Criminal law, the beginning of my sad, unhappy year in law school—I know nothing about the law and I have the grades to prove it. Others were hiding out. I was actively listening. My facial expressions interacting with everything Richardson said.
Early in the semester, we came upon a few cases with holdings that seemed unjust. He would point out the apparent injustice, smile, shrug, and say: “We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily have it.”
Richardson had spotted my reactions and hit me twice with questions about these apparently “unjust cases.” I could give the summary and holding correctly, but Richardson would skewer me for my judgmental thoughts on the holding. He’d ask me to summarize the case, and in doing so, my face would tell my dissatisfaction. He followed with questions exposing my thoughts about the holding. I would inevitably--and stupidly--say I didn’t like the holding because it was wrong. He would smile; point out my opinion of the law didn’t change it, and once asked, “Are you familiar with the concept of compromise?” Steaming a bit, thinking he was baiting me, I said, “I’m humiliatingly aware of the concept of compromise.” It was a weak response, revealing I’m sure to most in the room, that I deserved baiting. He smiled, shrugged, and continued.
After those first hits, I listened and took notes, trying to mask my thoughts and feelings. I no more wanted to invite questions with facial expressions or body language. Though I never learned to mask completely, Richardson turned his hits to my classmates the rest of the semester and I thought he had forgotten about my narrow thinking and about me.
At semester’s end, in his last lecture, expounding on another apparently unjust holding, he stopped abruptly. Looked directly at me and said, “You don’t like that, do you, White?”
“No, because it seems wrong to me,” I said. Thereby proving how little wisdom I had gained that semester.
He began the phrase, all familiar gestures and inflections, “We only seek justice, we don’t necessarily. . .”
I leaped on it, overlapping “have it,” obliterating his pause, smile, knowing look, and shrug with the words: “I’ve been waiting for you to say that again all semester.”
The slight stir in the lecture hall threw him off his timing. My classmates were emerging, making the subtle shifts needed to bring themselves out of hiding and into direct line of sight with Richardson. He raised his eyebrows, looked directly at me, again, and . . . waited.
“Because,” I threw into the silence, “If we accept that statement as true, we not only guarantee never to have justice, we also reduce number of times we might approach justice.”
At least that’s what I thought I said, what I wanted to say. My only clear memory is sound coming out of my mouth over the heart in my throat. I hope that’s what I said.
Richardson smiled, shrugged, and went on to the next case.
I like to remember that moment as some kind of victory.
I think if we believe something is impossible we make it so. If something is in fact impossible to attain and it is a good thing, it seems to me we increase the good by reaching for it.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Nice Is Different Than Good
Good is the verity.
Or perhaps, to phrase it as the ancient philosophers did, "the good."
Many today cannot differentiate "nice" from "good."
Because of this, still others focus on being nice to hide the reality that they are not good. It's an easier task, less effort, less character demanded. It's facile but quite pleasant. When they are very bad, they make a point to be especially nice, confident no one will notice the stark difference.
Eventually, they cease to notice the flat plain of "nice" lacks the deep dimensionality of "good."
Or perhaps, to phrase it as the ancient philosophers did, "the good."
Many today cannot differentiate "nice" from "good."
Because of this, still others focus on being nice to hide the reality that they are not good. It's an easier task, less effort, less character demanded. It's facile but quite pleasant. When they are very bad, they make a point to be especially nice, confident no one will notice the stark difference.
Eventually, they cease to notice the flat plain of "nice" lacks the deep dimensionality of "good."
Friday, July 20, 2007
On Choosing Riches
Being on the cutting edge, has never really been one of my goals, but I've been reminded again during the i-phone release how challenging it is to even stay current in anything (technology, style, fashion) without a lot of money (this is also sometimes pejoratively called, "keeping up with the Joneses," but the phrase is so out of fashion—not current at all).
Many years ago, one of my students, the daughter of a medical doctor with a successful practice, was talking to me in her senior year about how much she was thinking she would enjoy being a teacher.
I *gently* suggested she also consider in her thinking how much she enjoyed her car (a brand new, fully loaded, cream-colored Pontiac Grand Am with matching leather interior, as I remember), the new and very stylish cashmere sweater she was wearing, her harp playing (as I remember her instrument cost more than my car and seemed to require an SUV just to haul it around), being able to participate in dressage competitions, and the many other financial amenities she enjoyed as the good doctor’s daughter. She barely paused in her catalogue of the anticipated joys of teaching, but seemed a little put off by my suggestions at the time. Ultimately she chose a nursing career, married a doctor, left nursing, taught classes at her church, bought and competed with a top dressage thoroughbred, and became a parent volunteer in the schools her children attended, most of these choices, by the way, were identical to those her mother had made.
The girl may have been happier as a public school teacher. She may even have had a greater impact on many more children, but if she grew to be anything like her mother that isn’t necessarily the case. As I remember, her mother was one of the principal organizers of our Project Graduation, a program staffed and funded by parent volunteers that has benefited several thousand Brazoswood students for more than a decade. A vow of poverty is not an absolute prerequisite to doing good or for that matter to being an artist.
