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Walter Isaacson, in his book, Leonardo, quotes Sir Kenneth Clark as saying that da Vinci was the “most restlessly curious man in history.” By the time I finished Isaacson’s tome, published as it has been on paper intended to survive the ages, I agreed.

Isaacson observes that da Vinci laid the academic groundwork for myriad disciplines, including medicine, optics, and physics. But he has never received acknowledgement for his insights. Isaacson suggests two possible reasons: da Vinci was too busy being curious about all of the phenomena of the world around him to be bothered by the time and effort publishing would take, or he was too much of a perfectionist, loathe to release anything into the public sphere that he thought was not perfect.

I can imagine da Vinci waking up each morning wanting to know more about something. I know that the occasional mornings I wake up curious in that way often turn into satisfying and productive days. It is fun to know things.

I have an 82-year old friend who often has a comment or two in response to one of my musings. As I have said before, eliciting responses is one of the great outcomes when I write. One of my friend’s recent responses echoed a desire of mine. He wrote that he wants to know how things will turn out.

As Rick wrote, “I am one of the fortunate people whose high school history teacher (what’s not to like about a guy who praises his high school history teacher!) instilled in me a love of history and a lifetime desire to learn more about what happened and why.” Rick is a voracious reader, eyesight problems notwithstanding, and we occasionally share observations about how current events find roots or parallels in events of the past.

Especially vexing to Rick these days is the distance between the Republican Party he joined decades ago, open to social liberals and fiscal conservatives like himself, and what that Party has become in his view, as policy purity standards have calcified it into opposition to anything not meeting those standards. Rick wrote about policy areas, like regulation and climate, and constitutional debates, like the role of the judiciary and the press, as topics where no one knows what the outcome of these debates will be.

Rick wants to know how things will turn out. I hope he lives a long and healthy life into the post-Trump era, though there are no guarantees. And Rick is a shrewd enough student of history to know that policy areas and constitutional matters have been parts of the political dialogue in the U.S. since the beginning and will be so for as long as there is a United States.

His desire to know is not his alone. Frequently, during one of our read-aloud-with-wine sessions on the lanai, Judy will pause her readings when either she or I say “I wonder…” Out comes the iPhone as the “research department,” (my nickname for her), goes to Google. Often, the first answer leads to another question as the web of curiosity is spun. When “I want to know” is about a person, place, or thing, finding an answer only requires a punching a few buttons and trusting the sources to which you are taken.

Wanting to know must be the base of most good scientific or academic inquiry, too. Some discoveries have been accidental but a lot more have been the result of somebody looking. The explorers from every culture who risked life and limb to discover what lay beyond the horizon, and the scientists and engineers who have probed the universe in search of understanding, perhaps even other forms of life, all started their journeys wanting to know.

People of a Certain Age, you have now discerned, no doubt, that I have outlined three distinct meanings of the same words. Judy and I look to add to our reservoirs of knowledge for little purpose other than to build those reservoirs. Likely, we won’t do anything with what we learn but we take satisfaction in learning.

Leonardo and the explorers wanted to know because they were driven to know. They would have been dissatisfied with whatever contemporary limitations to knowing existed in their times. So each would have been compelled by their natures to find out more than was known.

What Rick wants has fueled psychics and soothsayers, philosophers and pundits, and not a few sensationalist publications. Some very good novels have been written that involve time travel, attempts to predict what happens between a chosen time of then and now.

The uncertainty variable is how people will act and react.

I’d like to know how things will turn out, too. Perhaps, when we are all in an afterlife, we will continue to find out. More likely is that how things turn out won’t matter as much to us then.

Still, it would be nice to know…

Daniel E. White

May 26, 2019

We were on the beach at Ko Olina. I was standing by our chairs, letting the sun dry me, looking across the crescent of sand at nothing in particular. I saw possibilities.

The protected nature of the lagoon provides a unique place for children to play, in the water or on the beach. I saw a half dozen children from at least three distinct ethnic backgrounds, all toddlers or younger. Two were sitting on the sand with plastic shovels. Three were in the water in the arms of Mom. One was asleep on a blanket, soft rock music in her ear from a small boom box.

I thought about the moms. The love and affection they showed to their children seemed almost holy, like the finest painting of Madonna and Child come to life. I hoped that each of these kids was the fruit of intention, not accident, an explicit statement by the parents of hope and optimism about the future. I wondered what the lives of those six children would turn out to be.

We like to believe that any child can become whatever he or she has a passion to become. We know differently. Context and circumstance, economic and otherwise, are factors in all our lives and will be for these kids as well.  Just now, though, on the beach at Ko Olina, in the loving care of Mom, anything seemed possible.

At home later that day, I was outside in the driveway when the FedEx truck pulled up across the street.  The driver hopped out with a large package, walked quickly to the front door and rang the doorbell.

