Dick Bolles' Enchanted World

Our Annual Christmas Message 2010

Every year, for ages, I've written a Christmas poem, sent to all my friends and family. Here is this year's (in response to requests from people whose address I don't have):

Christmas 2010 At The Bolles' House

We spin through space, yet drive our car

As though on straight, flat ground,

What great illusionists we are:

We're really upside down.

'Twas Shakespeare said it first, I think,

"What fools these mortals be,"

We hold the world is only what

Our earthly eyes can see.

We think A World Invisible 

Just simply can't exist.

So, "what you see is all you get,"

On that this Age insists.

Bunk!  there is Mercy -- can't see that!

Forgiveness, too, and Love!

And true, the world's not flat, but round,

And heaven's not "above",

Yet God surrounds us, everywhere,

As though we're in His womb,

Yes! Christ was born. Lived. Died. Rose. There!

He killed death in its tomb.

 

Illusionist!  come, close your eyes

And lean on Faith, not reason,

Man's experience testifies

We really need this Season:

When Unseen World sings out its Joy

Despite This World's bad news:

"Look up! for He, the baby King,

Was sent to be your Muse."

Dang!  light the trees!  Dance!  Sing the songs,

And hang the mistletoe;

Do what we can to right life's wrongs,

And let our souls just know

Things aren't as bad as they may seem,

God triumphs,  in the end.

So, Marci sends her love, and I

Add hugs, to you, dear friend.

  R.N.B.

 

Street Sweepers at Midnight

I get irrationally happy when I hear certain sounds. One of them comes at midnight, when I'm working late.  It's the sound of a street sweeper, coming up the street.   I assume you know what a street sweeper is.  It's a truck, usually white, with big brushes sticking out from the side of the truck, that are spinning, whirling, parallel to the ground, kicking up, then sucking up, the debris and waste that has accumulated in the street, near or at the curb.                                              

                                                                                                                       ^{Copyright © by Ponchitos, at en.wikipedia}

It makes a very distinctive sound,  audible while the sweeper is still a good ways off, as it moves up the street slowly toward you. It's a deep hum from the sweeper's engine, married to the soft swish of the spinning brushes, up against the curb.  As it gets louder, and nearer, I always run to the window to see.  And, sure enough,  along comes this hulking white thing, with its high beams piercing the midnight darkness.  It looks like some mechanized beast.  Never was I so happy to hear any other beast.

Why?  Well, I've heard that sound since I was a little kid.  It was a far, far, simpler world, then. But over the years, my childhood landscape has changed, seven times over, and there are new technologies for everything, all with their peculiar new sounds; but in the midst of them all comes the old familiar sound of the street sweeper, at midnight.  I've heard that sound for most of the time that I have been on earth.  I've heard it for decades.  It enchants me that these machines are still rumbling around, in my world.

For, things keep changin', as Bob Dylan observed.  Like: the times we live in, our ways of doing things, our locks, our home, our transportation, shopping centers, cinema complexes, commerce, technologies, the way we dress, our music, our body, our strength, and all the sights and sounds around us.  Change, change, change.   "You'll have to get used to it.  That doesn't work that way, any more. Sorry.  Things have changed."

Nostalgia is in full season.  Once considered a disease  [1770, "debilitating homesickness" from nostos (homecoming) and -algia (pain, grief)],  the word "nostalgia" graduated around 1920 to a disease-less meaning:  "a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time", and in our time it has mutated again to the simple " feeling of appreciation for the past or things related to the past."  In other words, "before all these changes."  That's nostalgia.  You saw it in the recent elections, you see it in the continuing strength of the Tea Party movement.

Nostalgia is in season because, as I said,  life lately seems like nothing but changes. Researchers Holmes and Rahe even made a list of life's changes, and assigned a certain stress level to each. You can find (and take) the test at http://tinyurl.com/384l43.  What you notice, when you study that list, is that the degree of stress is directly related to the degree of change each event represents in your life. The greater the change, the greater the stress.  And there are lots of changes in many people's lives. So therefore,  lots of stress.

So,  how do we get rid of so much stress? How do we cope with so many changes?  

