Asking for what we need

Why do so many singles ads sound the same? As I pondered venturing out again into the dating scene, I read scores of profiles from men around the Philadelphia area-and found that, after a while, most began to blur together in my mind. Few were seeking a stereotypical domestic goddess/slave. I suppose we might consider that progress. Perhaps I'm way too fussy, but after a while all the profile adjectives collapsed like meringue into a sweet broth of superficiality-Everyman seeks an Everywoman who is sensous, independent, affectionate, family-oriented-and, of course, loves the Jersey shore! Yet women singles also seem to have trouble making the sales pitch that makes them memorable- or so says a guy friend. It is possible, of course, that so many of the profiles sound alike because the authors reflect some kind of fundamental human truth about what we all want-sex, a good meal, a steady income, and a house at the Jersey shore. Is it only because I am not a huge fan of the Jersey beaches that I find this theory so unbelievelable?My intuition is that we (not just singletons, but pretty much all of us) find it very hard to be direct and to expose ourselves enough to unearth the deeper truth-that what we desire requires that we extend ourselves way beyond our comfort zone. It is even possible that the older we get the more difficult it is to ask for what we truly want. Each relationship becomes a decision-will we allow ourselves to gamble on the basic goodness of another human being? In no particular order, wouldn't it be nice to find a man or woman who will forgive us when we hurt them (and ask them to)? A companion who will stick by us if/when we get ill and our hair thins and our varicose veins become prominent? A mate we can trust with all that is fragile and scarred and ugly about ourselves? Someone who will help us laugh when we so want to be self-righteous? Someone who can get our pulses racing with pure unadulaterated lust when sex is the last thing we want as we slam the door after an awful day at the office? I suppose that if dating site clients wrote profiles that articulated these kinds of questions readers might think that the person behind the pitch actually was in need- in need, that is, of a partner as flawed, bruised and hopeful as they are themselves.

A bus to Babylon

"There is a new installment in the annals of loneliness. Americans are not only lacking in bowling partners, now they're lacking in people to tell their deepest, darkest secrets. They've hunkered down even more, their inner circle often contracting until it includes only family, only a spouse or, at worst, no one. And that is something the Internet may help ease, but is unlikely to cure. A recent study by sociologists at Duke and the University of Arizona found that, on average, most adults only have two people they can talk to about the most important subjects in their lives — serious health problems, for example, or issues like who will care for their children should they die. And about one-quarter have no close confidants at all." NYTimes, July 2006 Saturday I'm running wild And all the lights are changing red to green Moving through the crowd I'm pushing Chemicals all rushing through my bloodstream Only wish that you were here You know I'm seeing it so clear I've been afraid To tell you how I really feel Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made If you want it Come and get it Crying out loud The love that I was Giving you was Never in doubt Let go your heart Let go your head And feel it now Babylon, Babylon By David Gray

Early Tuesday morning-I've just put my eleven year old daughter Sian on the school bus. As the bus pulls away I say a quick prayer that her dad's and my decision to change her previous parochial school for a closer one will have been the right one. Sian has blossomed this year, and one-on-one friendships are a lot easier for her than they were. But I still worry-will she retreat if she is hurt? Will they judge her because she hasn't been going to St. Joes for the past six years? Will she surrender too soon?

Since I read about the results of the study of lonely Americans this past July, I've been wondering why we are increasingly afflicted by this ailment. It is a complex question, admitting of no one easy answer. Few of us live in one town or city for most of our lives-we are more and more used to leaving friends behind as we move on (or they do). The tools which could help build intimate relationships-the email, instant messages, cell phones-apparently can become those which keep us from getting close to real time human beings.

Back in my office, the syncopated strains of the British songwriter/musician David Gray fill the still morning air. "I've been afraid to tell you how I really feel/Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made."

Could that be part of our problem here in Babylon? Is it possible that we feel safer when we don't let others close enough to see the warped and bruised places-the spiritual battlegrounds where we have waved the white flag or turned the sword on those we love?