The sound of the bell cued a musical worm in my head, the song from “The Music Man” about “the Wells Fargo man.” Remember?  The child singing the song is sure that the delivery man is bringing “somethin’ tspeshal, just for me.”

Most packages you and I get these days bring items we have ordered. So they hold no surprises. When a box comes that we have not expected, a frisson of excitement lights up in us. Could it be “somethin’ tspeshal?”

The philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, wrote “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life.” In it, he said: “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible.  Pleasure disappoints; possibility never. And what wine is as sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?”

People of a Certain Age, how are we all doing on that passionate sense of potential?

Nothing guarantees that possibilities will be positive. Kierkegaard’s title is so intriguing because either/or seems a condition of life; will the possibility produce something good or not?

Is that a matter of luck or fate?  Whenever we make decisions, are we not engaging in weighing benefits and risks, positives and negatives? Haven’t we all been disappointed when the possibility of a positive is unrealized?

Doesn’t our attitude about possibilities depend upon our natures?  Watching the movie Christopher Robin recently, I was reminded that A.A. Milne provided lovable and comical characters to depict either/or. Winnie the Pooh, bear of “very little brain,” sees only positives. What can go wrong floating near a beehive holding on to a balloon determined to collect a little bit of honey?  Eeyore, the donkey, can see only negatives.

Milne gave us other archetypes, too, like the ever-anxious Piglet and the oh-so-not-so wise Owl. How many children have selected Pooh or one of his friends as their favorite in the Hundred Acre Wood? How much are you and I surrounded by Poohs and Eeyores, Piglets and Owls?

One of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson takes its title from the first line:

“I dwell in Possibilities—

A fairer House than Prose—

More numerous of windows—

Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—

Impregnable of eye—

And for an everlasting Roof—

The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of visitors—the fairest—

For occupation—

The spreading wide my narrow Hand

To gather Paradise—“

Scholars see the poem as proclaiming the power of poetry to lift her from the confines of the house she seldom left. I see the movement in the poem from dwelling in possibilities to Paradise.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once quipped, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered!”  I wonder if he gardened much or did he leave that to Mrs. Emerson while he wrote his essay on Self-Reliance? (Not my original line.) But he did make the point that some potential is hard to spot.

Our house faces east and south, and we have a nice view. We can watch the sun rise. Most days, nature seems to be inviting me to see possibilities, the sparkling potential announced by the dawn. I wonder if that gift of grace I receive each day was nurtured many years ago on the beaches of Long Island where I was the toddler with a plastic shovel in my hand?

Possibly.

Daniel E. White

May 11, 2019

Rev. William Aulenbach was a round-headed elf who wore a pinkish clerical shirt and wire rimmed glasses. At least 80 years old, he would shuffle into the dining hall at Webb School shortly after noon every Wednesday. Without waiting for a greeting from the headmaster or asking permission, he would turn on the microphone and shout “it’s great to be alive.”

We, students and teachers alike, knew what our response was expected to be. “Joy, joy, joy” we would dutifully reply.

In our first year at Webb, I wondered why and how this tradition had started. It seemed a little hokey. Over time, I came to view it as giving an old man a moment in the spotlight he once enjoyed as a parish rector, late-life recognition for him once a week in a life now out of the main stream of daily service to others.

These days, I see Rev. Aulenbach differently. He wished that all of us would see the joy that can come in living. He was still being a pastor.

Joy has been on my mind, prompted by a phone conversation with my sister, Sandee. I told her that a book our father had given to me bore the title Surprised by Joy. C.C. Lewis wrote it, and since he had married a woman named Joy late in his life, I assumed, wrongly, that the book was about discovering love.

It is helpful to read books before deciding what they are about.

Sandee and I pondered how joy was different from happiness. Modern usage often uses the two words interchangeably. When we rang off, I googled “joy” to find its etymology, and I clicked on a few of the articles that sounded, from their titles, like comparisons and contrasting of joy and happiness.

The upshot, of course, is that nobody really knows. Philosophers and poets have taken their shots at differentiating but they all base their points of view on certain assumptions. That leaves the field open for others, like me, to try my own reflections.

If you grew up in a Protestant Church and/or celebrated Christmas, you sang about “tidings of comfort and joy” and “joy to the world.”  If you are a Person of a Certain Age, you might have giggled at a different “joy to the world” that also wishes “joy to the fishes in the deep blue see, joy to you and me.” If you enjoy classical orchestral music, you know that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was called “Ode to Joy,” named for the Frederic Schiller poem of the same name that provides the text for the singers in the fourth movement.

I think these references to joy are related. I also think each reveals how joy is different than happiness.

Joy bears a relationship to religion that happiness does not. In the Christmas story, people in need of God are being told that the awaited one has arrived. A messiah is not a transitory image; it is about something lasting—salvation in Christian understanding—and salvation would bring joy.