I encourage my students as they are thinking about colleges/careers to consider whether the financial rewards of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or maybe some capitalistic/corporate career might be a better choice for them. Many of course want to act or work in “the business” and are surprised when I appear to discourage it. I tell them they would be more likely to afford all the gadgets they have, the kind of clothes they wear, and the activities they enjoy in a career where more than just the top ten percent earn income above the poverty level. Those who assert they will be rich and famous as actors usually face a Socratic style string of questions designed to bring them to the realization that what they really want is to be well-known, powerful, and rich. Whereupon I suggest they consider dealing drugs as an easier path to their life goal. I believe they get the point, though they seldom acknowledge it.
On the other hand, I also ask them to consider the lives of some of my doctor friends, who--it has always seemed to me--do not like being doctors and would rather spend their time doing something more artistic. Unfortunately, my friends also seem to really like all the stuff that can be bought with a doctor's income and can’t quite make the choice to leave it all. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing a career that increases the likelihood of a wealthy lifestyle (excepting of course the doubtful morality of choosing a career dealing drugs) if it is a choice, but at least one of my friends seems to have backed into that life without making it an intentional choice, and so is grouchy and apparently unhappy so much of the time I feel sorry for him. He seems trapped.
I tell my students that of the hundreds of ways to move into the future there are at least two widely separate ways they might want to ruminate on as they make their career decisions.
On the other, other hand, another friend told me once if he “had known in college what [he] knew now” he would have gone to dental school in preparation for taking over his father's practice. He and his wife seem to have struggled their whole lives because the career he chose, youth minister, just did not turn out to be the one he, or possibly, they together, could be happy with. Same thing with his wife, she was in the top five or so of her graduating class and never seemed to land in a career where she was comfortable. I think her degree was in teaching but the closest she ever got to that was teacher aid. They have always seemed to drift along from one job--as opposed to a career--to another without really settling in anywhere. To the best of my ability to discern, my friend has kept a pretty good spirit, but he does regret some of his choices.
I don't necessarily recommend my students choose to make the bucks so they can then do and have the things they desire, but it is something they should consider. It is a choice many people make. I think it's a valid choice. It's not the choice I made.
I never expected wealth when I chose teaching. I expected to be frugal on some things so I could spend on others--which is what I have always done. I really believe--and this is so much more a truth than the flippant joke it seems to be--the only true way to be rich is to spend less money than you have, so you always have more than you need. If you can't do that and be happy with the choice, then you should make another choice. I also figured a creative person could always find way to do and have the things he desired even if he didn't really have the bucks to buy them straight up.
Therefore, when I wanted new technology for my children, my family, and myself I went out and took extra jobs. Some of those jobs brought in extra money; others just gave us access to technology we couldn’t afford to buy. Our computer use was never cutting edge, but as I look back, I believe we fell into the category of early adopters.
Over the years, my fondness for travel was filled by all the little short trips my family made to interesting places close by--an exploration of Houston or Galveston is rich if approached creatively. Actually, someone who looks at the world with openness and kindness can find exploring Clute an interesting travel. My fondness for New York City and broader travel was fulfilled by leading student tours and managing to make some travel job or education related.
My desire to do creative work has been filled many ways: by my private writings, by directing, and working on high school and community plays--and to a certain extent by "coaching" original creative work by students. Among my creative writing students are poets and several playwrights, two others write regularly for newspapers and one is a regular columnist. Two of my students have had several short plays performed by other groups, that is they were not self-produced. I still expect one of my young playwrights to produce professionally some day. Several of my acting/theatre students have and/or are now working professionally.
My desire to be a positive blessing for other people has been filled not by big financial donations to charities and causes--though I make many small financial donations--but by teaching at school, church, the Center For The Arts, and by the choices of performance literature I have always made. For a while, I was an elder at our church and that was a good thing, I believe.
If I have regrets, they’re not because I trapped myself in a life I hated and blamed on others.
I did after all at one point take charge and dump teaching to go to law school, thinking my family would be better off if I made more money. I made the choice. In law school, I decided the things I did with my life and my time with my family were more important than the money I could make working as a lawyer sixty billable hours a week, a goal I discovered usually required many more hours than sixty. I took charge again and dumped law school, another choice. Ultimately, not finishing my PhD was yet another choice I made for my family.
The regret I do have is that for a while, I let the vagaries of life shadow my spirit and keep me from doing things I have always chosen to do joyfully, but it’s only a slight regret. I still choose to live under the pall of life's vagaries, but I don't let that keep me from doing things that give me joy. I'm still heart-broken and soul-sick, but rather than that state being the terminal tragedy of my life, I see it as the other side of the great joy I had in great love. There is no regret there and no deep fear of future pain. I believe people who wall themselves off from emotional pain also brick up their capacity for joy. I’ve been hurt. I will probably be hurt again, but I will also love again. It’s my life, my choice, my pain, and also my joy.
Many years ago, one of my students, the daughter of a medical doctor with a successful practice, was talking to me in her senior year about how much she was thinking she would enjoy being a teacher.
I *gently* suggested she also consider in her thinking how much she enjoyed her car (a brand new, fully loaded, cream-colored Pontiac Grand Am with matching leather interior, as I remember), the new and very stylish cashmere sweater she was wearing, her harp playing (as I remember her instrument cost more than my car and seemed to require an SUV just to haul it around), being able to participate in dressage competitions, and the many other financial amenities she enjoyed as the good doctor’s daughter. She barely paused in her catalogue of the anticipated joys of teaching, but seemed a little put off by my suggestions at the time. Ultimately she chose a nursing career, married a doctor, left nursing, taught classes at her church, bought and competed with a top dressage thoroughbred, and became a parent volunteer in the schools her children attended, most of these choices, by the way, were identical to those her mother had made.
