But Can You Believe It?

As will surprise no one even noddingly acquainted with this little blog, I am a fan of quotations. Always have been. In high school I had a small black binder in which I compulsively jotted interesting quotations that I came upon. Today I’m more efficient though no less geeky: I find and share them via the internet, including this blog.

Lately I’ve been encountering and sharing a fair number of quotations via Twitter--in fact, it occurred to me not long ago that I need to quit following so many whose tweets consist only of quotations, since my Twitter page (@wjreynolds; see all my fun tweets over to the left there) is getting pretty clogged up with quotations, many of which are tweeted and retweeted and re-retweeted to a disturbing extent--by the original tweeter, I mean, which gets to be a little old.

One of the things I’ve noted about the quotations I see on Twitter is that the vast majority of them are intended to be “inspirational.” Which is fine. We can all use a little inspiration, a little motivation, a little boost to get us over life’s speed bumps.

What we don’t need, however, is to be lied to about life.

And I’m afraid there’s a subset of “inspirational” quotes that does precisely that.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them—Walt Disney

Sorry, Walt, but that’s simply not true. All of our dreams? Nonsense. People die every day having had dreams that never came true. I hope they died having had dreams that did come true, too, of course, but the idea that every dream can come true if we work hard enough or never give up or, oddly, have sufficient “courage,” is, I’m afraid, only a dream. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue our dreams; definitely we should! But the notion that pursuit guarantees success is silly.

Any person who contributes to prosperity must prosper in turn. —E. Nightingale

That’s a great sentiment and I endorse it wholeheartedly...except for the words “must” and “prosper.” Lots of people contribute to prosperity and get swindled--if we’re using “prosperity” in a concrete, dollars-and-cents way. If we’re talking about prospering spiritually or morally by contributing to the overall prosperity of our fellow human beings, then I have no issue with it. But if we mean monetarily, then no. Anyone who has been paying any attention to the war on the American middle class has to know that Mr. Nightingale’s comment is noble but untrue. Change “must” to “should,” though, and I’m on board!

We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish. —Tony Robbins

Ooh--started off great there, Tony, and then botched it. It’s the Disney Fallacy again: You can (and should) pursue your dreams, but there is no guarantee--none, whatsoever, in any shape or form, ever--that so doing will make them happen. For instance, I would like to be six feet tall and have a full head of wavy black hair. But it is quite impossible. Doesn’t matter how hard I try, how positively I think, how many motivational quotations I memorize. Ain’t gonna happen. Ever.

Better I should concentrate on what can or may happen rather than delude myself into thinking that anything is achievable.

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it. —Wayne Dyer

More of the same. I realize that I receive and then transmit these quotations out of whatever their original context might be. It’s possible that the speaker or writer went on to elucidate more clearly their meaning, and delineated the obvious stumbling blocks and outright barriers that stand in the way of their supposed “achieve everything” message. But I contend that the stock in trade of motivational speakers and writers is that “sound bite,” that pithy, telegraphic message that resonates with people, and sometimes falls under the heading of telling people what they want to hear. Dr. Dyer’s quotation above seems to fit that category. Truth is, you cannot attain anything you “really want” if you “really go after it.” You can attain some things, but not “anything.” Not everything in life is under our control, or bendable to our will. To believe that it is borders on delusion.

The escape clause in many of these quotations lies in the phrasing: Oh, when I said “you can achieve anything” I meant “can” in the sense of “it’s possible.” Ah. I guess “you might” or “you could” is less catchy than “you can.” I said you can attain things you really want if you really try. If you don’t attain them, you must not have wanted or tried enough. Oh, I assure you: I really want to be six feet tall and have a full head of wavy black hair. Won’t happen.

So it is that I prefer and find more inspiration in quotations that speak to what life is and what life may be, and how we should live our lives.

The reality you experience is a reflection of what you believe is most possible. —Bashar

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. —Henrik Ibsen

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. —Carl Zwanzig

Okay, that last one was just for fun. I like those too.

And I especially like this one, which I think most accurately reflects reality:

Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. —Langston Hughes

Now that is inspirational!

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Two Years On. Or So.

Here's a great old photo I came upon this past week whilst cleaning out an old desk at my folks' house. It is your humble correspondent and his dad, taken, I would judge, in the spring of 1957. (Clues: I was born in December 1956, I am obviously not very old in the photo, I am not particularly bundled up but Dad is wearing a long-sleeved shirt so I suspect a warm spring day and not a hot summer day.)

I love those old scallop-edged snapshots; I wonder why they did away with them. For that matter, I wonder why the scallops existed in the first place--purely decorative, or was there some other purpose?

According to the Minnehaha County Coroner, my dad died two years ago today, January 31. But it has always been a date pulled from the air. I found my dad in his bed on February 1, 2008, when he failed to turn up for our weekly luncheon. He lived alone, so who is to say whether he died before or after midnight? 

(Had the bureaucratic coin-toss landed on the other side, we would not have had to refund his February Social Security payment. Thanks a bunch, county!)

When my mom died, we knew with certainty the date, for my parents, as was their custom, had been up till the wee hours of February 7, 2003, going to bed well after midnight. No question marks there at all.

But with dad...well, there's always just that little bit of mystery. Is today the anniversary? Or tomorrow?