It was in that sense of the word that C.S. Lewis wrote about being surprised. He was raised as an average Anglican schoolboy who, as he matured, fell away from his belief to become a self-proclaimed atheist. Then, using the path of reason, he finds his way back to belief, finds joy and writes about it.

Schiller’s poem begins by connecting joy with the divine without being too specific. I don’t know that much about other major religions of the world. But I surmise that whatever believers find in their faith transcends momentary happiness, connecting people in some lasting way to something higher than themselves. At its purest, might not evangelism, for whatever faith tradition, be a sincere desire to invite others to share the joy one has found in faith?

Yet joy is not bounded by faith. I described to Sandee how I watched two red-vented bulbul birds busying themselves atop a tree outside our bedroom window. Apparently a pair, the two flitted back and forth with twigs and string to build a nest, pausing to snap a bug or two out of the air for sustenance.

Watching them, I felt joy.

Recently, Judy and I watched the sun set into a horizon unencumbered by clouds, perfect conditions for the green flash of light we saw as it disappeared. I suppose we were happy to be in the right place at the right time in the right conditions. What I felt, though, was joy.

Lives are constructed in very small bits. History and the history unfolding in the news we ingest every day focuses on the big bits. In doing so, we are distracted from seeing the joy available to us every day.

What nonsense lines: “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea. Joy to you and me.” What profound lines, too.

One of Dad’s favorite verses in poetry was Wordsworth’s calling out “the little unremembered acts of kindness and of love.” How many unremembered moments of available joy do we miss because we are focused on big bits, like a messiah coming, and miss the little bits, the fish, the bulbuls, the green flash?

Joy incorporates gratitude and reverence and love and peace. It is a state of mind and not a transitory emotion.

And, as Rev. Aulenbach was teaching, you don’t seek it. It comes to you.

Don’t Let the Turkeys Get You Down

The backyard at our Sacramento house sloped toward a canyon that led to the American River. Turkeys and deer were occasional visitors to our yard but, thankfully, no skunks or mountain lions to our knowledge. Neither the deer nor the turkeys made any noise when they came to visit. One minute the yard was empty; the next, we had guests.

Where the grass ended and the wildness began, there was a large stump, the remains of a tree some previous owner had cut down.  That stump was a perfect seat for sitting and meditating or observing or even reading. For our cats, the stump was an ideal perch from which to survey their surroundings in between cat naps.

One day, Fritz, our tabby, was curled up on the stump passing the time the way cats do. During one of his naps, a flock of a dozen turkeys infiltrated the yard, noiselessly, pecking at the ground, oblivious to Fritz. Fritz awoke to a cat’s worst nightmare—being surrounded by monster-birds.

Fritz was as smart as cats usually are. But cat-smartness does not include information about whether or not turkeys or monster-birds eat cats. Fritz was smart enough to know that sticking around to find out about the eating habits of these creatures would not be smart. He decided on a path through the forest of turkey legs and shot across the lawn, up the stairs and into the house to find sanctuary.

Judy watched and laughed. Fritz never saw the humor.

Not long ago, I had my five-year-out meeting with the oncologist who treated my prostate cancer in 2013. Coincidentally, within the last six months, a half dozen men friends have heard their doctors confirm cancerous prostates. Their diagnoses and my appointment prompted me to think about the day my urologist gave me the news.

I hope I am not naïve about life and death maters.  As has been observed, the mortality rate for humans is 100%. For the most part, though, until some illness strikes, we live our lives far more focused on how we will manage the day-to-day than on what might be the cause of our demise. When the doctor, after performing a biopsy, told me “Dr. White, three-quarters of your prostate is fine,” I wondered for a while if the manner of my exit was now established.

Like the turkeys, the cancer came silently. I was feeling fine, getting ready to retire, unprepared for my primary care physician’s “I feel something I don’t like” comment following his physical examination of my prostate. That planted a seed of anxiety. The results of the biopsy fertilized it. In hindsight, it was that unspoken anxiety that constituted a flock of turkeys in my mind as much or more so than the disease.

I could identify with Fritz. I needed to plot a way through the forest of turkey legs to find my sanctuary. I was determined not to feel sorry for myself but I did harbor some ungracious thoughts about other people who might have deserved to have cancer more than me.

It did not take me long to find my way through the turkeys, and I did not resort to cowering in a safe place, ignoring the world around me. Before long, I had a boatload of information—I am a student, after all—that helped me shape my course of action and built my confidence in the outcomes.  I had terrific medical practitioners working for me—the oncologist introduced himself and then said “I’ve done this procedure 2,000 times” to reassure me right off the bat—and I had been diagnosed early.

So my annual chats with the doctors have not included any bad news. Several of my friends confronting their own turkeys have enjoyed similar success. We all acknowledge how lucky we have been to benefit from the skills and support of others.

