Might As Well Be Here Now

Recently I was watching my family play (at social distance) in the swimming pool in our neighborhood. My wife was throwing a plastic ball to her grandchildren and I said, “Nice throw, Carol. You don’t throw like a girl.” Sara, my adult step-daughter, responded with an uncharacteristically harsh admonition. She said she resented the phrase “throw like a girl.” She said she did not want language like that spoken in the presence of her two young sons. She said she wanted her sons to grow up to be sensitive, good men who respected women.    I thought Sara’s reaction was a little extreme. However, it did cause me to reflect on the role of parents in the character development of young boys.    I wondered (especially in the context of the  #metoo  era) how do young boys learn to become men who respect women? This month I have also asked myself how do young white males learn to recognize and (unlike my generation) do something useful in response to systemic racism?...

Living in a pandemic reveals truths that are endemic  to the life, times, and polemics  of Planet Earth in this age of exaggerated outrage when we prefer to argue and fight and insist that only our side sees the Light that can reveal the solution to our global plight without seeing that the only hope… however slight is to work together toward a collective insight that just might hold us together  long enough to tether  a lifeline to the solution  to the pandemic’s challenge to our evolution.

2020 was a doozy of a year! So many of us got sick with the virus. So many of us died earlier than we would have otherwise. We lost jobs, money, and, most significantly, we temporarily lost a sense of confidence about the future. Yet, here we are in late 2021. We got through it. So what did we learn. We learned that we are all interconnected, whether we like it or not. We now recognize that all of us on planet Earth are connected in a giant physical (and maybe metaphysical) network. For many centuries prior to 2020 most of us were able to ignore this fact. But in a post 2020 world we can no longer ignore this simple reality... we are one... big interconnected organism. We learned that we need to create a global healthcare system that has the capacity to respond to the next novel virus and to the one after that. We learned that we need to transcend cultural barriers that inhibit collaboration. We learned that our giant physical (and maybe metaphysical) network can be helpful in s...

You might think there is no need for sorrow, no need for grief. You might think her death is actually overdue and a welcome relief. People might say to you, "The deceased has finally been released from the painful cage of very old age. So just move on. Don't feel sad. Just appreciate what a good life she had." You might even tell yourself. Don't feel lost. Don't feel lonely. Don't dwell on the loss of your one and only... Mothership. All of that might be good advice for how you should feel. But don't expect that advice to matter a great deal. Because the Mothership is gone and can never be replaced. So now you are left to learn how to fill in the empty space.

About five years ago I was walking on the beach at Bald Head Island with then six-year-old Sully Davis. Sully saw something that caught his attention and he ran ahead to check it out. It was a mangled mess of seaweed, driftwood, trash, and some unidentifiable organic matter that had washed up onto the shore.  Sully said, “Hey, what’s that?” Always interested in the depths of gullibility of the six-year-old mind, I said, “That, my friend, is a Sea Beaver.” Sully said, “Sea Beaver! What’s that?”  I said, “Sea Beavers are very rare creatures that are only found deep near the ocean floor. This one must have gotten into shallow water and lost a fight with a shark or something. You are really lucky to find a Sea Beaver, even a dead one, because Sea Beavers avoid people and are seldom seen by anybody.” Sully picked up the dead Sea Beaver with a stick and took the carcass back to an area of the beach near our rental house.  The following day we were wal...

This morning I stopped by Whole Foods in Chapel Hill for breakfast. I don’t stop there often anymore but this morning I was there…again. As I sat down I remembered being at that same spot on September 11, 2001 and hearing about the 9/11 attacks for the first time.  Today it was another surprise. I was reading the news on my iPad and came across an article announcing the death of Ram Dass. I was not shocked by the news but really shocked by my response. I felt a deep sense of loss, as if I had lost a close friend. Fortunately, I was alone and could allow myself a few moments to feel the emotion. I found the Ram Dass Facebook page where thousands of people were commenting. I added mine, hoping this simple act might matter to someone. I wrote: After hearing Ram Dass speak in 1971 my life was never the same. I sense his Being...here…Now.

Yesterday I had a pleasant text message exchange with Steve Rodriguez who is an extremely nice guy in Louisville. Steve wrote, “Remember that Cowboys jacket I got from u a while back?” I remembered because the jacket had a history. About 10 years ago a generous woman, Laura Ring, gave me a bag of clothes to share with some panhandlers in my neighborhood. Laura had an unusual but admirable respect for the panhandlers and their difficult lifestyles. Included in the bag of clothing was an almost-new Dallas Cowboys leather jacket.  I made a decision to take the really cool leather jacket intended for the homeless guys and instead give it to the only Dallas Cowboys fan that I knew – Steve Rodriguez. I asked my wife to wrap it up so we could give it to Steve for Christmas. I enjoyed watching Steve open and appreciate the gift. I also felt a slight ambivalence because I knew the homeless guys in my neighborhood might have hated the Dallas Cowboys but they would have appreci...