The girl may have been happier as a public school teacher. She may even have had a greater impact on many more children, but if she grew to be anything like her mother that isn’t necessarily the case. As I remember, her mother was one of the principal organizers of our Project Graduation, a program staffed and funded by parent volunteers that has benefited several thousand Brazoswood students for more than a decade. A vow of poverty is not an absolute prerequisite to doing good or for that matter to being an artist.
I encourage my students as they are thinking about colleges/careers to consider whether the financial rewards of being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or maybe some capitalistic/corporate career might be a better choice for them. Many of course want to act or work in “the business” and are surprised when I appear to discourage it. I tell them they would be more likely to afford all the gadgets they have, the kind of clothes they wear, and the activities they enjoy in a career where more than just the top ten percent earn income above the poverty level. Those who assert they will be rich and famous as actors usually face a Socratic style string of questions designed to bring them to the realization that what they really want is to be well-known, powerful, and rich. Whereupon I suggest they consider dealing drugs as an easier path to their life goal. I believe they get the point, though they seldom acknowledge it.
On the other hand, I also ask them to consider the lives of some of my doctor friends, who--it has always seemed to me--do not like being doctors and would rather spend their time doing something more artistic. Unfortunately, my friends also seem to really like all the stuff that can be bought with a doctor's income and can’t quite make the choice to leave it all. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing a career that increases the likelihood of a wealthy lifestyle (excepting of course the doubtful morality of choosing a career dealing drugs) if it is a choice, but at least one of my friends seems to have backed into that life without making it an intentional choice, and so is grouchy and apparently unhappy so much of the time I feel sorry for him. He seems trapped.
I tell my students that of the hundreds of ways to move into the future there are at least two widely separate ways they might want to ruminate on as they make their career decisions.
(Way #1) Take control and make choices using your best judgment.
If you later find you don't like your choices, either choose to make the best of them with a good spirit (imminently possible--people do this joyfully every day) or summon the courage to take control again and change. Make different choices.
(Way #2) Fall into your future without actually making choices.
Here may lay a sad morass. If you later decide you don't like it, you feel trapped. Or since it wasn’t your choice in the first place, you may fall into denial. You claim to like it even though you really don't. Subsequently you begin to feel inexplicably trapped and miserable. After living that nightmare for a while, it’s almost inevitable you will decide (or in the case of the self-denier, "come to feel") your situation is someone or something's fault other than your own. After faulting anything and or anyone but yourself, you decide (or "come to feel" again) your misery is beyond your control and you are helpless. Finally, you are in full-blown unhappiness. You build unhappiness and resentment toward your situation and everyone you know, and begin to blame others. You spew blame indiscriminately, hitting those closest to you hardest and most. You freak out. You never really know why.
On the other, other hand, another friend told me once if he “had known in college what [he] knew now” he would have gone to dental school in preparation for taking over his father's practice. He and his wife seem to have struggled their whole lives because the career he chose, youth minister, just did not turn out to be the one he, or possibly, they together, could be happy with. Same thing with his wife, she was in the top five or so of her graduating class and never seemed to land in a career where she was comfortable. I think her degree was in teaching but the closest she ever got to that was teacher aid. They have always seemed to drift along from one job--as opposed to a career--to another without really settling in anywhere. To the best of my ability to discern, my friend has kept a pretty good spirit, but he does regret some of his choices.
I don't necessarily recommend my students choose to make the bucks so they can then do and have the things they desire, but it is something they should consider. It is a choice many people make. I think it's a valid choice. It's not the choice I made.
I never expected wealth when I chose teaching. I expected to be frugal on some things so I could spend on others--which is what I have always done. I really believe--and this is so much more a truth than the flippant joke it seems to be--the only true way to be rich is to spend less money than you have, so you always have more than you need. If you can't do that and be happy with the choice, then you should make another choice. I also figured a creative person could always find way to do and have the things he desired even if he didn't really have the bucks to buy them straight up.
Therefore, when I wanted new technology for my children, my family, and myself I went out and took extra jobs. Some of those jobs brought in extra money; others just gave us access to technology we couldn’t afford to buy. Our computer use was never cutting edge, but as I look back, I believe we fell into the category of early adopters.
Over the years, my fondness for travel was filled by all the little short trips my family made to interesting places close by--an exploration of Houston or Galveston is rich if approached creatively. Actually, someone who looks at the world with openness and kindness can find exploring Clute an interesting travel. My fondness for New York City and broader travel was fulfilled by leading student tours and managing to make some travel job or education related.
My desire to do creative work has been filled many ways: by my private writings, by directing, and working on high school and community plays--and to a certain extent by "coaching" original creative work by students. Among my creative writing students are poets and several playwrights, two others write regularly for newspapers and one is a regular columnist. Two of my students have had several short plays performed by other groups, that is they were not self-produced. I still expect one of my young playwrights to produce professionally some day. Several of my acting/theatre students have and/or are now working professionally.
My desire to be a positive blessing for other people has been filled not by big financial donations to charities and causes--though I make many small financial donations--but by teaching at school, church, the Center For The Arts, and by the choices of performance literature I have always made. For a while, I was an elder at our church and that was a good thing, I believe.
If I have regrets, they’re not because I trapped myself in a life I hated and blamed on others.