I think we have also shared an outlook exemplified by a second cat that lived with us on that Sacramento canyon: Rigby, an orange, neutered male cat. We saw him one day in the yard surrounded by our other silent visitors, deer. Rather than running away, Rigby seemed curious about these critters who, like him, had four legs, but were dramatically taller and clearly not interested in him. After a while, his curiosity seemed satisfied, and he found a spot where he could continue his nap.

People of a Certain Age, I am certain that every one of us has had multiple times in our lives when a flock of turkeys or a herd of deer have suddenly and silently appeared. I also suspect that, sometimes, the emotions and anxieties stimulated by these intrusions have come to be as big a challenge as the actual issue.

More often than not, the default emotion, irrational though it might be, is fear, and it is real to us. The urge to run to a safe place and hide is strong.

We can try to cultivate in ourselves the Rigby Approach, although there is that old saying that “curiosity killed the cat.” Better still, we can be grateful that there are people in our lives who can help us navigate through the forest of turkey legs to find the sanctuary that is peace of mind.

Daniel E. White

April 14, 2019

I wrote my dissertation about President Dwight Eisenhower. I looked at who controlled access to the President, and I gained some insight into who saw him and why. In the process, I concluded that, contrary to the “avuncular-golfer” image he had, Ike was far more involved in the direction of the activities of his administration than what he was given credit for.

I gave no thought to publishing my work as a book. Two years later, a prominent political scientist at Yale wrote his book, Hidden Hand, about Ike’s presidency that changed academic thinking about it. “Woulda, coulda, shoulda” went through my mind when I saw that the Yale guy and I had reached the same conclusion. But, as I counsel my dissertation students these days, the purpose of a dissertation is to get a degree, and I did.  On the whole, it worked out well for both the professor and me.

Ike’s leadership style came back to mind recently. Because I will be teaching the Leadership and Governance class to M.Ed. students for a seventh time, I have been thinking about leadership intermittently as I prepare the course.

When we attend the symphony, we usually arrive in time for the pre-concert conversation with the concertmaster, the conductor, and the principal soloist. It is my 30 minutes of music history each time. Recently, the conductor noted, in a timely coincidence, the many different approaches to conducting and then said, “the problem for some conductors is that they conduct when they don’t need to be conducting.”

He explained. Working with any professional orchestra, especially a good one like the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, the conductor can assume that every musician is talented and skilled, in his or her own way, an excellent musician.  In most pieces, some instrumentalists, like those playing the oboe, bassoon, or clarinet, are often soloing. They are capable of reading the musical notation provided by the composer.

The wise conductor lays out a vision for the performance and trusts that the individual members of the orchestra will, to the best of their abilities, play the music in a manner consistent with the vision. The conductor might need to be more explicit with the violin section where a dozen or more virtuosos are playing together, but once the conductor has said what he or she wants, he or she can expect to get it.

Then, at the performance, the conductor sets the tempo and gets out of the way of the performers doing their best.

Successful professional baseball managers share the understanding that the success of the team depends upon individual players doing their best. Teams don’t catch fly balls or hit home runs; players do. Such managers are keenly aware that some of their players might earn 10-15 times what the manager does in a year because someone with money has judged that the skills and talents the player possesses are worth the money. The great managers assess the personalities and the talents of the players they have and mold the team’s character and approach to each game according to the skills and talents each player represents.

If the orchestra plays well, if the team wins game after game, their leaders will be recognized. They do not need to call attention to themselves; the attention comes with success.

Some years ago, a student in the M.Ed. program, who is now a good friend, when I asked her why she thought the class she was taking with me seemed to be working better than another class, replied “you trust the room.” On reflection, I have considered that a high compliment.

The “room” was, indeed, populated with twenty-five active educational professionals who had leadership experience themselves and/or had experienced multiple leadership styles in their careers. Trusting the room meant mining the wisdom already present and then figuring out a way to bring the many contributions together in a manner that left everybody, the students and me, feeling like our time together that day was well-spent. In effect, I was playing conductor.

People of a Certain Age, in your experience, haven’t some of the best leaders been those who trust the followers, who don’t crave the attention and personal adulation, who might seem the “avuncular golfer” but in fact are the hidden hand?

Somebody has created (surely not us!) a society in which those in power, or wishing to be, worry daily about being seen and heard by as wide an audience as possible, supported by media, social and otherwise, who demand comments and reactions. That propensity for pointless noise inures many, who respond by tuning out the noise. That, in turn, causes those wanting attention to work hard at the 10 second sound bite, hoping to bust through our information-fatigue. “Where’s the beef?” is not just an historical relic of a political quip (borrowed, of course, from a TV ad for a fast food restaurant).

 In politics, it might not be possible to be just a hidden hand anymore.

“That leader is best when others hardly know that he exists” counseled Lao-Tse.

I believe him.

I wish others did, too.