Archimedes had the answer:  "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth."  The place to stand must, of course, be immovable.  Likewise with the fulcrum, and the very long pole. But his metaphor was important.  Find a constant, a firm place to stand,  and you can then turn to deal with change.    In our lives, a Constant is anything that does not change; anything or any person that remains unchanging, invariable, steadfast, faithful, and dependable.

The key to coping with stress is not found by ticking off, listing, noticing, remembering and meditating upon, all the changes we are having to deal with, in our life.  

It is found by listing, noticing, remembering and meditating upon what in our life has remained constant.  Life is composed of both Constancies, and Changes.  We live at our own peril if we only notice the Changes. That can drive you nuts.  We need to notice the Constants in our life more than we do; for from them, we derive our strength to deal with whatever Changes we may face.  

The Constancies I have noticed most, are:  character ( as hopefully we stay essentially the person we are, all our lives),  true friends, classical music, love and trust, our skills, talents, and gifts,  faith, and (for those who believe) the eternal God.

You can make up your own list. And you should.  Ask yourself, what has remained constant throughout your life, to date?  

I'll leave you now, with these thoughts.  So, cue the music, cue the old familiar sound of street sweepers at midnight.

 

 

__________________________

For a history of street sweepers, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_sweeper  For street sweeping in my town, see: http://tinyurl.com/29xf8gg   If you're curious about the town overall, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danville,_California

 

 

There's A Meanness Abroad in the Land

This is a criticism of critics. Just a tiny bit of irony, in that!

I was reading Newsweek today,  and found a review of war films, written by Caryn James.   She is a well-known movie critic.  I don't want to pick on her, she's probably a very nice woman, but she does serve up food for thought about all critics.   She was reviewing the new series about World War II,  by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.  And she had nothing good to say about it.  She also had little good to say about The Hurt Locker, the film which just cleaned up at the Oscars.   She said that Kathryn Bigelow's dazzling filmmaking "doesn't pause to let you realize that suspense and bravery are everything here."  I thought the film was about nothing else but. I went to watch it twice, because I was so entranced with her examination of the virtues and defects of such bravery.  ("War is a drug.")

In many of the reviews I read daily, on a whole range of subjects besides filmmaking, I am so struck with the underlying view the critics seem to have about intelligence.  Review after review bespeaks the idea of "look how intelligent I am, I can see – more than most – everything that's wrong with this."  (Whatever the this may be.)  I was raised with a very different view of intelligence: it valued "look how intelligent I am,  I can see – more than most – all the things there are to appreciate, about this."   

In our day, and perhaps in other days as well, it is a far rarer soul who makes appreciation the defining motif of his or her life,  than those who make criticism their defining goal.  Criticism is easy; it takes no brains to say what's wrong with something. Appreciation however, is difficult;  you sometimes have to fight to see things to appreciate, digging for example beneath ugly surface impressions,  to see some shining beauty underneath.  That's why prejudice flourishes.  It takes brains to see what there is to appreciate in every man and woman who was ever born.  Which should be the goal of every intelligent man or woman.  Civilization never decays or vanishes because of a lack of criticism in a society;  it decays or vanishes because of a lack of appreciation in that society.   As a direct consequence of this, that society tends to preserve the commonplace, while it casually throws away treasures. And criticism causes more meanness to be abroad, in the land.

Every critic begins with assumptions, usually unexamined, that they use to justify their hammering the thing they are examining.  For example, Caryn James' assumption here, in reviewing historical war films like The Hurt Locker, is that such films must have "a cultural resonance today," and feel "relevant." She has no patience with "outdated ideas" that were dear, she says in the past,  like "justice is on our side," or "warfare was about turf,"  or "platitudes about heroism."   She criticizes The Hurt Locker for "ignoring the urgent question of whether the war should be fought at all."   In other words, if she had been making that film, she would have been sure it dealt with that question. Fortunately, no such obligation was laid upon Kathryn Bigelow.  She was free to make her own film, not Caryn James'es.

In critics' articles or blogs, there's always just a little bit of "Ah, if I were king....(or queen) this is what I would have done."  The one notable exception to this is Roger Ebert, whom I read devotedly, just because he looks for things to appreciate in films that other critics dismiss out of hand.