Last week Fran called to see how my dad was doing. In her early eighties, Fran is my friend-but she was my mother's friend first. In fact, my mother and Fran went to grade school together. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer this past spring, I called Fran for some ideas about good treatment centers in New York City. When I want someone who recalls that laughing, daring, brave girl who was my mother, I call Fran.

How can people bear not to have people like Fran in their lives? It is at least in part because I was raised by a mother and a grandmother who treasured life long friendships that I have close friends today.

Sadly, my childhood friendships are long gone, casualties of neglect, moves or unbridgeable differences. Even so, I feel deeply blessed by the breadth and depth of the friendships I do have. I cannot imagine a life that is not enriched by shared confidences, diverse points of view, support in times of crisis, laughter that draws on the deep pools of mutual experience and knowledge.

When Sian gets off that bus today and walks into her new school, I hope her heart is open to the possibility of new friendships. I pray that she sees each "hello" as an opportunity to build new relationships. Have her dad and I helped her to be vulnerable and strong? Have we given her the confidence to admit to "some of those bad mistakes I've made" and know she's going to be a better person for doing it? Can she let go her heart and her head and trust that loving relationships can stand some ugly conflict?

I wonder what she has learned from watching me (and from her dad).
Watching her take our life lessons out into the "real world, " I find myself frightened-and hopeful. When I let the hope win out, then I can truly trust Sian to be increasingly wise, and perhaps in some things even more insightful, than her loving, empathetic and sometimes over anxious mother.

What we think we know

Often, when I am talking to someone about Sians' school, they will ask me why we're sending her to a Catholic school. She's got ADHD, I will tell them, and her dad and I felt that it she needed the extra structure (we like the idea of uniforms, too). Sian's got one diagnosis. Colin has one, too.....in his case, the name is so much broader and probably less accurate than his symptoms that when I mention it folks who know Mr. C. start disputing it with me. My friend Heidi, for example. Heidi thinks that eventually we will all have labels. People won't know us by our great cherry pie, or our willingness to lend a hand when a neighbor is in trouble. Instead they will call us by our particular disorder or personality type. We'll walk by a co-worker, and,l instead of asking how things are going in marketing, ask casually: "Hey, Julie, how are you doing with that oppositional behavior this week? Or a spouse planning a party will query their mate: "I hear you asked Mike over. Do you think his defiant passive aggressive personality will blend well with Tom's nonpathological introversion neurosis? Maybe we should put Marla between them...she is a gregarious overachiever who can help them both feel good about themselves!" Anyhow, you see where I am going. It is way too easy to paste labels on people and think that we have them categorized. Shoving those who make us uncofmortable into our boxes also assures that we may not ever really get to know them...and let them surprise us with how different they really are from the cut-out we have created. Americans often seem to think that if they look hard enough, they will find black and white answers to the small pesky questions and the large mysterious ones that dog us every day. Sometimes, we just find more questions await us. When that occurs, it is usually better to wait, and, in the words of the oft-quoted writer Rilke, live the questions, rather than create our own, inevitably cramped and possibly very innacurate answers.

Stolen from Today's New York Times

This article was too appropriate to leave out of here. As well as determination and courage, it may be optimism that compels people like Jackie to persist in showing the 'fruits of the Spirit." Optimism, an American trait, is not a cheap confidence trick. It's not all about using the rhetoric of success to ignore the truly needy. There are those in our government, both Democrats and Republicans who are evangelists for opportunism instead of opportunity...or for self-reliance without help from those better off. Affirmative action is a dirty phrase...as long is it doesn't apply to their special pet road project or set-aside. Optimism about social justice is something a lot more revolutioarny...an optimistic perspective is, au fond, the idea that what one does really matters in the grand scheme. As Cohen notes, optimism is a part of our heritage...are we willing, even though challenged, to surrender it?