I did after all at one point take charge and dump teaching to go to law school, thinking my family would be better off if I made more money. I made the choice. In law school, I decided the things I did with my life and my time with my family were more important than the money I could make working as a lawyer sixty billable hours a week, a goal I discovered usually required many more hours than sixty. I took charge again and dumped law school, another choice. Ultimately, not finishing my PhD was yet another choice I made for my family.
The regret I do have is that for a while, I let the vagaries of life shadow my spirit and keep me from doing things I have always chosen to do joyfully, but it’s only a slight regret. I still choose to live under the pall of life's vagaries, but I don't let that keep me from doing things that give me joy. I'm still heart-broken and soul-sick, but rather than that state being the terminal tragedy of my life, I see it as the other side of the great joy I had in great love. There is no regret there and no deep fear of future pain. I believe people who wall themselves off from emotional pain also brick up their capacity for joy. I’ve been hurt. I will probably be hurt again, but I will also love again. It’s my life, my choice, my pain, and also my joy.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Pain, Joy, and Becoming Numb
I believe pain is inevitable, even necessary, but that suffering is a choice. My feet hurt right now, but I don’t allow that pain to steal my power to choose. If I yielded my will to that pain, I would soon be suffering, even suffocating.
On the other hand, I don’t ignore it, either. Pain alerts me to problems I need to address. So tonight, I treat the cause of the pain. I take some simple steps to bring the swelling down, knowing it will return, if not tomorrow then another day. I also know when it returns I will treat it again.
It would be dangerous to ignore the pain, pretend it’s cause does not exist, and not treat it. If I did that, I could accelerate myself into a downward physical spiral towards even greater pain, ultimately until I’m left, literally without a leg to stand on. I could also travel that same downward spiral with drugs that numbed the pain without treating the cause.
It would also be dangerous to recoil sharply from that pain, determined never to feel it again. That choice would lead me to my bed, elevating my feet, alternating heat and cold packs on them, and never again doing anything—like walking or sitting—to cause my feet to swell and give me pain.
I believe my choices are the same with both physical and emotional pain. I acknowledge and treat pain’s cause, doing what simple things I can. I do not ignore it; pretend it’s not there or that I don’t feel it. Finally, I do not flee, determined never to feel pain again, making myself numb to its warning.
I believe I cannot allow myself to become a bit numb to pain without also becoming a bit numb to love and joy.
On the other hand, I don’t ignore it, either. Pain alerts me to problems I need to address. So tonight, I treat the cause of the pain. I take some simple steps to bring the swelling down, knowing it will return, if not tomorrow then another day. I also know when it returns I will treat it again.
It would be dangerous to ignore the pain, pretend it’s cause does not exist, and not treat it. If I did that, I could accelerate myself into a downward physical spiral towards even greater pain, ultimately until I’m left, literally without a leg to stand on. I could also travel that same downward spiral with drugs that numbed the pain without treating the cause.
It would also be dangerous to recoil sharply from that pain, determined never to feel it again. That choice would lead me to my bed, elevating my feet, alternating heat and cold packs on them, and never again doing anything—like walking or sitting—to cause my feet to swell and give me pain.
I believe my choices are the same with both physical and emotional pain. I acknowledge and treat pain’s cause, doing what simple things I can. I do not ignore it; pretend it’s not there or that I don’t feel it. Finally, I do not flee, determined never to feel pain again, making myself numb to its warning.
I believe I cannot allow myself to become a bit numb to pain without also becoming a bit numb to love and joy.
Monday, June 11, 2007
I’ve already had a chance at that bottle and turned it down.
“Houston woman convicted of killing her husband by running over him with her Mercedes in a hotel parking lot after finding him with his mistress.”
The Clara Harris case was a tell for our whole society. Our perverse fascination for murderous revenge was exposed in the detailed nation-wide coverage of the story that stretched from the day she ran over her husband, through the murder trial, to the wrongful death suit months later.
Clara, the now-infamous Dentist’s wife, tracked down her cheating husband with his mistress at a Houston motel and ran over him in the parking lot multiple times with the family Mercedes. Her stepdaughter was sitting in the front seat at her side, begging Clara not to kill daddy. The daughter, 16 at the time of the murder, is quoted years later as saying: “Anyone who shared my ride in the car that evening, seeing my dad’s face as he was about to be hit, and experiencing the horrible feel of the car bumping over his body would understand that this murderess deserves no sympathy.” The police and witnesses confirmed Clara did not stop after running over him once, but ran over him repeatedly, some witness accounts claim as many as five times. Surprisingly, a significant percentage of the subsequent public response claimed she should not have been convicted, that the cheating husband got what he deserved.
One miserable day—in the nightmare two years between Connie’s “I love Bruce,” and “I’m leaving”—our family was touring Greenwich, England. At her insistence, I was trying to put on a good face. The raw bleeding agony of her betrayal kept pushing into my thoughts, leaving me blindly stumbling through the day, totally overwhelmed by the cold aching reality beneath what I saw as her fake smiles, fake laughter, and fake ministrations to our children. Every pose she struck seemed a mockery of motherhood. She looked into the eyes of our children and pretended we were the same happy family I always thought us to be even though I knew she held the absolute conviction I was such a bad husband, such a bad father that her relationship with Bruce was justified.
