Month: July 2019

Everything has expiration dates. Our food is stamped with them. Our cars, devices, and technology have them. Even our health, and our very lives, has its limits.

About six weeks ago, I tore the Achilles tendon on my left heel. It wasn’t a complete rupture; an ultrasound revealed that half of the fibers were still connected the way they should be. So my treatment has consisted of a large boot and some physical therapy.

When people see the massive boot, almost everyone asks me what happened. Then they invariably want to know how it happened. The tale isn’t very exciting. I was descending, fairly gently, two small steps one morning and the tendon just gave way. “You should come up with a better story,” most say. “Just make something up!” I usually smile. Then shrug. The truth is sometimes dull. Yesterday, I decided to share it.

“I turned 60 this summer. I guess the warranty on my Achilles was up.”

That answer got a laugh. It also got me thinking. The warranty was up. Who knows what sorts of micro tears and strains that tendon has sustained over the years. It wasn’t designed to last forever. I’m probably lucky that it has lasted this long.

We are, for better or worse, organisms with limited lifespans. The warranties on our parts are typically less than the lifespans. The older we get, the more those parts fail. Sometimes it is because we haven’t cared for them. But many times it is because the parts just weren’t designed to last as long as we are. The spirit is often more willing to keep going than the flesh is able to do so.

Consider the musculoskeletal system – a major set of human componentry with short-term warranty. Knees are especially notorious for their inability to sustain the shock and awe of modern living. Contemporary lifestyles and the pounds associated with food surplus are just too much for the thin cartilaginous cushions inside most of our knees. Over time, the cushions loose their spring. Then the bones grate against each other. Arthritis follows.

Fortunately, medicine has found ways to help many of us with expired skeletal warranties. Once uncommon, joint replacements are now a routine part of the menu of options available to address bone and joint failures. These days a person can actually have a knee, hip, or shoulder replaced and be home the same day. Just like our cars, routine maintenance will only go so far. Yet we can keep the same chassis if we are willing to swap out some parts. We can’t do that indefinitely; biology won’t permit things attached to the core framework to run past a certain expiration date. But the reliability of some key human constituencies can be refreshed. New warranty periods are possible. Those extensions don’t come with guarantees. Neither of course did the original parts themselves.

Which leads me to wondering what else might be renewable in the human form and experience, besides our joints. Basic elements of anatomy can be replaced, yes. More elements, including even organs, may be possible soon. It is conceivable that, in the next few decades, we will be able to swap out a larger and larger portion of our worn, disease-riddled, or neglected physical selves. If we can do this safely and appropriately – and equitably – that may not be so bad. Suffering will be decreased. Some diseases, such as diabetes or Parkinson’s, may be able to be cured. I used to feel less favorably inclined to such futuristic scenarios. Now, perhaps because of age, or maybe because of evolving insight, the promise of human part replacement doesn’t bother me as much. In fact, I hope that medical science can accelerate some of its capabilities so that more of us, across the age spectrum, can benefit. It is terribly unfair that some children are born with certain debilitating and life threatening conditions. It is tragic that certain genetic mutations or extrinsic infectious illnesses can leave teens and adults with useless organs and physical components. It is wrong to deny the same help for those who have failed to care for perfectly normal systems that would have lasted longer save for people’s poor choices. If we can do something about suffering and physical impairment, we should.

However, we shouldn’t fool ourselves, especially those of us peeking over the crest of life’s final decades: there is more to being human than having a physical form in good or excellent condition. There are emotional, spiritual, and mindful considerations as well. And they can likewise become arthritic, decrepit, or poorly functional. We must tend to their warranties as well.

When was the last time you thought about the warranty of your mental health? It can, and often does, fail. As does the warranty of our spirits; some of us struggle to appreciate the critical role that spirit plays in the definition of human purpose – the why of our existence, and the what next. We can forget that our minds, emotions, and souls have their own expiration dates and ignore the renewal of those non-physical warranties at a peril far greater than that created by an arthritic knee or a partially torn Achilles tendon. Sadly, there aren’t the same types of same day replacement procedures available for our minds and spirits as for our skeletal systems. The rejuvenation of the spirit or the restoration and replenishment of the mind takes more than a quick trip to the body shop for a join. A different type of societal commitment is required.

And prioritization. The health of mind and spirit is equally if not more important as that of the body. That kind of health renewal takes time. It takes skills and supports different than those necessary for warranty renewal of the corpus. Helping a person in the depths of depression and despair should be fundamental to our communal approach to wellbeing. Likewise should be the open recognition and support for spiritual sustenance. I don’t know about you but I’m not interested in a longer life purely for the sake of more years. I’d prefer to have those years be ones of mental peace, social stability, and spiritual prosperity.

That’s why I’ve decided to redouble my focus on warranties beyond those of my tendons and bone junctions. Who knows when other types of expiration dates may be headed my way? Better to proactively tend to those renewals while I still have the opportunity. Because a simple boot and physical therapy series aren’t enough to repair or renew the challenges of a faltering personality, moral compass, or soul. If some of those warranties expire, second chances may not be possible.

