March 10: "The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came," Control Issues, Egotism

Mary Oliver reflects on human beings . . . 

The Poet Compares Human Nature to the Ocean From Which We Came

by:  Mary Oliver

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,

it can lie down like silk breathing

or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold; it can rise, ebb, froth

like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can

sweet-talk entirely.  As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

Human beings sometimes flummox me.  In my various jobs--programming director for a library, college English professor, church organist, poetry workshop leader--I encounter all kinds of people.  And I'm part of two large, extended families, as well.  So, you can say that I get what Mary Oliver is saying here.  I've seen quite a bit in my life, from craziness to sweet-talk.

Yet, some aspects of human nature that I just don't get, no matter how many times I encounter them.  For instance, I don't understand individuals with control issues.  A person who literally has to control every aspect of every part of their lives (and everyone else's lives) is doomed to a life of unhappiness.  Because life and people are unpredictable.  So, either you can either enjoy life in all of its chaos, and love people in all their failings, or you can be absolutely miserable.  I prefer enjoyment and love over unhappiness and misery.

Another aspect of human nature that is beyond my comprehension:  egotism.  If someone has to provide a complete CV of accomplishments within the first five minutes of interacting with me, I will be quickly looking for the bar or hors d'oeuvres table.  I don't care if you received a $100,000 grant from the NEA, unless you're paying for dinner.  Don't regale me with tales of how you got drunk with Truman Capote at Studio 54.  I'll probably counter with how I met Alec Baldwin at the Met one day.  Humility is more interesting and attractive to me.  If you have to toot your own horn, please do so in another room (preferably in another house in another town).

If I sound slightly misanthropic, it's because I am.  At least tonight.  I've had a week where I've dealt with several difficult people, including today.  My response is always the same.  I patiently try to point out, in a gentle and kind way, the absurdity of overwrought emotional reactions to certain situations.  I try to pierce balloons of self-importance without causing another Hindenburg.  Sometimes, I'm successful.  Most of the time, however, I fail, because people don't like to be wrong (another aspect of human nature I loath).

The sad thing about people with these kinds of character traits is that they don't even realize how embarrassing their behaviors are.  Or they don't care, which is even worse.  I am so self-aware that it can be paralyzing at times.  But I prefer to go through life sensitive to the feelings of others rather than blindly oblivious.  Give me a healthy dose of compassion over a heaping helping of misplaced indignation or pride.

Saint Marty may have already used up all his people skills at the start of this weekend.

May 6: Everything Seemed Clear, Hard Truths, "Dead Poets Society"

Merton readies himself for the monastery as Paris falls to the Nazis . . . 

The months passed quickly, but not quickly enough for me. Already it was June 1940: but the two months that remained until the date in August when the doors of the novitiate would open to receive thirty or forty new postulants seemed infinitely far away. 

I did not stay long in New York when I came back from Cuba. I was there only a few days, in which I went to the monastery on 31st Street, and learned from Father Edmund that my application for admission had been accepted, and that some of the necessary papers had arrived. It was a very good thing that this was so, because postulants entering a religious Order need documents from every diocese where they have lived for a morally continuous year since their fourteenth year, as well as a birth certificate and a lot of other things as well. 

But this was precisely the time when the German armies were pouring into France. At the moment when I stepped off the boat in New York, they had made their first great break through the French lines, and it had at last become obvious that the impregnable defence of the Maginot Line was a myth. Indeed, it was only a matter of very few days before the fierce armored divisions of the Nazis, following in the path broken out before them by the Luftwaffe, pierced the demoralized French army and embraced the betrayed nation in arms of steel. They had Paris within a fortnight, and then they were at the Loire, and finally the papers were full of blurred wirephotos of the dumb, isolated dining-car in the park at Compiegne where Hitler made the French eat the document on which the 1918 armistice had been written. 

So, too, if my father and mother’s marriage certificate from St. Anne’s in Soho, London, had not come in that year, it might never have come at all. I don’t know if the parish records of St. Anne’s survived the blitzkrieg that was about to be let loose over the head of the huge, dark city full of sins and miseries, in whose fogs I had once walked with such wise complacency.

Everything seemed clear. A month would go by, and then another, and soon I would be walking, with my suitcase, up some drab, unimaginable street in Paterson, New Jersey, to a small brick monastery which I could not very well envisage. But the drabness of the city would be left behind at the door and I knew, although I had no special illusions about St. Anthony’s novitiate either, that inside I would find peace. And I would begin my retreat, and after a month or so I would put on the brown robe and white cord of a friar and I would be walking in sandals with a shaved head, in silence, to a not too beautiful chapel. But anyway, there I would have God, and possess Him, and belong to Him.

It's amazing when your life seems clear, your way straight and unencumbered.  That's what Merton sees.  He is seeking a path to God, and that path runs directly through the Franciscan monastery in his mind.  Of course, life is never that simple, as Merton will soon learn.

It has been over a week since my last post.  In the betwixt time, I graded piles of student essays, entered final grades, took a day or two to celebrate surviving a year of pandemic teaching, and watched Dead Poets Society once or twice or seven times.  Other good things have happened, as well.  I got my teaching assignment for next fall semester, and I received some good news at my library job.  Overall, with some minor bumps and twists, my path to this point in the year was pretty much as I expected.  At least, in my professional life.

My personal life is a whole other ball of wax.  I am some place where I never thought I'd be.  Thirty years ago, I had a vision of what home and wife and family would look like.  I saw a clear path.  And now, sitting on my couch at 11:30 at night, watching Dead Poets Society yet again, typing this blog post, I can say that the road hasn't been all that easy.  In fact, it has twisted, turned, detoured, and potholed.  A few times, it completely shut down for construction.

No, I'm not feeling sorry for myself.  That's not what this is about.  It's about coming to terms with hard truths.  (Is that vague enough for you?  Unfortunately, that's about as specific as I'm going to get right now.)  Truth is not always pleasant.  In fact, truth can cause a whole lot of sleepless nights.  You can fight truth and be absolutely miserable.  Or you can accept it and make the necessary (if uncomfortable) adjustments.  

Me?  I'm somewhere between World War II and the Potsdam Agreement.  Not quite at peace, but really battle weary.  

So, disciples, this post will not be my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.  I have no wisdom to impart tonight, except for the fact that Dead Poets Society is a really damn good movie.  In some ways, I'm standing on top of my desk with Ethan Hawke, looking down at the world from a different perspective.  Not really liking what I see, but not being able to change it.

Say it with Saint Marty, "O Captain!  My Captain!"