)

Words are such constructs. We fixate on meanings. The soul is named, so it must exist. So too must Santa. And so forth. Constructs make up our mythologies. Yet history has made a mockery of the immanent beliefs of the Greeks, and then the Romans, and then the Celts, and the Zulu. Their gods have lost power. Beliefs have eroded. Words denoting cherished entities have devolved from adulation to mere intellectual apprehension. We no longer recall the Pantheon. We no longer have reference or deference. Yet in the present we now co-exist with words that give other meaning and import, (despite the avowed intention of some to have those self-same contentions overthrown). OMG! The constructs of our times are imminent iconoclastic impulses toward the dissolutions of eminence. We are in, 'The Iconoclastic Age'! (as hereby given coinage.)

Names for things appear to bring them to life. Kathmandu can be found. So can Timbuktu! But Xanadu is sadly no longer. Yet all of history precedes us, and within the scope and content of its passage we each have had the seeds of progeny that have brought us, willy-nilly, to this place, you and me, (or, "I, and Thou," as Martin Buber would have it). Children become adults.

Trouble is, there are so very many things to know. For some, there are so very many concepts to refute! There are (hierarchical) rungs to climb in the metaphors and analogies of life. But taking on yet one more rubric can be like taking on an accretion of mere facts, rather than being given the wings to soar to the next levels. Words. They can make or break me. Familial words. (That everyone has a Mummy and Daddy certainly does not make all parents the same. Even Brothers and Sisters applies, usually, to The Chosen.)

Words. Big ones are off-putting. Small ones can be paltry. Thing is, words between us are about things, people, and ideas. We apportion the subjects according to our own proclivities. But most frequent is the weather, the immediate, the sense of an other's health, well-being, and welfare, and then the mention of places been, places to go, and the feeling of missing the other (or why write at all?) And in all of these words, somewhere, are the real people. Writing about it all. You?