It was sad when my youngest daughter figured out the riddle of the tooth fairy. While some of fairy’s rides were a little bumpy (i.e. “There’s another tooth under her pillow? Ugh, I don’t have any cash.”), all were successfully completed. Teeth were rescued and nominal compensation exchanged. My daughter was overjoyed when she awoke. There was magic.

Different cultures delight in an assortment of enchantment-associated traditions. Many sorcery stories are positive, life-engaging. Some are darker, involving forces of evil pitted against personages of good. All inspire the imagination of the young in powerful ways.

As a child, I was captivated by the imaginative. Not that I personally possessed an abundance of the quality; I just found it reassuring that the world was influenced – perhaps even guided – by forces of creativity and imagination who cared about the good, who cheered for the hopeful, who rewarded the kind. It was nice to know that beings such as Santa Claus existed, less because they brought things, more because they stood for things. They lived above the fray. They were consistent and reliable. They embodied a world of goodness, not accomplishments.

It was fun to re-experience the non-religious fairy and spirit world as an adult parent. My wife and I created some fairy friends for our children. Those fairies communicated with the girls during times of triumph and struggle, encouraging them to become better versions of themselves. There was also Max, an excitable elf who would call my nephews every Christmas Eve and, amidst lots of high-pitched chattering and horse barn banging, remind them to be asleep when Santa visited later that night. Santa himself called my house to update my daughters on his annual voyage. There were sleigh marks in our driveway, half-eaten carrots in the house and garden for Easter bunnies and Christmas reindeer, longings in November for the Peanuts’ Great Pumpkin, and superpower assimilations on Halloween. The magic was decidedly from a Judeo-Christian or Celtic tradition but I would have been open to learning from and leaning on other heritages as well. The key wasn’t the historical lens. What mattered was the experience of wonder.

Such an experience was not always available through formalized religion. While there is potential for awe, even rapture, in the religious, there is also exposure to the weighty matters of sin, immorality, guilt, and eternal damnation. The Easter bunny, although a symbol of fertility from ancient spring rituals, brought sweets and treats into our household, not fire and brimstone. Only an eye for the hidden was required in order to share in the gifts of the Easter bunny’s season.

But, alas, the joy associated with magnanimous mystery fades once our children discern the actual origination of the visits and calls. Oh, that was just “Mom and Dad”. Or it was my brother Mark, or my Uncle Mike. There wasn’t really a Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, or secret world of fairies. There was just this world, the so-called adult one, the one of the routine, the one of unmasked truth. Welcome to the view behind the curtain, our children learn when they are old enough to guess at roles. Welcome to the way things are.

How we hardly understand how things are! We live in a world where you can think of someone and then that person calls you – and we think time flows only in one direction. We breathe the same air as trillions of other lifeforms – and we assume that our lives are separate from everything and everyone around us. We walk on a planet that rotates faster than the speed of sound – and we act as if standing up with dizziness is the easiest thing in creation.

We think faster than the speed of light. We love stronger than the measurable bonds of nature. We live beyond the capability of our physical form.

And yet we believe that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and other so-called mythical beings don’t really exist.

There is so much magic in the world, if only we might slow down enough to realize that magic manifests itself to us through each other. Movies, books, and stories capture our imagination because our imagination inhabits the power of possibility and informs the role that all of us together play in the revelation of that potentiality. This does not diminish the place of God, the Creator, Allah, and the supreme presence of the spiritual. It does not contradict the dynamic tension between light and dark, yin and yang, and good and evil. It does not trivialize the vital place that value, morality, and decency should have in our lives.

It instead enhances the joy of being. The magic should only just begin when the identity of Santa Claus and other cultural colleagues is disclosed. We are, of course, the embodiment of the mystical. We already live in a constant state of augmented reality. Special glasses or head sets are not required. All that is needed is an openness to listen, feel, and see.

The tooth fairy lives on – if only we believe. Let’s not stop leaving gifts under our children’s metaphorical pillows, even when their primary teeth stop falling out. Let’s keep calling across generations and enjoying the ability to laugh, love, and leap into the wonder of the universe.

It is time we embrace the magic that is life.

The world is full of wisdom. Most people, however, don’t realize their own contributions to the collective sagacity. We tend to equate prudence with grey hair, monastic living, and eyes the color of a wintry sky. We think that meaningful percipience is only resident on mountain tops.

Perhaps that isn’t so bad; we don’t need a planet full of show-offs and bombasts. That is a risk with wisdom. Awareness of its possession can lead to arrogance. And there is plenty of that loose in the world these days. We don’t need to encourage more.

Still, it is worth acknowledging the quiet pervasiveness of perspective among us, perhaps because there is so much ugly individualism and egotism. We need more positive role-modeling in our lives. We need to see each other as capable of providing that mentoring.

Which we do – albeit inconsistently. In fact, if we open ourselves to listening, exemplars of wisdom abound, from the young and the old, the effete and the crude, the sacred and the profane. People may not be routinely wise from moment to moment; no, there is plenty of folly, even stupidity, in daily existence. But our fellow human travelers can also demonstrate their fair share of insight and perspective, in words as well as action. And it can manifest itself at the oddest and most unexpected of times.