To be safe, I shall drink a toast to him this evening and again tomorrow.

Passages

I started to write this almost a week ago, but have been too busy and too interrupted to complete it. So here you have it "as is," unfinished, unpolished, and with no warranty expressed or implied.

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It's funny how similar events can strike you differently.

Three weeks ago today, on February 1, 2008, my dad failed to show up for our standing lunch date, and I subsequently found him in his bed, so peaceful-looking that I half-expected him to start awake, as he would when I was a kid and would creep into his room while he slept.

And I find only now can I write about it--and him--a little. When my mom died in 2003, it seemed I needed to write about it right away. Indeed, I was a little annoyed that there was so much "stuff" to deal with that I had scant time to do so.

Then, too, when Mom died, most of my writing was personal, for my own therapy or shared with, primarily, family. I don't recall having written anything here, though I haven't gone back to check.

Anyhow, it's funny.

And I don't know why it's been hard to write about it this time and not the previous time. Maybe because my mom had been ailing, and in fact had passed a couple of points earlier in the year where we, or at least I, thought she was done for. So it was still a shock, but not so much of a surprise. In Dad's case, it was both. He had been fighting some bronchitis-like symptoms for some weeks, but there was nothing that would cause one to think that any crisis point was looming. Even his doctor, who is also my doctor, was stunned by the turn of events.

My dad's death serves to underscore for me something that I have felt for some time: I don't understand death. I don't get it at all. This is nothing new: Even as a kid, it made no sense to me that a person could one minute be up and about, hale and hearty, and then the next minute be dead. Certainly, it makes sense that a bad accident would kill someone, or that an overdose of druges would do someone in, or drowning--extreme stuff like that. But the thought that a person can go to bed and not get up in the morning (as was the case, in the end, with both my parents), or, as has happened with a couple of friends over the years, get up out of a chair to go do something and keel over dead--well, that's just ludicrous. That makes no sense. "Oh, he had a heart attack"; "Well, he had a stroke"; "It was an aneurysm"--this is supposed to make sense? Well, it doesn't! I know that people drop dead all the time...but it just doesn't seem that they should. You might just as well say, "Oh, well, buildings fall down all the time." NO, THEY DON'T! Buildings stay up, barring disaster. Why shouldn't we?

It appears now too that I am past the time when Society thinks I should still be reeling from the loss of my last parent. Well, Society can go to hell, as far as that goes. I think it's pretty damn inconsiderate for the world to keep turning at a time like this, if you must know. There's so much to be done--a thousand details, ten thousand moving parts--and yet my whopping great three days' Bereavement Leave are all gone, and I am expected to pretend that the crap that piled up on my desk while I was burying my father has any significance. As was the case when Mom died--and when I had a LOT less to do, since my Dad was, naturally, point man on all her affairs, and nor was there an estate to settle--it seems to me that Bereavement Leave would best come right about now, when the funeral hubbub has died down (bad choice of words, that) and a guy could use some time to process, let alone mourn. But Society seems to think that three days should about do the job, and how come you're still not all caught up from that week you were gone to lay your father to rest? (I took some vacation days, too. Three days--bah!)

I am quite astonished by the number of times these past three weeks that something amusing, aggravating, or just plain strange has occurred, and I have found myself mentally filing it away for recounting to Dad at our next luncheon. That, I presume, will be some time in the future. I also presume he will, as usual, insist on picking up the tab.

Not surprisingly, I think, and not for the first time, I find I have spent a goodly amount of hours lately contemplating life, death, and eternity. I am no theologian, of course, and indeed a great many of my views border on heresy. But for the most part I do believe in some kind of Creator, and I usually believe that there is some kind of continuation past this life. Heaven? Maybe--I have absolutely no idea, and I think anyone who says otherwise is delusional. But while I freely, even cheerfully acknowledge the possibility that this mortal coil is all there is, and that when we leave it we simply blink out of existence, that strikes me as wasteful. And I consider the universe to be a pretty frugal place. So the waste of our lives, ideas, experience simply CEASING when we die is counterintuitive. Makes more sense to me to think that SOMETHING happens after death...floating among the clouds strumming lyres, if you like, but SOMETHING. Something has to happen to that energy that is US. We continue in another form. We continue without form. We integrate into some cosmic wholeness. Whatever. That seems less a leap than to think it all just evaporates.

On the other hand, if it all does just evaporate--if we live and then we die and there is no more after that--well, that doesn't strike me as the worst thing, either. And how would we ever know the difference?

Of course, it is very comforting to think that my parents are now reunited in some otherly plane of existence...that they are there with their own parents, and with friends and loved ones who have gone before. Just as it is pleasant to think that I too will someday join them. But "pleasant" and "fact" are not synonyms, just as "belief" and "fact" are not.

This much I do know: If the measure of our "success" as human beings is in the impact we have made on the people we encounter in our lives (as I believe it is), then my father was a very successful man indeed. There is no way I could begin to keep track of the number of people--many of them known to me, many not--who have stopped me these past three weeks to tell me how much they'll miss my dad, how important he was to them, how helpful and supportive. It's certainly not hard for me to believe, for those sentiments sum up my father pretty completely. But I'm not sure I fully appreciated the scope of his impact on others' lives. It's really quite impressive.