Now, about history:  just because the past was different from the present, with different values and assumptions, doesn't mean it shouldn't be depicted.   Our history is what defines people, and nations.   Show me only a man's present circumstances,  and I may be bewildered by his actions.   But tell me that man's history and I will understand him much more completely, and find much to appreciate in him.  Our past is important,  and so are nations' pasts. We didn't just come into this world fully-hatched, and fully-born. We came into a context,  a family,  a community, a country, with traditions and values that were important to them, then;  and therefore important to us now.  In a word, show us our past, and make us really feel our history vividly,  and then we will find much more to appreciate about the present.  That is what the producers of The Pacific have done, and that is what Kathryn's The Hurt Locker has done, magnificently.

There's no way around it:  we need more "appreciators" in our society: men and women who, from the beginning, set out to make their lives all about appreciating others, even if it requires some hard thinking. And who think it takes more brains to appreciate than it does to criticize.  We need more men and women to make appreciation the goal of their whole career.  These are men and women to admire.

As the great composer of beautiful music, Jean Sibelius, famously said, "No one ever erected a statue to a critic."

 

 

Why the Job Hunt is Ruining America

Needless to say, I am not a politician.  I'm only an expert about "the job hunt."   But this does cause me to stay riveted on all that goes on in our nation's capital, because I've never seen a place more obsessed with The Job Hunt, in my whole life.

It's breathtaking to watch how, in the interests of their next job hunt, they will do almost anything: they will say one thing when they're trying to get the job, say the opposite thing once they have it.  They will even say No to everything, if they think it will help them with their next job hunt. 

They all have what we in our industry call "contract jobs" -- jobs that are only for a set amount of time, and then have to be renewed.  This keeps their eyes riveted on the people who have the power to hire them again,  and if they think  it will improve their chances of getting rehired, they will completely reverse their decisions on the job, from week to week:  they will even sponsor a bill one week,  vote against that bill the next week.   If they think it will help them with their next job hunt.

Why do they like this job so much, why do they want this job so badly?  Well, for one thing it has a great health plan.  For another, they get some mouthwatering special benefits and favors.  And, probably most importantly, the job gives them a lot of power, for as long as it lasts.  In an organization with 100 employees, one man (or woman) can thwart the will of the other ninety nine.

They don't need to take a Dale Carnegie course; this job, from beginning to end, depends on their being able "to win friends and influence people."  That's the skill that most determines whether or not they are successful in their next job hunt. It is the sine qua non of the job. 

The job hunt is their obsession.  They try to conceal that simple fact by giving it a more high-falutin' name.  They call it "re-election."  But beneath the facade of that language,  it's still the job hunt.

So, what does all this add up to?  Simply this: their obsession with their own job hunt is ruining America. It's causing things not to get done that should be done.  It's causing things that should not get done, to be done.   It's corrupting the fight to make this a better and more compassionate country, toward its own citizens.

I know what you're thinking, of course.  You think I'm talking about a particular political party. Nope. Wrong.   I'm talking about the whole Congress and the Executive Branch, decade by decade.  I'm talking about the hallowed tradition of the beast. Most of the policies, decisions and votes are based on their next job hunt.

So, as a job hunting expert, of sorts, I have this comforting thought for you: if you are unemployed, and worrying about how to find your next job,  don't worry. You have a friend in Washington, who is in the same boat as you are.  Make that: a lot of friends in Washington.  They may be employed temporarily right now.  But they're just as worried about their jobs as you are.

Friends?  Well they would be, if they ever saw any connection between their situation and yours. But I wouldn't hold out much hope that they'll ever change.  They are obsessed with their next job hunt.  They're not that worried about yours, except as it affects theirs. 

Wouldn't it be wonderful if they ever saw a connection between your job hunt and theirs?  And moved beyond self-obsession to compassion?    Oh well, we can dream, can't we?

P.S. In the interest of full confession, my grandfather was a congressman.  He was a noble man, and never worried about his job hunt.  He died peaceably, while he was still in office.I know of course there are other noble men and women in office, to whom none of what I have said above, applies.   I hope their tribe increases. 