Daniel E. White

April 1, 2019

M

One of the many virtues of baseball is that scorekeepers and statisticians keep track of errors.  I have written before about the forgiving quality of the batting average; hit safely only three of ten times and you will likely end up in the Hall of Fame, having failed the other seven times.

The margin of errors for errors is less generous. Say, 100 balls are hit to me over a several game span. If I successfully field 97 of them, I probably keep my job. But, oh, the cost of those errors!

When you make an error in front of 50,000 fans, you have no place to hide. The scoreboard will record a large “1” under the big “E” that comes after your team’s name, and everyone knows who committed the error. When statistics are published at the end of the year, yours will include all of those awful moments of embarrassment you experienced in front of all those fans.

Yet, hit a game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the game in which you committed the Big E, and no one will remember your error.

The news in the past few years has been teeming with stories about errors, usually mistakes made by this person or that who is in the public eye. Frequently, these mistakes happened years ago, often in youth, when making mistakes, and hopefully learning from them, is almost an expectation. Like the statistical summary of a player’s career, the record of mistakes seems, to some, to be a permanent stain on the offender’s character. Make a mistake in behavior or attitude or belief, and thereby be disqualified for public trust for the rest of your life.

What poppycock! Those who would so censure have forgotten that “to err is human,” and that there is a following clause in that quote: “to forgive, divine.”  And It always makes me wonder about just how stain-free the accuser might be.

As teachers, we wanted our students to do well but also counselled them that mistakes created opportunities to learn. I hired a math teacher once who had earned his degree from Claremont McKenna College in English Literature. He had started as a math major but changed when he failed Differential Equations.  He was a terrific math teacher because he knew about making mistakes, and the kinds of concepts and functions that trip up students. (I now understand why math teachers always wanted students to “show their work.”)

The current Paragons of Perfection, 21^st Century Inquisitors, will not allow for the real-life equivalent of the ninth inning home run to mitigate the effects of the error.

They fail to remember that the best biographies of our pantheon of heroes and heroines are not records of perfect lives. They describe what happened, and what happened after mistakes were made. Likewise, stories abound about convicts who reform to have lives of productive service to others and drunks who sober up to help others refrain from becoming drunks.

I am certain that I have “gotten away” with a few mistakes, like driving after having too much to drink. Few people around me as I was growing up did NOT repeat a joke that would be judged ethnically or sexually inappropriate these days. Fewer still raised any objection to such a joke being told in the first place.

The mistake most egregious is the mistake of not owning up to one’s mistakes.  That ranks right up there with the mistake of not allowing for mistakes to be only one part of one’s life story.

People of a Certain Age, in looking over our lives, aren’t we able to see mistakes we have made? One can hope we’ve “made a few, but then again, too few to mention,” as Sinatra sang. But how realistic is that? Aren’t we lucky that our mistakes have not ended our useful lives?

To be clear, there are mistakes that are more than indiscretion, that really do reveal something about a person’s character. We call these mistakes “crimes,” or even, in a religious sense, “sins.” Reasonable people should be able to make reasonable distinctions. 

In response to crime, people “pay their debt to society.” Regarding sin, people “atone for their transgressions.” Our formal systems have provided for the mending of one’s ways, the ninth-inning home run a factor or not. It remains to be seen whether or not the court of public opinion is so willing to accept that people can change their ways. To reject the notion that people can change is to undercut the beliefs of most of the major religions in the world.

Few baseball players have given up their careers because they committed an error. Players who commit a lot of errors might be less desirable to have on your side, but if those players hit lots of home runs and have high batting averages, they can probably still enjoy a respected career. To be sure, their career stats will always have that column marked “E,” but that is one of many columns.

I wouldn’t mind living in a society where the sum of one’s actions at the end of one’s life would allow for mistakes, a life of service to others serving as the ninth-inning home run.

Daniel E. White

March 18, 2019

S

A regular feature of the Real Journeys cruise from Deep Cove, New Zealand to where Doubtful Sound meets the Abel Tasman Sea is time in Hall Arm, a small bay on the Sound. The ship turns into the inlet, pulls up beside the steep cliffs, and shuts off its engines.  The stillness is stunning, no doubt amplified by the stark difference the engine noise makes, but still complete. Passengers cooperate—no one talks or moves.

As the ship returned to the Sound, the ship’s guide said, “we often think about what’s past or what might happen in the future. Silence provides the opportunity to focus on the present.”

There is much to be said for silence. Meditation practices, religious or otherwise, often incorporate silence as a discipline, recognizing that to shut out the cacophony of daily life—to focus on the present, as the guide suggested—is hard work yet essential.  He was careful to say that silence “provides the opportunity to focus on the present.”

When we were growing up and frequenting libraries, we were cautioned to be silent in order to not disturb the concentration of others. Silence, then, became connected with serious thought and contemplation.