August 28, 2006
Editorial Observer
What Is the Latest Thing to Be Discouraged About? The Rise of Pessimism
By ADAM COHEN
The early stages of the Iraq war may have been a watershed in American optimism. The happy talk was so extreme it is now difficult to believe it was sincere: “we will be greeted as liberators”; “mission accomplished”; the insurgency is “in the last throes.” Most wildly optimistic of all was the goal: a military action transforming the Middle East into pro-American democracies.
The gap between predictions and reality has left Americans deeply discouraged. So has much of what has happened, or not happened, at the same time. Those who believed New Orleans would rebound quickly after Hurricane Katrina have seen their hopes dashed. Those counting on solutions to health care, energy dependence or global warming have seen no progress. It is no wonder the nation is in a gloomy mood; 71 percent of respondents in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll said the country is on the wrong track.
These are ideal times for the release of “Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit,” by Joshua Foa Dienstag, a U.C.L.A. political theorist. Mr. Dienstag aims to rescue pessimism from the philosophical sidelines, where it has been shunted by optimists of all ideologies. The book is seductive, because pessimists are generally more engaging and entertaining than optimists, and because, as the author notes, “the world keeps delivering bad news.” It is almost tempting to throw up one’s hands and sign on with Schopenhauer.
Pessimism, however, is the most un-American of philosophies. This nation was built on the values of reason and progress, not to mention the “pursuit of happiness.” Pessimism as philosophy is skeptical of the idea of progress. Pursuing happiness is a fool’s errand. Pessimism is not, as is commonly thought, about being depressed or misanthropic, and it does not hold that humanity is headed for disaster. It simply doubts the most basic liberal principle: that applying human reasoning to the world’s problems will have a positive effect.
The biggest difference between optimists and pessimists, Mr. Dienstag argues, is in how they view time. Optimists see the passing of time as a canvas on which to paint a better world. Pessimists see it as a burden. Time ticks off the physical decline of one’s body toward the inevitability of death, and it separates people from their loved ones. “All the tragedies which we can imagine,” said Simone Weil, the French philosopher who starved herself to death at age 34, “return in the end to the one and only tragedy: the passage of time.”
Optimists see history as the story of civilization’s ascent. Pessimists believe, Mr. Dienstag notes, in the idea that any apparent progress has hidden costs, so that even when the world seems to be improving, “in fact it is getting worse (or, on the whole, no better).” Polio is cured, but AIDS arrives. Airplanes make travel easy, but they can drop bombs or be crashed into office towers. There is no point in seeking happiness. When joy “actually makes its appearance, it as a rule comes uninvited and unannounced,” insisted Schopenhauer, the dour German who was pessimism’s leading figure.
As politicians, pessimists do not believe in undertaking great initiatives to ameliorate unhappiness, since they are skeptical they will work. They are inclined to accept the world’s evil and misery as inevitable. Mr. Dienstag tries to argue that pessimists can be politically engaged, and in modest ways they can be. Camus joined the French Resistance. But pessimism’s overall spirit, as Camus noted, “is not to be cured, but to live with one’s ailments.”
President Clinton was often mocked for his declarations that he still believed “in a place called Hope.” But he understood that instilling hope is a critical part of leadership. Other than a few special interest programs — like cutting taxes on the wealthy and giving various incentives to business — it is hard to think of areas in which the Bush administration has raised the nation’s hopes and met them. This president has, instead, tried to focus the American people on the fear of terrorism, for which there is no cure, only bad choices or something worse.
Part of Mr. Bush’s legacy may well be that he robbed America of its optimism — a force that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other presidents, like Ronald Reagan, used to rally the country when it was deeply challenged. The next generation of leaders will have to resell discouraged Americans on the very idea of optimism, and convince them again that their goal should not be to live with their ailments, but to cure them.