Going to College As Fun -- With God

I had the sweetest college education anyone could ever dream of.   I decided to attend college in Cambridge Massachusetts, because that is where my high school sweetheart, Jan, was also going to college.  The first two years there I chose M.I.T., looking forward to being a chemical engineer.  But every Sunday we went to church in Boston, and one time there I heard a sermon about how many Episcopal churches were going to have to close, due to a shortage of ordained ministers.  Believing in the old saying, "If you're not part of the solution, you're probably part of the problem," I pondered the obvious dilemma as it applied to me personally: does society need more faith, or more technology?  I opted for faith, and decided to give up chemical engineering, and go into the ministry -- in spite of the fact that I was the shyest man I ever knew.

And so, for my final two college years I decided to transfer out of M.I.T. and go to a liberal arts college. I wanted to stay in Cambridge (for reasons you can guess),  so the obvious choice was Harvard.  And that's when I experienced college as I wish everyone could experience it.   You see,  because of my course credits from M.I.T. I had "a major" already fulfilled --  it was "Physics," which I greatly disliked, but it required no further course work. 

So, each semester I was at Harvard I just opened up the catalog, looked to see what subjects intrigued me, and went and enrolled in that class. I ranged all over the lot.  I took Psychology with Gordon Allport.  Anthropology with Clyde Kluckhohn. The world's religions with Arthur Darby Nock.  Atomic physics with Einstein's successor at the University of Prague.  The development of the English language, with Dean Kirby-Smith from Radcliffe.  And so forth. The names may or may not mean much to you, but they meant everything to me.  For these two years at Harvard, I don't think anyone ever had more fun going to college than I did.  With nothing I had to take, I just studied subjects that intrigued me, guided by some of the best minds in the world.  It felt, well, so Plato-ish.

Ah!  and what exactly is the reason that all these memories came flooding back, this week?  Well, the February 22nd issue of Newsweek magazine had an article about Harvard.   It was called "Harvard's Crisis of Faith", and in it Lisa Miller discussed a proposal "that undergraduate students should be required to take at least one course in a category called Reason and Faith." Harvard's Louis Menand, and others, were for it;  Harvard's evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker, and others, were agin it.  It was an interesting article, but I think they got the whole frame of the debate wrong.  It was all about God in  "courses."

What I learned from my time there, is that the courses you enroll in are only a small part of a college education.  That's because there are three steps, it seems to me, in the evolution of an educated person.  The first is, you begin by getting fascinated with information, or "data."  The Internet furnishes a fine example. The very nature of the beast is that it exists in packets.  Packets of data.  Mastering it, as you make your way through all the data that is out there, involves listening for silences as well as sounds. Listening for what's missing, as well as for what's there.  For what "they" don't tell you, as well as for what they do. Only then can you claim you're "an information specialist."

The next step in the evolution of an educated person is you move on.  You get fascinated now with courses and knowledges.  This is still data, of course, but now it's data that has two new characteristics:  the data is organized, and it is applied.  Mastering knowledge means you see how discrete packets of information are linked to each other,  by some internal logic or intuition;  and you see how this now-organized knowledge applies in real life situations, with real life problems. With this, you can claim you have mastered a field or body of knowledge. 

But there is a third step, in the evolution of an educated person.  You move on, eventually --  at age 22 or 72 -- to what is in essence a larger concentric circle,  encompassing all that has gone before, but now with an added outside circle or dimension.  That added dimension is called wisdom.  Wisdom has all the previous characteristics mentioned above -- sound, silence, organized, applied -- but with two new characteristics:  context, and weight.   With mere knowledge, mere coursework, you can start to think after a while that all ideas are of equal value and equal weight.  But with wisdom you try to look at things in the largest context possible,  and with that you realize that some ideas just matter more than others.  Some ideas simply carry more weight.  Wisdom lies in knowing that, and in knowing which ones.  And that, in turn, depends on always looking for the largest context possible, in which to set things, ideas, people, history, exploration, growth, and so on.  The impulse for doing this lies in the fact that  the largest context for everythng has always inspired in humans awe, dumbfoundedness, speechlessness,  and adoration -- such as those beautiful photos, lately,  of the heavens and the cosmos inspire in most of us.     