The Psalmist extolled a benefit of silence: “be still and know that I am God.”

Then there is the wisdom of Maurice Switzer, as quoted by Garson O’Toole in his book, “Hemingway Didn’t Say That; The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations,” often erroneously attributed to Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln. “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

People of a Certain Age, have you ever heard yourself say “silence is golden?” Have you ever been in silence and a flood of thoughts about the past and musings and worries about the future crowded into your golden moment of silence? In the silence of the night, when you cannot sleep, can you use that silent time to focus only on the present?

I love the romance of the guide’s thought. If it were always true, silence would, indeed, always be golden.

Alas, life tells us otherwise.

“Silence is Golden” is the title of a hit song of 1964 by the Four Seasons, released as the “B” side for their recording of “Rag Doll,” which hit #1 on the charts. I remember liking the song then and I still do, even after I looked up the rest of the lyrics. Turns out the song is a lament, a self-criticism by the singer about his not speaking out when he sees—“but the eyes still see”—someone being wronged for fear of being called a meddler.

To be sure, the “hurt” most likely involves teenage love but some of the glitter is off the idea that silence is golden now that I know the lyrics.

I also really like “The Sound of Silence,” by Simon and Garfunkel, a 1965 release. The haunting opening “hello darkness, my old friend,” and the pseudo-profundity of “and the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made” still transport me to our dating days during the Vietnam War and the violence in the cities when we wondered if the world would come apart of the seams. To say that “the words of the prophets were written on the subway doors” seemed so perfect to capture the sense that “the Establishment” just didn’t get it, and that a new age of “power to the people” would be the salvation of the nation.

Paul Simon wrote the lyrics. Art Garfunkel said they were meant to illustrate how people were unable to communicate effectively with each other any more, assuming that people had been good at doing so before. Given Garfunkel’s comment, the sound of silence is not an occasion for celebration. It might be interesting to ask Simon and Garfunkel to compare the times in which they first sang the song with current times in this regard.

There is another common expression involving silence that has emerged in recent times: suffering in silence.  The idea of enduring without comment could apply broadly but the more recent concern has been about those who have been abused or assaulted in childhood.  A TV ad features a local attorney, appealing to those who have been so violated to contact the attorney for help, who punctuates his message with the words “it’s not your fault.”

Silence is golden until it is not. It is not golden when one sees someone wronged, could speak out about it, and does not. It is not golden when it represents the inability of people to talk to each other. It is not golden when the silent one has been abused and made to feel responsible for the abuse.

The silence of Hall Arm in Doubtful Sound in New Zealand is golden. So is the silence in the desert at night, illuminated by the Milky Way and the other billion points of light.

As with so much in life, context matters.

Silence is golden, unless it is not.

Daniel E. White

February 24, 2019

FWe went to a rock concert a while ago. Don’t envision us with thousands at Aloha Stadium for Bruno Mars. Think a crowd of fifty in Hawaii Public Radio’s Atherton Studio for a concert by Beat-lele, a Beatles’ tribute band. They play great versions of all of the Fab Four’s music on electric ukulele.  For two hours, we bathed in the Beatles, from “Help” to “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “Hey, Jude” to “I Get by with a Little Help from my Friends.”

To us in the room, the songs were friends of long-standing, remarkable signposts for our lives in the 1960s.  I remarked to the drummer (who played rhythm on a box on which he sat and two cymbals) that he looked like he was having too much fun.

“Hey, it’s the Beatles,” he replied, and I understood.

A couple of days later, we watched an old friend of a movie, “Finding Forrester,” released in 2000. It tells the story of a very bright African American teenager who meets up with a reclusive Pulitzer Prize winning author, the prize book being the only one he published.

“Forrester” is a feel-good movie, through to the rolling of the credits which roll to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, better known as Iz, Hawaii’s own, singing his version of the “Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” combo song.

“Forrester” is also a thoughtful portrayal of friendship, on many levels. Each of the main characters finds a missing piece of life as they open up to another person who, in the end, becomes a friend. No one takes more than he or she gives. 

You and I are blessed when we have such friends.  I am doubly blessed to live with what the younger set would call my BFF.

I also have a lifetime collection of friends-in-absentia. You do, too. Some of you are on the receiving end of my musings; friends from years ago and miles away who, nonetheless, are characters in the play that is my life. Just recalling playing basketball in the gym on Oregon Street in San Diego or as the “Over-The-Hill” gang in the UCR gym, cruising Oscar’s for burgers and fries in a green and white ’56 Chevy, or tasting wines in the Napa Valley with my boss and his wife one spring makes memories of old friends into friends themselves.

I confess to thinking that “friend” has been co-opted in a world of ever-present social media stimulation. (Curmudgeon alert!) Contact?  Sure. Acquaintance? Better than friend but still a bit familiar.  And to top it all off! The power to “un-friend!” In a face-to-face world, one would just stop seeing somebody. One would not consciously brand a person as “unfriended.” It sounds so cruel!