It should have been a delightful family day, but violence kept forcing its way into my thoughts. I alternately wished to kill myself, then Connie, then Bruce. I would mentally hurl the thoughts from my head, trying to enjoy some moment of the day, but the bloody wishes would push back in and cycle through my mind repeatedly. Reoccurring throughout that day of disorienting madness were a few clear thoughts: “I won’t be that kind of father.” I held and still hold the conviction that every bad choice parents make can multiply the bad choices their children will ultimately make.
That’s why it’s so hard for me to imagine why Clara took her stepdaughter along on the vehicular homicide that killed the girl’s own father. I thought, "Who would do that to a kid?"
That day I pushed my thoughts away from violence by thinking, “What kind of father would do that to his children?” Not the kind I wanted to be. By the end of the day, clinging to the desire not to hurt my children, I careened away from those obsessive, murderous thoughts, and, for the most part, never went back to them.
Sometimes I think Connie and Bruce owe me a trip to England with the kids, at the very least a pleasant day in Greenwich to replace the one their choices robbed of me, but most of the time I think I owe myself that day because allowing those thoughts to steal it from me was my choice, my weakness.
By the time we went to England, Connie had agreed for me to go see a marriage counselor but had refused to go herself. Later she agreed to go to the counselor herself, alone. Much later, she agreed to go with me to a few joint sessions. Her mantra on the drive up each time was, “It won’t make any difference.” Prescient that. During the sessions, she would most often decline to speak. Lots of silence there. On the drive back from a session, she would explode, angry outbursts that seemed to come from deep within, but were disconnected from anything in the session.
Occasionally she would curse at me. She cursed like a pre-teen trying to learn the low art. Words dropping out of her mouth, stumbling into the air poorly timed with awkward inflections. Cursing was so atypical of her it silenced me. I had no response to her cursing, didn't know what to say and didn’t dare laugh at its awkwardness.
Prior to the England trip, the counselor I was seeing pulled out of me the fact I was not sleeping at all. Earnestly telling me sleep deprivation could cause psychosis and that I should avoid psychosis if possible, this counselor, who was so proud of his homeopathic methods, immediately whipped me over to a psychiatrist for sleeping pills and anti-depressants. To get these pills, I had to have a thirty minute face-to-face session with the shrink at least once a month. The next time I went to see him after the England trip with its’ miserable day of murderous thoughts I mentioned it to him. I had never had thoughts like that before and I worried they were a precursor to something horrible. I told him I had a day where I was obsessed “with thoughts of suicide/murder.” After a brief pause, a direct, wide-eyed look, and a blink, the shrink said, “You mean murder/suicide, don’t you.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, I guess that would be the correct order wouldn’t it.” I think my laughter was a good sign. The shrink seemed to think so. I hope it was a good sign. Everyone survived the day alive, anyway.
A Mark Twain short story, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadlyburg,” thematically asserts man can’t claim to be good until he has the choice to be evil. In the little pitcher* days my cousins and I shared, surreptitiously absorbing our father’s words from outside their conversation circle, I heard one of my seven uncles joke about being “a better Christian” than his brothers because he had remained abstinent his whole life though he “knew [he] had more chances at a bottle” than they. The assumption beneath his joke was virtue not subjected to temptation was not authentic. It was my first intimation of the labyrinthine complexities of good and evil.
An anonymous comment on “e-verities” asked me if I “believe in revenge? Do [I] believe it is ever justified?” I though about that question for a while, reading back through what I had written about forgetting wrongs verses revenging them, trying to determine if there was a subconscious warm-up to, or a lengthy justification being built for some act of revenge I had yet to take.
I concluded I haven’t been planning revenge, even subconsciously, but decrying it. It's true many victims seem to have a gnawing need for revenge, but I really believe the only true victim of our bad choices is ourselves—left helpless in the face of ultimate, inevitable, consequences.
Others, hurt by our choices, are only victims if they choose to be. They desire revenge the same way a drunk desires a bottle, but they need something else, something healing, something that will take them out of the downward spiral of revenge for wrong, revenge for revenge for wrong, revenge for revenge for revenge . . . Well I guess this pattern is also eternal, but I wouldn’t call it a verity
My reply to “anonymous” was: To take revenge is to take spiritual poison. I’ve already had a chance at that bottle and turned it down. The dark eternal consequences of choosing revenge are more abhorrent to me than the ephemeral rush available to me in taking revenge. The real eternal verity here is not revenge or forgetting, but forgiveness.
*little pitchers , first the surreptitious attentiveness of my cousins and myself was noticed, then silent arch looks passed from uncle to uncle, and one would say, “little pitchers have big ears.” This was followed by winks and knowing looks all around, a heads together volume reduction, and a change in subject. Still, we heard quite a bit.
The Clara Harris case was a tell for our whole society. Our perverse fascination for murderous revenge was exposed in the detailed nation-wide coverage of the story that stretched from the day she ran over her husband, through the murder trial, to the wrongful death suit months later.
Clara, the now-infamous Dentist’s wife, tracked down her cheating husband with his mistress at a Houston motel and ran over him in the parking lot multiple times with the family Mercedes. Her stepdaughter was sitting in the front seat at her side, begging Clara not to kill daddy. The daughter, 16 at the time of the murder, is quoted years later as saying: “Anyone who shared my ride in the car that evening, seeing my dad’s face as he was about to be hit, and experiencing the horrible feel of the car bumping over his body would understand that this murderess deserves no sympathy.” The police and witnesses confirmed Clara did not stop after running over him once, but ran over him repeatedly, some witness accounts claim as many as five times. Surprisingly, a significant percentage of the subsequent public response claimed she should not have been convicted, that the cheating husband got what he deserved.