So, what is religion?  Well, at its best it has always been simply our search for the largest context in which to set everything. And, with one important discovery:  that as you move from information, to knowledge, to wisdom, you are moving to things that become more and more alive, as you journey. Knowledge is more alive than mere information.  Wisdom is more alive than mere knowledge.  And context -- the largest context imaginable -- is the most alive of all.  So we call that Context  "God." And feel, prior to any revelation from above,  that He or She has personality:  is sentient, alive, thinking, and -- above all -- creating. 

Over the course of this evolution of the educated person,  something odd happens. At the beginning, it is we who go looking -- for information, and then for  knowledge, and so forth.  But  when we find context -- the largest context imaginable, God -- the tables are turned. The history of religions has not been "Man's search for God" but "God, coming looking for us,"  seeking to fill every inch of our life with  His (or Her) full nature, life, and Being:  a process we call "grace"  (amazing grace! ).  

As I put down the Newsweek article, I found myself thinking:  God at Harvard?  Of course.  But not as a course.  Rather, as the context for the whole Harvard catalog, the beginning and end of both education and Wisdom.    

Fireworks in the Brain

I've noticed something startling these past few months:  my brain has been experiencing a sprint of new ideas in almost every area of interest, that I have.  For a long time, I simply noticed this,  and enjoyed it.  I mean, my brain has always been active, but now it's superactive. And creative.  I'm coming up with new ideas, a mile a minute. If thoughts once came like an occasional firecracker in the brain, now it feels like continuous fireworks.

Yesterday, it occurred to me to wonder why this was happening.  I am, after all, 82 years old; isn't the brain supposed to go into a slow decline by this point, with brain cells flicking off into space at an increasingly alarming rate?   Well, evidently not.  So, pondering why, I found myself talking to myself:  "what is different about your life, now, from, say, ten years ago?"  Instantly I knew the answer.  

My beloved wife and I have been watching movies.  No, that's not exactly something new.  I've been a movie buff all my life. What's new is the frequency.  Courtesy of Netflix, we've been watching movies every night. Think what that means:  graphic images flooding the brain for two hours every night. Without fail. And graphic images stimulate, as is common knowledge now, the right side of the brain.  This right side, in most people, is the creative, exploring, designing side of the brain.  It's the side that looks at old things in new ways,  familiar things with newly-found wonder, unexplored mental territory with new curiosity, sees patterns where no patterns were noticed before. The late Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness (1979) was one of the first to notice that images could make a big difference in a person's life.  Suffering from what doctors said was a terminal illness, he healed himself by playing Marx Brothers movies day by day.  It was images (and belly laughs) that did it. 

So, watching the movies every night lights up the mind.  I then wondered, is that enough to explain this burst of fireworks in my mind?   It occurred to me, after pondering, that there was something more.  And that was, the choice of movies.   I chose movies I remembered from different eras of my life, and most particularly the young years.  We chose to watch a movie I remember seeing when I was in tenth grade: Action in the North Atlantic, with Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart.  And the movie I remember seeing on my eighteenth birthday: Objective Burma, with Errol Flynn.  And so it has gone:  I've delved as deeply into my past as I can remember. For the sake of the curious, I have listed some of the movies at the end of this post.

But what is the point, and what does this have to do with stimulating the mind?  Well, it goes back to a belief of mine about dreams.  In my chequered career I used to do a lot of personal counseling with people in trouble. Some 6000 hours I would guess.   And I particularly delighted in helping them with understanding their dreams.  I noticed that when not much was stressing people out, in their present lives,  their dream-maker seemed to go back during their sleep to Unresolved Issues from their past -- not yet completely digested experiences if you will ––  and try to bring them to some kind of closure and peace. In other words, looking back at the past freed these people up, to do more in the present.  And what was I doing, but going back to the past every night with Netflix?   

When Frank Sinatra died, someone over forty wrote, "We have lost the soundtrack of our lives:  the music to which we fell in love, to which we proposed, to which we tied the markers of key events in our lives."  That's how I think of old movies, in my life at least:  they were the soundtrack of my life.  Going back and viewing this past, via movies, has freed me up to do more in the present.

Of course, I could be all wet. Maybe this new burst of thought and creative energy has more to do with age, the stars in their courses, God's grace descending,  wisdom arising - - who knows?  It still feels like fireworks in the brain. And I do believe it is a continuous diet of graphics and visiting the past that has something to do with it.  But, either way, it is a wonderful time to be alive.

