|
A
monthly journal of articles, essays, observations,
and resources for men
|
|
Number 122 - May 2012 In
this issue:
●
Blossoming ●
The
Buckeye State: My Speech to the Graduates Blossoming
The cherry
blossoms in Washington were early this year, and I got
to see them, for the first time in my life, because
somebody died. Let me explain.
Mario's son, Giorgio, organized and hosted a
gathering in Washington for family, extended family, and
friends to celebrate Mario's life. The gathering was
scheduled for a Sunday afternoon. Ann and I flew to Washington a few days before
the gathering, to visit with friends and to visit with
Giorgio and his wife. We also hoped to go in town to the
Tidal Basin to see the cherry trees in full blossom. On Friday, Ann and I took the Metro to the city
and walked over to the Tidal Basin. We joined the
throngs of tourists celebrating a gorgeous spring day
and the sight of blooms forming dense pink and white
clouds. The blossoms offered soft frames for the
Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial. We
walked all the way around the basin, enjoying one
breathtaking vista after another. In some places, we
were treated to a gentle blizzard of pink and white
petals as the blooms began to reach the end of their
life cycle. On Saturday it rained, knocking many petals to
the ground and bedraggling the rest. On Sunday we spent the afternoon honoring Mario.
He had experienced blossoming in his life: successful
and innovative engineer, highly respected employee of
the World Bank, family man, award-winning glider pilot.
He had also experienced bad times: leaving his home in
Italy, the death of his wife, a disfiguring accident,
struggles with health issues in the last few years of
his life. The budding, flowering, and demise of the cherry
blossoms take just a few weeks every year in March and
April. The budding, flowering, and demise of Mario took
91 years. The blossoms and the man are eloquent
reminders of the impermanence of everything. In time,
everything must pass: The flowers and the man followed
natural trajectories that ended up in the earth. I got to thinking about trajectories, real or
metaphorical, as part of the natural order of things. As
time passes, nothing remains the same; nothing happens
in isolation; everything is interrelated. Beginnings and
endings are part of each other. There is no beginning
without an end, and there is no end without a beginning.
But it's
all too easy to try to pick and choose, to wish that the
good things would last forever or fear that the bad
things will never end. We set up an ideal world in which
good things never end and bad things should never be, in
which reality is an alien intruder. In the long run,
things are just never the way we think they ought to be.
The challenge, for me, is not to hold on so tight
to the ideal world I create in my mind that I miss out
on what's real. The lesson from this weekend (one of
many instances, but I'm a slow learner) is that
trajectories - beginnings and endings - changes -
realities - are a privilege of being alive, and worth
celebrating in their entirety. M ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Buckeye State: My
speech to the Graduates
(This
is an imaginary graduation speech I wrote but never
delivered. It appeared originally in Menletter in
the June 2007 issue. Seems nothing much has changed.
Or maybe it has, a little, and we need to carry on.) So. Here I was, age ten or so, standing at the
top of the steps of the Methodist Church in Chagrin
Falls, Ohio. Four older boys were standing at the
bottom, holding buckeyes. Let me tell you about buckeyes. Ohio is lousy
with buckeye trees, hence the moniker "Buckeye State."
The nuts, once you peel off the spiny rind, look a
little like chestnuts - round, shiny brown, but with a
white spot that makes them look like they eye of a buck
deer. And unlike chestnuts, they're bitter and
poisonous. Even the squirrels prefer not to eat them
unless they're starving. Buckeyes are good mostly for
drilling holes in to string together, and as missiles to
chuck at scared little kids. The thing about being pinned against the front
door of the church was that I felt totally helpless. The
other boys knew it, too, taunting me and saying, "This
one has your name on it" just before launching it at me.
One of them hit me in the chest, and for a couple years
I had a lump behind my left nipple. I never told anyone
about it. The barrage and the taunting kept up for what
seemed like hours but was probably about ten minutes.