One miserable day—in the nightmare two years between Connie’s “I love Bruce,” and “I’m leaving”—our family was touring Greenwich, England. At her insistence, I was trying to put on a good face. The raw bleeding agony of her betrayal kept pushing into my thoughts, leaving me blindly stumbling through the day, totally overwhelmed by the cold aching reality beneath what I saw as her fake smiles, fake laughter, and fake ministrations to our children. Every pose she struck seemed a mockery of motherhood. She looked into the eyes of our children and pretended we were the same happy family I always thought us to be even though I knew she held the absolute conviction I was such a bad husband, such a bad father that her relationship with Bruce was justified.
It should have been a delightful family day, but violence kept forcing its way into my thoughts. I alternately wished to kill myself, then Connie, then Bruce. I would mentally hurl the thoughts from my head, trying to enjoy some moment of the day, but the bloody wishes would push back in and cycle through my mind repeatedly. Reoccurring throughout that day of disorienting madness were a few clear thoughts: “I won’t be that kind of father.” I held and still hold the conviction that every bad choice parents make can multiply the bad choices their children will ultimately make.
That’s why it’s so hard for me to imagine why Clara took her stepdaughter along on the vehicular homicide that killed the girl’s own father. I thought, "Who would do that to a kid?"
That day I pushed my thoughts away from violence by thinking, “What kind of father would do that to his children?” Not the kind I wanted to be. By the end of the day, clinging to the desire not to hurt my children, I careened away from those obsessive, murderous thoughts, and, for the most part, never went back to them.
Sometimes I think Connie and Bruce owe me a trip to England with the kids, at the very least a pleasant day in Greenwich to replace the one their choices robbed of me, but most of the time I think I owe myself that day because allowing those thoughts to steal it from me was my choice, my weakness.
By the time we went to England, Connie had agreed for me to go see a marriage counselor but had refused to go herself. Later she agreed to go to the counselor herself, alone. Much later, she agreed to go with me to a few joint sessions. Her mantra on the drive up each time was, “It won’t make any difference.” Prescient that. During the sessions, she would most often decline to speak. Lots of silence there. On the drive back from a session, she would explode, angry outbursts that seemed to come from deep within, but were disconnected from anything in the session.
Occasionally she would curse at me. She cursed like a pre-teen trying to learn the low art. Words dropping out of her mouth, stumbling into the air poorly timed with awkward inflections. Cursing was so atypical of her it silenced me. I had no response to her cursing, didn't know what to say and didn’t dare laugh at its awkwardness.
Prior to the England trip, the counselor I was seeing pulled out of me the fact I was not sleeping at all. Earnestly telling me sleep deprivation could cause psychosis and that I should avoid psychosis if possible, this counselor, who was so proud of his homeopathic methods, immediately whipped me over to a psychiatrist for sleeping pills and anti-depressants. To get these pills, I had to have a thirty minute face-to-face session with the shrink at least once a month. The next time I went to see him after the England trip with its’ miserable day of murderous thoughts I mentioned it to him. I had never had thoughts like that before and I worried they were a precursor to something horrible. I told him I had a day where I was obsessed “with thoughts of suicide/murder.” After a brief pause, a direct, wide-eyed look, and a blink, the shrink said, “You mean murder/suicide, don’t you.” I laughed and said, “Yeah, I guess that would be the correct order wouldn’t it.” I think my laughter was a good sign. The shrink seemed to think so. I hope it was a good sign. Everyone survived the day alive, anyway.
A Mark Twain short story, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadlyburg,” thematically asserts man can’t claim to be good until he has the choice to be evil. In the little pitcher* days my cousins and I shared, surreptitiously absorbing our father’s words from outside their conversation circle, I heard one of my seven uncles joke about being “a better Christian” than his brothers because he had remained abstinent his whole life though he “knew [he] had more chances at a bottle” than they. The assumption beneath his joke was virtue not subjected to temptation was not authentic. It was my first intimation of the labyrinthine complexities of good and evil.
An anonymous comment on “e-verities” asked me if I “believe in revenge? Do [I] believe it is ever justified?” I though about that question for a while, reading back through what I had written about forgetting wrongs verses revenging them, trying to determine if there was a subconscious warm-up to, or a lengthy justification being built for some act of revenge I had yet to take.
I concluded I haven’t been planning revenge, even subconsciously, but decrying it. It's true many victims seem to have a gnawing need for revenge, but I really believe the only true victim of our bad choices is ourselves—left helpless in the face of ultimate, inevitable, consequences.
Others, hurt by our choices, are only victims if they choose to be. They desire revenge the same way a drunk desires a bottle, but they need something else, something healing, something that will take them out of the downward spiral of revenge for wrong, revenge for revenge for wrong, revenge for revenge for revenge . . . Well I guess this pattern is also eternal, but I wouldn’t call it a verity
My reply to “anonymous” was: To take revenge is to take spiritual poison. I’ve already had a chance at that bottle and turned it down. The dark eternal consequences of choosing revenge are more abhorrent to me than the ephemeral rush available to me in taking revenge. The real eternal verity here is not revenge or forgetting, but forgiveness.