_____________________________________

For the curious: The soundtrack and sighttrack of my past:

During the past six months, we have watched  Gunga Din, with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr, Sam Jaffe; Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston; Beau Geste, with Gary Cooper; Cabin in the Sky, with Ethel Waters; The Barkleys of Broadway, with Fred Astaire;  It Happened One Night, with Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert; The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn;  Drums Along the Mohawk, with Henry Fonda; Alexander's Ragtime Band, with Don Ameche; Casablanca, with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman; Suspicion, with Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine;  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, with James Stewart; Yankee Doodle Dandy, with Jimmy Cagney; Roman Holiday, with Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn;  Dr. No, with Sean Connery; Citizen Kane, with Orson Welles; The Maltese Falcon, with Humphrey Bogart, Pete Lorre; The Third Man, with Orson Welles; The Captain's Paradise, with Alec Guinness; The Big Heat, with Glenn Ford; Stormy Weather, with Lena Horne; To Catch a Thief, with Cary Grant, Grace Kelly; On The Waterfront, with Marlon Brando ("I coulda been a contender"), Eva Marie Saint;  Run Silent, Run Deep, with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster; My Favorite Wife, with Cary Grant, Irene Dunne; The Bridge on the River Kwai, with William Holden; Bad Day at Block Rock, with Spencer Tracy; The Sea Chase, with John Wayne, Lana Turner; River of No Return, with Robert Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe; From Here to Eternity, with Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr; Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy, Frederic March; Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand; Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman, Strother Martin ("What we've got here is failure to communicate."); High Society, with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra; The Graduate, with Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft; The Enemy Below, with Robert Mitchum, Curt Jurgens;  The Man Who Would Be King, with Michael Caine, Sean Connery; and every Fred Astaire or Cary Grant movie ever made.

Updated Information

Here's an update (as of the end of October) of the information in the previous blog, here:

Dick Bolles Contact Information

Books:  What Color Is Your Parachute:  A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers,  2010 edition.   10 million copies sold,  revised and updated annually.  In 20 languages, used in 26 countries.  303 pages; $18.99

              The Job-Hunter’s Survival Guide: How to Find Hope and Rewarding Work, Even When “There Are No Jobs.”   First printing sold out;  now into its second printing. 100 pages, $9.99   

       Blog: http://jobhuntersbible.typepad.com/enchanted-world/      

       Twitter:  ParachuteGuy

       Website:  www.jobhuntersbible.com       

       E mail:  RNB25@aol.com

       Information about the workshops in my home, held for five days, every three months: fivedayworkshop@aol.com   (Next one: April 10 - 15,  2010)

       Videos of themes from those workshops are sold at:  DickBollesWorkshop.com

       Other Visuals of me on the Internet:  http://spezify.com/#/_22_richard bolles_22_

        My best audio on the Web: My 2007 "Great Conversation" with Richard Leider; it can be found on the following page http://cce.umn.edu/Great-Conversations/Listen-to-Past-Great-Conversations/index.html.   Scroll down to June 2007 series.

        My best video on the Web: My hour long video on the subject of 50+;  it is at: http://mediamill.cla.umn.edu/mediamill/embed/21379

        Best article about me, on the Web: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/27/bolles.htm

         NBC Today Show segment with me as guest: http://tinyurl.com/c7nsq3

        My Article: Job Hunting Compared, Differences Between Countries, Written at the behest of the          State Dept: This is at: http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2008/December/20081210084227cmretrop5.685061e-02.html  It is on the site of America.gov, under American Life, thence Education.

          I am on LinkedIn, and Plaxo.   I am not on Facebook or MySpace.

Health Care, In The Days of House Calls

When I was five, instead of starting kindergarten,  I got pneumonia.    It was back in the days when there were no antibiotics,  so my body just had to tough it out.  It took some time; half a year, in fact.  I was in bed, at home, all that time  They wanted me to be watched 'round the clock, so a nurse had to be brought in, and they brought in a bed for her, which they put fifteen feet away from me, down against the wall where you came into the bedroom. I don't remember anything about her, except that she was always there whenever i woke up in the middle of the night; it was like having an angel watching over me.   And the other thing I remember is she always wore white shoes.  

