Month: May 2019

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