*little pitchers , first the surreptitious attentiveness of my cousins and myself was noticed, then silent arch looks passed from uncle to uncle, and one would say, “little pitchers have big ears.” This was followed by winks and knowing looks all around, a heads together volume reduction, and a change in subject. Still, we heard quite a bit.
Monday, April 02, 2007
I don't know where the verity is in this.
It occurs to me I have been struggling, unsuccessfully, for five years not to look pathetic, not to look like a post-divorce cadaver, moving zombie-like through the world without interaction.
I make feints at engaging—trying to “move on” as goes the popular phrase—but it seems I run into many blank walls; little incidents where my energy, time, and emotions disappear into the bland flat surface without a ripple, without apparent effect or affect.
I stare blankly at those moments and struggle against the urge to go home, close my door, and not come out.
I don't know where the verity is in this.
I make feints at engaging—trying to “move on” as goes the popular phrase—but it seems I run into many blank walls; little incidents where my energy, time, and emotions disappear into the bland flat surface without a ripple, without apparent effect or affect.
I stare blankly at those moments and struggle against the urge to go home, close my door, and not come out.
I don't know where the verity is in this.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Forgetting Lies
How can you forget love? How can you forget someone you’ve loved? I think I can understand how you could forget someone with whom you’ve shared a brief moment, a passing fancy, a wink, maybe even a dalliance—daydreamed or real, but forgetting someone you’ve loved?
How can you forget someone you’ve trusted completely, someone from whom you’ve withheld no intimacy, someone to whom you have made yourself totally vulnerable? How can you forget someone for whom your habit of supporting, encouraging, and forgiving is so much a part of you that you find yourself—inexplicably and foolishly--forgiving them of the deepest, most fundamental, and shocking betrayal even as they are in the act of that betrayal.
Perhaps my life experience is just too limited, or I have some deeply ingrained and unrealistic concept of love, but forgetting love is outside my personal experience.
Of course such an absolute view of love also creates its own problem. One who holds this view, thinking they love and who later comes to believe they don’t love, rather than doubt the longevity of love or admit to an inconstant character may doubt the validity of their earlier feelings. The words expressing this doubt come out as nonsense.
For someone to say, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did,” is for them to emit a collection of nearly random sounds, apparently intended to be words, but that do not make meaning. I’ve read these words so many places, heard about them as a relationship exit line so many times that I think they simply must be on someone’s top ten list of trite relationship phrases. There’s as much meaning in the phrases, “I don’t think my heart beats anymore, I’m not sure it ever has,” or “I don’t think I breathe oxygen anymore, I’m not sure I ever did.”
This of course is ephemeral nonsense. Love is the eternal verity here. Moreover, as inexplicably foolish as it seems, the very essence of eternal love includes forgiving even those who betray and reject in the very act of betrayal and rejection.
How can you forget someone you’ve trusted completely, someone from whom you’ve withheld no intimacy, someone to whom you have made yourself totally vulnerable? How can you forget someone for whom your habit of supporting, encouraging, and forgiving is so much a part of you that you find yourself—inexplicably and foolishly--forgiving them of the deepest, most fundamental, and shocking betrayal even as they are in the act of that betrayal.
Perhaps my life experience is just too limited, or I have some deeply ingrained and unrealistic concept of love, but forgetting love is outside my personal experience.
Of course such an absolute view of love also creates its own problem. One who holds this view, thinking they love and who later comes to believe they don’t love, rather than doubt the longevity of love or admit to an inconstant character may doubt the validity of their earlier feelings. The words expressing this doubt come out as nonsense.
For someone to say, “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did,” is for them to emit a collection of nearly random sounds, apparently intended to be words, but that do not make meaning. I’ve read these words so many places, heard about them as a relationship exit line so many times that I think they simply must be on someone’s top ten list of trite relationship phrases. There’s as much meaning in the phrases, “I don’t think my heart beats anymore, I’m not sure it ever has,” or “I don’t think I breathe oxygen anymore, I’m not sure I ever did.”
This of course is ephemeral nonsense. Love is the eternal verity here. Moreover, as inexplicably foolish as it seems, the very essence of eternal love includes forgiving even those who betray and reject in the very act of betrayal and rejection.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
“You can break his heart.”
. . . Miss Havisham to Estella on introducing her new playmate, Pip.
This character from Dickens’ Great Expectations is at the same time implausible and believable. Rather than forgetting her tragic rejection (leaving it behind, and moving on—what a boring plot device that would have been, not Dickinsonian at all), Havisham wallows in grief. Floating restlessly through her mansion, time-frozen at the moment of her betrayal, living for decades amid the rotting wedding feast and dusty decorations she never allowed to be cleared, all the clocks of her life stopped at the tragic moment her fiancé abandoned her at the alter, Havisham’s obsession finds its expression in proxy revenge.
Estella was the only new thing, the only growing thing in those decaying rooms. Estella was raised to wreak Havisham’s vengeance on all men, cultivated to be a heartbreaker, to leave others at the alter as Havisham had been left. Estella was purposed and trained for vengeance without a thought given to her own joy, happiness, or fulfillment.