I had two visitors every day without fail, around six o'clock.  One visitor was a family my parents knew; they dropped off ice cream for me, every night.  It was sweet and tasty, and soothed my perpetual sore throat.  The other nightly visitor was my doctor,  Dr. Leonard Nichol.  I never went to his office;  he always came to me. He was a doctor who made house calls, to heaven only knows how many people every evening. He was a wonderful soft-spoken man,  who carried a doctor's black bag with him. He examined my lungs and heart every night.    I liked him a lot.  I liked him for his caring, and I liked him for his dry sense of humor.  On one of his visits, we heard the sound of an airplane overhead.  He paused, looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes, and said, "Only way I'll ever be in a plane accident is if one falls on top of me."

I have no idea how my parents paid for all this.  We had no health insurance.  Dad made a miserable wage. We never owned a home. (We rented.)   We couldn't even afford a car. The way I figure it, the doctor had to be charging us virtually nothing for the house calls.  He came so faithfully, day in and day out,  for one reason and one reason only:  I was sick and he was a doctor.  That was his Calling.  

It's hardly any wonder that as an adult my life has been devoted to helping people find their Calling.  In fact, when I stop to think about it, that year when I was sick succeeded in defining all the themes of my adult life:  a woman's caring, a sense of angels watching over us, on being dependable day after day, plus the body's struggle to heal and grow.  (A real book title I have always loved: "The Body is the Hero".)   With all this, no wonder I went into the Ministry, straight out of college, instead of chemical engineering.   And yes,  I made house calls as a minister. Faithfully.  It felt good to pay back a little bit to the Universe for the kindness shown to me by Dr. Nichol.

Being sick at five years of age literallly changed my life. 

And, incidentally,  my heart still beats faster whenever I see white shoes. 

How to Live in An Enchanted World

I live in an enchanted world.  The secret can be summarized in one word:  Marci.   That is the name of the woman I loved and married, in 2004.   I cannot wait to get up, every morning,  at the prospect that I get to spend another day with her.  For she creates an enchanted world all around her.

Marci grew up in another country, and another culture.  She is exquisitely different from any one I have ever met in my life.  I ponder every day what makes her so delightful to live with.   So let me describe her character to you, but I won't say it's about her.  I'll say it's about us, or what we could be, since I beieve these are things she had to learn, and therefore these are things that we can learn, if we want to live a more enchanted life:

1. Prize Innocence.  We seem too often to prize worldliness, the person who has seen it all, done it all, and drained life of its wonder.  In an enchanted world, you prize innocence:  the people who have no cynicism, but believe the best of every person they meet.   Remember, when Jesus was asked who was the greatest in his kingdom,  he set a little child before them.   Keeping the little child in you alive is the kindest thing you can do for yourself. Believe, as children do, in an invisible world around us.   Filled not with dreadful dark and terrible things as the popular books and movies of our time would have it, but with invisible creatures of Virtue and Beauty, as the best of faith would have it.

2. Treat every day as the first day. Even with the partner you have lived with for ten thousand days and nights, treat each new day with them as though it were the first time you've ever seen them.  That means, tell them each day what you delight in, about them.  Never grow tired of saying "please" and "thank you" each time they do an act of kindness that makes your life better, on down to simple tasks like cooking and making the bed.  Hold them, touch them, hug them, and laugh with them each day, as a child would. You know the respect with which you treated them when the relationship was new; treat them with the same respect, on the ten thousandth day.  And expect the same in return.

3. Always be curious about the people you love or treasure. A scientist is walking by the seashore. Suddenly she sees a creature she has never seen before, in her life.  She decides she will not capture it, but simply spend some weeks studying it, to see just what it does:  how it survives, how it spends the day, what it eats, what its relationship is with other creatures, where it goes at night, how long it sleeps, etc.   In an enchanted world, you must approach each person,  and most particularly your partner, with this same curiosity. Day by day, you observe them, not judge them.   You try to find out the laws that govern their being, and their life.  Example: ¥ou are married to a writer.  The writer seems to take two weeks each time they need to write a piece, before they actually start writing. You note this, not try to change it.  You do not say to yourself,  "Oh, she's got writer's block, and I've got to get her over that."  You simply observe: "Oh, she takes two weeks before she gets going."  This observation never ends.  You are living with a creature you do not know. Do not lull yourself into thinking you do. This creature is constantly evolving, changing. You want to  know more about the laws that govern your partner's being this year.  Always, in an enchanted world, it's "Oh, this is who they are,"  not "Oh, I've got to change them."  But there is a paradox here:  often, by just studying who they are, you will help them change and grow without a word from you.