The boys finally got bored or ran out of ready
ammunition, and I proceeded home in tears and shame. So. Here most of you are at the top of the
Methodist church steps, with the bullies of the world
chucking buckeyes at you. Here are just a few of the
things you have to dodge, or take full force. They're
the things that this world is handing over to you as its
future occupants: AIDS. Preemptive war. Genocide. Huge deficits.
Declining dollar. Outsourcing. Fat cats earning
mega-millions while the real wage for most workers goes
down. Fifty-percent divorce rate. Obesity epidemic.
Global warming - oops, climate change. Spinning of truth
into convenient, plausible lies. Media-generated fear of
putting anything into our mouths, and industry-generated
fake food products. Multinational corporations' control
of the media and politicians. A few of you have been trained, or will be
trained, to stand at the bottom of the steps tormenting
the rest of you. A few more will be trained to gather
more buckeyes. And the majority will stand at the top of the
steps, bravely or not, but mostly crying and desperate
simply to go home. And I hope I'm scaring the crap out of you. So. What are you supposed to do with all this -
this horrid inheritance from a tiny minority of your
elders, who should have known better but didn't? A few of you - very few - will have the vision
and courage to throw the buckeyes back at the
tormenters, or simply to walk down the steps and
throttle the bastards, take away their buckeyes, and
pitch them into the sewer. You will be the political and
moral leaders of tomorrow, perhaps playing the game long
enough to acquire the power and resources to try to
change the country or even the world - if the world
doesn't corrupt you first. Be careful. Most of you don't
know what the hell you're getting into if you try to
play with the big boys. What are the rest of you going to do, stuck as
easy targets at the top of the steps? Unlike my
tormentors five or so decades ago, yours won't be
getting bored or running out of ammo very soon. How about nothing - or close to nothing, in the
context of the national or world stage. To go any
further with this, I have to invite you out of the
buckeye metaphor, out of Chagrin Falls, and back into
this space. If you read or watch even some of the daily news,
you'll know that very few of us can have any direct
effect on the events of the world - or our country - or
even our state. We may, some of us, be able to affect
local events by organizing, letter-writing, or even
running for office. But what most of the news gives us
is a voyeuristic thrill, and then a feeling of utter
powerlessness and ineffectual rage. Frankly, for you new
grads and us old folks alike, I don't think it's very
healthy. You do nothing because you can do nothing. You
might as well make doing nothing a conscious choice. You
might even choose to limit your exposure to the news
media. Does this leave you totally impotent in dealing
with the load of crap you're inheriting? Two paragraphs
ago I said "close to nothing." Even close to nothing
will be a challenge for you, I promise. First, you need to vote. Early and often, but not
in the same election. However much we may think (and
perhaps rightly) that the presidential elections of 2000
and 2004 were stolen, they couldn't have been stolen
without their being close enough to be tipped by a few
voters in many precincts who chose to stay home. Nearly
every clueless, crooked, corrupt, shoot-'em-in-the face
politician in office was put there by voters. So were
the good ones. Even the appointed hacks were appointed
by elected officials. Think of how little it costs you
to vote: an hour or two once every couple of years. If
you think your vote doesn't count, look down at the
bottom of the steps at the jackasses throwing the
buckeyes at you. Most are elected officials or the
kajillionaires who control them. Second, you need to know what and whom to vote
for. This means exposing yourself to as much information
as you need to, to be sure, and lending a critical eye
and ear to the task. Most of us know when we're being
had - we just look the other way. The effort to inform
yourselves is minimal, and the reward potentially great.
It may take decades to stop or reverse some of the awful
things headed your way, and you might as well start now.
If you want to give money to candidates and causes,
that's fine. But start with knowledge. Third, you need to encourage, or change if need
be, the people you can influence. Start with yourself.
Then your family, especially your kids or nieces and
nephews. And this may be the biggest challenge of all:
trying to media-proof and advertisement-proof and
propaganda-proof and inform ourselves and the people we
love so that we all can think for ourselves and lead
kind, thoughtful lives. Your personal integrity, and the
integrity you teach, are what will save your generation
and the generations to come. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ © Copyright 2012 by Tim Baehr. All Rights Reserved. Powered by   
|