Eventually, after nurture in Havisham’s shrine to regret, even Estella becomes as frozen in time as the dusty wedding relics cluttering the mansion. She becomes a two dimensional prop, raised for a single purpose, kept shallow, not allowed to deepen and develop. She is frozen at the point of freshly ripened beauty when hearts are stopped at her very presence, before a hint of anything but compliant bliss is allowed to edge into her personality. Wide-eyed and worshipful in a way no woman could ever be, beneath her bosom where her heart should have been is a cold throbbing ice water pump. Cold steel forcing ice water through her veins as she first enthralls then devastates the men she encounters.
At maturity, Estella realizes the trap she is in and is briefly rueful, but ultimately is incapable of feeling the pain of her own cold simulacra of life. She has no hope for change, but only knows her life is not one anyone would choose. She became a beauty trained to break hearts, raised to revenge, Havisham’s proxy revenge.
Revenge by proxy, frequently using innocent and helpless children, is a regular theme in literature and, unfortunately, in our society. Anyone who has experienced first hand or watched helplessly as those full of hurt and anger try to fill a child’s mind with poison knows this to be true. It may be that the horrors of proxy revenge presented in literature are a way we distance ourselves from the emotional horrors committed by us.
In the Robinson Jeffers’ version of the Greek tragedy Medea, there is a moment when the inescapable fall towards destruction pauses, all action gasps to a stop when Medea, after howling in agony through most the play about her husband's betrayal, after sending vengeful wedding gifts to her husband's new wife that burst into flames and reduce her to a charred smoking lump, ends her tirade against Jason, Creon, and the world to look into the face of one of her sons and say: “Would you say that this child has Jason’s eyes?” and then, “tenderly but hopelessly,” says, “They are his cubs. They have his blood. As long as they live I shall be mixed with him.”
These are some of the most chilling words in all literature. They are followed by Medea’s Nurse begging her to flee from the "horror of horrors,” but Medea doesn’t flee. She commits bloody slaughter, killing her sons, saying it is necessary because it is the only vengeance against her husband that equals his betrayal.
A convention of Greek tragedy is that a highborn person is brought to total destruction by hubris. There is, perhaps, no place lower than murderer of your own children, and perhaps there is no hubris greater than to believe your children should die for your revenge. However, I believe the real horror of all horrors, beyond bloody slaughter, is to poison a child’s mind with hurt and anger. That horror can stretch into eternity.
This character from Dickens’ Great Expectations is at the same time implausible and believable. Rather than forgetting her tragic rejection (leaving it behind, and moving on—what a boring plot device that would have been, not Dickinsonian at all), Havisham wallows in grief. Floating restlessly through her mansion, time-frozen at the moment of her betrayal, living for decades amid the rotting wedding feast and dusty decorations she never allowed to be cleared, all the clocks of her life stopped at the tragic moment her fiancé abandoned her at the alter, Havisham’s obsession finds its expression in proxy revenge.
Estella was the only new thing, the only growing thing in those decaying rooms. Estella was raised to wreak Havisham’s vengeance on all men, cultivated to be a heartbreaker, to leave others at the alter as Havisham had been left. Estella was purposed and trained for vengeance without a thought given to her own joy, happiness, or fulfillment.
Eventually, after nurture in Havisham’s shrine to regret, even Estella becomes as frozen in time as the dusty wedding relics cluttering the mansion. She becomes a two dimensional prop, raised for a single purpose, kept shallow, not allowed to deepen and develop. She is frozen at the point of freshly ripened beauty when hearts are stopped at her very presence, before a hint of anything but compliant bliss is allowed to edge into her personality. Wide-eyed and worshipful in a way no woman could ever be, beneath her bosom where her heart should have been is a cold throbbing ice water pump. Cold steel forcing ice water through her veins as she first enthralls then devastates the men she encounters.
At maturity, Estella realizes the trap she is in and is briefly rueful, but ultimately is incapable of feeling the pain of her own cold simulacra of life. She has no hope for change, but only knows her life is not one anyone would choose. She became a beauty trained to break hearts, raised to revenge, Havisham’s proxy revenge.
Revenge by proxy, frequently using innocent and helpless children, is a regular theme in literature and, unfortunately, in our society. Anyone who has experienced first hand or watched helplessly as those full of hurt and anger try to fill a child’s mind with poison knows this to be true. It may be that the horrors of proxy revenge presented in literature are a way we distance ourselves from the emotional horrors committed by us.
In the Robinson Jeffers’ version of the Greek tragedy Medea, there is a moment when the inescapable fall towards destruction pauses, all action gasps to a stop when Medea, after howling in agony through most the play about her husband's betrayal, after sending vengeful wedding gifts to her husband's new wife that burst into flames and reduce her to a charred smoking lump, ends her tirade against Jason, Creon, and the world to look into the face of one of her sons and say: “Would you say that this child has Jason’s eyes?” and then, “tenderly but hopelessly,” says, “They are his cubs. They have his blood. As long as they live I shall be mixed with him.”
These are some of the most chilling words in all literature. They are followed by Medea’s Nurse begging her to flee from the "horror of horrors,” but Medea doesn’t flee. She commits bloody slaughter, killing her sons, saying it is necessary because it is the only vengeance against her husband that equals his betrayal.
A convention of Greek tragedy is that a highborn person is brought to total destruction by hubris. There is, perhaps, no place lower than murderer of your own children, and perhaps there is no hubris greater than to believe your children should die for your revenge. However, I believe the real horror of all horrors, beyond bloody slaughter, is to poison a child’s mind with hurt and anger. That horror can stretch into eternity.
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