4. Go through Life determining to be fun to live with. You know, we have so many goals when we are in a long-term relationship, marriage or whatever:  to be forgiving, to be gracious, to be ioving, and kind.  We often forget the most essential goal, the one that creates an enchanted world:  that you be fun to live with.  Just that.  Nothing more.  It's not that hard. If you're puzzled, and you think it is hard,  recall someone you know who is loads of fun to be with.  Don't just try to fake being like them, but make a list of what makes them fun. That will give you something to work on.  Here are my hunches:  lots of laughter, showing an interest in you, immense playfulness that is also kind, having an optimism about people and things,  not brooding about things, looking forward rather than backward,  able to keep people entertained, and the creme de la creme, able to make occasional funny comments about things.  That you can cultivate in yourself.  But most of all the key is simply that you want to be fun, to live with.

5. Prize Beauty. An enchanted world is a beautiful world, above all.  To live in one,  put as much beauty into your daily life, as you can.  It's up to you to say what that means.  For some it is flowers.  For some it is music. For some it is nature.  For some it is art.  For some it is decoration of the place they live.  For some it is the way they dress, and the jewelry they wear.  For some, it is all of these things.  In an enchanted world, however, it is inner beauty radiating from the face and soul, that is the greatest beauty of all.

6. Lastly, an enchanted world is a place of endless gratitude. Nothing is taken for granted. Everything is offered and accepted only with gratitude.  Endlessly.  To and from your partner.  To and from your family.  To and from your friends. Strangers.  Everyone, including above all the one who created us.  In a world where it is considered the height of intelligence to criticize everything, it is enchanting to be thanked often.  It is enchanting to give thanks often.   Why settle for a dreary complaining existence when you could have an enchanted one?

Well, there it is: a description of Marci.  A description of you. A description of an enchanted life, where you just can't wait to get up each morning.

I wish each of you a more enchanted life.  Even if it's not named "Marci."

  

The Stomach

When I was 31,  I was so thin that if I turned sideways, people thought I'd left the room.  I was 6' 5" tall, but I weighed only 150 pounds.   Over the years this changed, dramatically.  Recently I weighed 276 pounds, and if I turned sideways, I looked like Alfred Hitchcock (for older readers), or  a sumo wrestler (for the younger crowd). I had, in effect, donned a perpetual backpack, with 125 pounds of stones in it.  And I was carrying it around with me, 24/7.

This summer, my beloved wife Marci and I took a long trip, by rented car, through the West.  August 15 - 24.  On the trip my stomach started to diminish, more than somewhat.  "What the......?"  I thought to myself.  "What was happening on this trip that was different than when we were back home?"  Suddenly I realized, "Milk."   I wasn't drinking any milk.  Sat down that night in Helena, Montana, and did some figuring.  I had been drinking an enormous amount of milk:  4 gallons of 1% per week.   In a year, that was 200 gallons.  A visual image popped into my mind:  a conveyor belt, with 200 gallon-bottles of milk, all to be consumed by me.   Yikes!

I realized the stuff tasted good, and made for strong bones, but clearly I was addicted to it.  I wondered, do they have the equivalent of an AA meeting for milk addicts?  "Hello, my name is Dick. I'm a milk-aholic.  I haven't had a drink since August 15th."

I dunno.  Anyway, I made up my own group.  Haven't touched the stuff since I woke up.   I've lost 16 pounds in three weeks,  and expect my weight to continue to go down.   

Ah, the benefits of kicking the stuff.  I can start fitting into clothes that had applied for unemployment.  My blood pressure, which was 210/110 not that long ago, is now down to 100/70.   My vanity, wounded every time I would look in the mirror, now is beginning to heal.  Things are really looking up.  And I'm no longer looking down.   At the stomach,  that used to be.