The mystery of unselfishness

I grew up in a household well staffed with "do-gooders." They weren't at all santimonious, my great-aunt and grandmother...instead, they were happy reformers, always willing to believe the best, looking for what Quakers might call the "Inner Light" in others. The rest of the Jackson clan, brothers and sisters and cousins, were more or less involved in justice movements-some were Socialists, some were Trostkyites, many were staunchly committed to unions. My mother's generation, while less ambitious in its goals for bettering the world, still had its share of teachers, college professors and goverment workers. When I survey my generation, I see similar aspirations-many of us teach, travel and advocate for reform. Yet the energy and the optimism, my grandmother's gracious but powerful call to the duty of altruism, seems to have dimmed in some of us. It is not true that the times are more difficult-after all, my grandparents lived through two world wars. Possibly, as connected as we are around the world, we are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the evil in the human heart and less optimistic about our capacity to make a dent in it. Or perhaps the answers to the question of self-sacrificial goodness cannot be found in generalities, but in the enigma of specific lives. Take my friend Jackie for example. If it were not for Jackie, I (and my friends) would not be supporting home health care for Romanian children with AIDS. Jackie went over to Romania about ten years ago and fell in love with a particular Romanian child with AIDS. So much of what she has done since she met Cogneac has been done in memory of a dying child who changed her life forever. Now a widow in Rutland, VT, Jackie is most likely closing her house, leaving her neighbors, and volunteering for a year with a Catholic religious group in a home for indigent patients living with AIDS. Would I have the courage to do something like that? I don't think so. Yet if you met Jackie, she probably would not strike you initially as a remarkable woman. She, like many of us, is victim to doubts about her own capacity for having an impact on the suffering of the world. Perhaps the differenc between me and Jackie is not in her uncertainties, nor in her idealism. It may be that where I am reticent and anxious about moving forward, she, also anxious and reticent, still decides to take the next step...the one that puts her closer to humanity's suffering, closer to the foot of the cross, more intimately acquainted with the God who sees our fears, but promises to be with us in the eye of the storm and the depth of the seas. Maybe the example of women and men like my friend Jackie will inspire more of us "nervous Nellies" to reach out to those less fortunate than us. One quivering step at a time. I think God honors those baby steps.

Last night, as I was driving up to my house, a fat black and white animal waddled off the driveway and headed into the woods. Happily, it didn't seem to be scared enough to leave its very odofirous scent behind it. I'm still not sure how many skunks live in the woods, but I strongly suspect a family has set up its own home behind my neighbors. Closing the car door and heading towards my breezeway, I watched two (or more) deer that had been catching a few winks under my other neighbor's apple tree rise and walk at a leisurely pace into the evening and fade to black. Deer and skunks I don't mind. But as good as they are for eating pests, I must confess that I'm not crazy about the bats. They swoop low over our heads and poop on the breezeway. I worry about the possibility of bites and other unforeseen events. Tonight I spent the evening with volunteers for our local conservation group, the Wallace Trust. They are trying to restrict development, preserve open space, and persuade residents considering selling their property or buying new land to get conservation easements on the open land that makes this such a wonderful township in which to raise children. Stay cool, I want to say to the deer sleeping on our lawn-don't fret, I want to yell at the skunk as he or she walks on to my neighbor's property. But I keep my mouth shut-they certainly need no encouragement to continue eating my neighbor's apples or stinking up our bedrooms when they feel like it. At ease in their God-given roles, they walk our sets with sublime insouciance, staring at us with their curious eyes, pausing for a snack or a moment of slumber, then moving on...to someone else's lawn.

Lost love and found

If you looked at my profile, you will notice that I list A.S. Byatt's novel "Possession" as one of my favorite books. Thanks in part to the fact that I currently have no religion book to review (yes!!)I've been re-reading the Pulitzer- prize winning novel, sometimes with wonder, sometimes with tears. Yes, this long and sometimes complex novel is a romance focused on 20th century academicians chasing a 19th century mystery, and the textured and lively characters who created the mystery. But it is also about the nature of loss, the ways in which literature can be read and misread, the lenses through which we construe, and misconstrue reality, and the power of belief, religious, scientific and poetic. With all of its pathos, "Possession" is also a very funny book about the academic life and some of the women and men who people it. And, at the end, it is both a tragic and a very hopeful meditation on the possibility of happiness and of lasting love, and of the impossibility of "possessing" a person, or a reputation, or an academic theory. If you like books with neat resolutions, or don't have time to delve deeply into a novel at this point, skip this tome. If you prefer layers, and questions, and depth, and if you are willing to walk through the complexities of Victorian diction and put up with a lot of pompous academicians in pursuit of literary alchemy...by all means, get thee to a bookstore...and prepare to be swept away.