I have written before about Dad’s “adventures in friendship.” His adventures were usually unanticipated, unscripted, and often limited, in terms of the number of times he would meet the other person. I think he used the term friendship because such encounters generally involved the sharing of stories, giving each party a more-than-passing glimpse of the other’s life experiences and attitudes, face-to-face.

Sometimes a first encounter led to others with unexpected outcomes.  Dad used to go over to Grossmont Center, near home, to get coffee, write poetry, and watch people.  One adventure in friendship was with an Egyptian immigrant who managed a jewelry shop.  The man ended up renting the small apartment attached to my parents’ house until he could save enough money to get a larger place and contemplate marriage.

At his core, I think Dad would have aspired to the idea described in the last two lines of the poem that hangs, framed, on the wall in our entry.

“Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.”

Like me with my friends, the Beatles and Forrester, Dad had poems and hymns that were familiar comforts sure to raise his spirits.  I daresay, People of a Certain Age, that you do, too.  In such friends there is certainty and security; no one can un-make the Beatles’ body of work or the Forrester film.

That security is important because flesh and blood, living friends can sometimes “un-friend” in an unfriendly and devastating manner.  It was “friends” of Dad’s in the one church who turned on him and split the congregation. It was a “friend” of Dad’s from their service club who persuaded Dad to place my parents’ life savings with him at his brokerage firm and proceeded to churn profits for himself, resulting in a total loss for Mom and Dad.

In the realm of friendship, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Unrequited friendship hurts.

Forrester rediscovered friendship, albeit late in his life. The Beatles have not been alone in getting by with a little help from their friends. Most of Dad’s adventures turned out well, well enough for him to look for them until he died.

There are no guarantees about friendship except, possibly, that a life without friends, be they songs or films or poems or people, would seem incomplete.

Daniel E. White

February 13, 2019

Our recent “Literature on the Lanai with Wine” has featured Paul Theroux’s collection of essays, “Figures in a Landscape.” Some of the essays are character sketches of people like Graham Greene, Elizabeth Taylor, and Hunter S. Thompson.  Others are snippets from his adventures as a traveler—not a tourist—riding the rails or paddling a kayak into myriad places around the world.

A few pieces have raised the matter of fitting in. In one, Theroux writes about his time in the Peace Corps in Malawi in the 1960s. He is frank about his youthful hubris, perhaps even arrogance, in thinking that, because he was doing noble work there (in his mind), he would be able to fit it.

In a second, Theroux writes about Hawaii where he has lived for many years. He understands about his life here, as do we, that he lacks some aspect of “legitimacy” that seems the private reserve of those who, by virtue of blood quantum, regard themselves as Native Hawaiian. This sense of not exactly fitting in does not inhibit living a great life in Hawaii with friends from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and generally feeling like Hawaii is home.

Yet, he writes, there is that “something” which, because he is not blood Hawaiian, is inaccessible to him in the minds of some Native Hawaiians.

Fitting in is a major task facing children, almost from birth. The irony, of course, is that human development theories and social psychologists argue that the chief challenge in childhood is to individuate, to become a highly functioning responsible adult capable of directly one’s own life, to the extent that anyone does that.

To fit in is to be accepted. To be accepted within the group, even if the group is Goths or a gang, seems to be an innate drive. Our lives seem to be a series of concentric circles encompassing groups: nuclear family, extended family, chronological peers, school chums, social groups, work colleagues, etc. As such we are much like other species in which the outlier, the one eschewing the group or cast out if the group, is the exception one tries not to be.

Theroux’s life has been a series of travels to places where he has been warmly received (most times) and treated with respect (except for times like when five boys with spears menaced him and his kayak). He has been cognizant of his status of the outsider, and he is clearly comfortable with that status.  He has chosen to be in places, albeit for short periods of time, where he does not fit in.

Two movies we have seen recently address the theme of fitting in. “Crazy Rich Asians” follows the travails of an “American-born Chinese woman” (as her Singaporean Chinese boyfriend’s mother calls her) as she is courted by the boyfriend. The story turns on another outsider who initially poses a major obstacle for the young woman because she is still not 100% a part of the family into which she has married. Spoiler alert: that outsider ultimately relents. It wouldn’t have been as happy a film had she not.

“The Book Shop” tells the story of a widow who goes to a small village in England intending to open a bookshop, a dream she had shared with her late husband.

The penultimate scene of the movie is the widow leaving the village on a boat, never to return, her departure welcomed by most all of the villagers.  This, despite the fact that many of them had frequented her shop, helping her to envision the prospect of making a good living for herself.

Only one adult character and one child see the widow as anything but an outsider who did not fit in with the community. From the boat, the widow sees her bookstore burning.

People of a Certain Age, what has been your experience with fitting in?  Or not?

-In both movies, the lead character did not anticipate any difficulties fitting in. The American Chinese woman looked Chinese, spoke Mandarin, knew and respected Chinese cultural norms but was still regarded as an outsider. The widow looked like every other villager, was cordial, solicitous about the well-being of others, and eager to serve her new community. When push came to shove, though, she got shoved.

This tribal or clan instinct to fit in needs to be acknowledged as a fact of life, a part of the ecology in which we human beings live, perhaps even a primal urge. I wonder if we ever outgrow it? To what extent are we forever like the new kid joining the fourth-grade class at school in March just hoping that he can blend in with the other kids quickly?

One of the many advantages of aging is that, on the whole, we care less about impressing others than we used to and are more willing to express what we think, less injured by slights or exclusions.

Or not?

Andre Malroux wrote about an old priest who, when asked what he had learned hearing all those confessions for all those years, replied “that there are no adults.”

Is there an antidote to this primal urge? Those potentially exclusive circles above? What if more people drew wider circles, to “include in” rather than “keep out?” What would politics be like, or daily living?

Primal urges need not dictate destiny.

Daniel E. White

January 21, 2019

Tucked in the pocket of my three-ring binder journal has been a piece Dad handwrote around 1960. It is titled “Returning Good for Evil.” I don’t know from where he took the piece but it was clearly important to him.

Dad had written:

A foolish man, learning that the Buddha observed the principle of great love which commands the return of good for evil, came and abused him. The Buddha was silent, pitying the man’s folly.

When the man had finished his abuse, the Buddha asked him, saying “Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?” And the man answered, “in that case, it would belong to the man who offered it.”

“’My son,” said the Buddha. “If I decline to accept thy abuse and request thee to keep it to thyself, will it not be a source of misery to thee? A wicked man who reproaches a virtuous one is like one who looks up and spits at heaven. The spit soils not the heavens but comes back and defiles his own person.”

The abuser went away ashamed but he came back and took refuge in the Buddha.

I am not sure whether or not Dad ever developed a sermon from this.  But he could have done.

If the news is to be believed, the world in 2019 has lots of people hurling abuse at others, across political, societal, and ethnic lines. There being few Buddhas, the abuse seems accepted and returned in kind. That’s a lot of spitting going on even if it is not always aimed at virtuous ones.

The popular novelist, Jonathan Kellerman wrote, “Life is like a prism. What you see depends upon how you turn the glass.”

The editor of the Christian Science Monitor recalled last month a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that became the words to a popular Christmas song, “Christmas Bells.” The last two stanzas are:

“And in despair I bound my head,

There is no peace on earth, I said.

For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

God is not dead nor does he sleep.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep,

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men.”

People of a Certain Age, do we really believe “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail” and that “good will to men” is still possible?

I do.

These are a few of the things that shape my prism on the matter.

1. Across the country, there are people solving problems in their own communities, ignoring political party labels, class, racial, and even immigration distinctions to collaborate for the good of the community.  You cannot read the Fallows’ book, Our Towns, and be unmoved.
2. Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Haifa, Israel have figured out a way (according to a recent Monitor article) to live together peacefully, for the benefit of all, without letting religious differences impede cooperation.
3. Our local newspaper gave over 50% of its editorial page on the Sunday before Christmas to print a few of the many pieces submitted by readers describing simple acts of kindness, which Dad believed to be a most powerful force in life.
4. Hawaii Revised Statue 5-7.5(b) codifies the Aloha Spirit.  It is “the coordination of mind and heart within each person. It brings each person to the self. Each person must think and emote good feelings to others.” The statue expects people to show kindness, harmony, pleasantness, humility, and patience.
5. The club of billionaires pledged to divest themselves of at least 50% of their wealth to the benefit of others grows.  They have Andrew Carnegie, who gifted American cities thousands of public libraries, as a role model.
6. Jenova Chen has developed a phone-app-based game about “spreading light” in which generosity and compassion are keys to finding the right path. (Again, from the Monitor)
7. Research has established that most people would rather be happy than sad. (Or it should have done.) Being kind to another person creates happiness for two.

Hope is the base of my prism. My niece, Hope, sent around the following reflection on hope by Victoria Safford:

Hope is the Place Where Joy Meets Struggle.

“Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of hope—not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense: not the strident gates of self-righteousness which creak on shrill and angry hinges; nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of ‘Everything is going to be all right,’ but a very different, somewhat lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the places of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it might be, as it will be, the place from which you glimpse not only struggle but joy in the struggle, and we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see.”

Telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see; no abuse being hurled, no spitting at the sky. There are signs everywhere that people are finding refuge, observing the principle of great love, trying to replace evil with good, acting like the wrong shall fail.

It all depends upon how you turn the glass.

Happy New Year!

Daniel E. White

January 7, 2019

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