“Daddy didn’t do anything wrong. He just made a mistake.”

That was my youngest daughter’s comment a decade plus ago when I forgot to watch a pot of stew on the stove. Heaps of seasoning and feverish stirring could not mask the burnt flavor in a meal that had been previously heading toward perfection. My wife had done all the work; my role was just to remember to pay attention to the pot and stir. I don’t recall why I didn’t just plant myself next to the simmering concoction. Bottom line: I did not and the stew was ruined. Our youngest’s timely declaration was written down and secured for posterity to the refrigerator door with a magnet. While it didn’t save me from profuse apology, nor lessen the selfishness of my blunder, it did soften the communal disappointment felt by family that a tasty vegetarian stew was no longer on the evening’s menu.

“I get to relive stages of childhood, because my kids demand that I see the world through their eyes.”

We were going around a table, offering personal insights before a collaborative meeting. There were representatives from health, education, justice, and community service disciplines. A colleague shared his perspective regarding life at home with his three young children. We all laughed. The truth within his spontaneous comment leapt at me. I immediately scribbled his words in my notebook so that I wouldn’t forget them.

It happens regularly, when I listen for it. People lower their guard or they decide not to raise one. They say how they feel. They share some part of themselves that they care about. They speak honestly, from the heart. Gems of wisdom spill unfiltered into my days.

Sometimes there is conscious intent behind these jewels of the commons. “We’re jumping from rock to rock,” Turbo said the last night I stayed with him, “just trying to cross the stream.” Damien Cave, a reporter for the NY Times, wrote an article this past week about Matt Zurbo, a father and oyster farmer in Tasmania, who was writing a children’s story a day for his 20 month-old daughter. Mr. Zurbo’s perspective on a life’s journey resonated with me. It reminded me of what my father told me that my grandfather once said when the two temporally tired one afternoon of bickering and my grandfather, staring out a window in the waning light of day, dropped his head and sighed . “You know, Ben, we’re all just trying to get by.” My grandfather wasn’t as purposefully poetic as Matt Zurbo. Perhaps, in his own way, he was expressing the same sentiment. It’s slippery out there. There aren’t easy signposts for how we should proceed. There aren’t handrails for the crossing. We are often doing the best we can not to fall in.

I wasn’t alive when my grandfather said those words to my father. And Granddad wasn’t alive when my father shared them with me many years later. Nonetheless, when I think about the scene, I feel, quite vividly, as if I’m in the room. In fact, I feel like I’m actually seeing – through my father’s eyes – Granddad loosen his shoulders, shake his head, and look up sadly into the evening light. And there, right there, mingled with some dust motes dancing on the last rays of day, I see Granddad let his soul show to my dad. To me.

Maybe that’s a helpful way to think about wisdom in our world: letting the soul show. Fanfare, drumroll, long treks up hillsides or into dense documents are not required. Just a deep breath, some soft eyes, and an open heart. The soul knows what to do next.

Thank you, friends, for your unguarded moments of revelation. You are very wise indeed.

While reading a book on wisdom this morning, I came across the expression “seeing with fresh eyes”. As sometimes happens, my brain at first processed the written words incorrectly; I substituted the word fresh with fish, misinterpreting the expression. Fortunately, it didn’t take too long for me to recognize the mistake. After a double take and a more careful rereading of the sentence, I laughed and wondered if I shouldn’t call the optometrist’s office for an exam (like the reminder card that I’d recently received in the mail had suggested).

That’s when it struck me: my subconscious could be on to something. There may be something useful to see the world as a fish does.

Anatomically, fish eyes are not too different from land vertebrates. In fact, the basic structure is the same. There is a cornea, pupil, lens, and retina. There are rods and cones, enabling perception of light and color. However, one key difference separates fish eyes from ours, a distinction that makes us view fish consciousness as vastly different than ours. Except for sharks, fish don’t have eyelids. They can’t blink.

That’s why fish stare.

Staring is not necessarily a habit that I would like to acquire. Two weeks ago, I was having lunch with my family on the patio of a Greek restaurant when I heard a woman sit at the table next to us and tell the server that she felt. “I think I need some fluids and sugar,” she said. Trying to be casual, I turned my head to find a young woman in her twenties who was flushed in her cheeks and neck. She had the look of someone who was teetering on the edge of syncope.

“Dad”, my oldest daughter whispered, “you’re staring.”

As a healthcare professional with decades of medical experience, I admit that I feel entitled to a visual inspection of someone who publicly declares feeling ill. Apparently, the intensity of the optical assessment associated with that entitlement is not for the faint of heart.

My daughter had not heard the woman’s complaint of feeling ill. “Still,” she said, after I quietly explained what was going on, “that was kind of a creepy look.”

It was a clinical look, I wanted to explain, a look that blocks out everything and everyone else around and focuses on one person at one time, in this case a person with a verbal complaint that could be harbinger of heat exhaustion or, even worse, heat stroke. My eyes swiveled back to the young woman. She was alone. This could be my daughter, I thought. This was a young person traveling by herself and in need of help. This was someone else’s daughter who needed someone else on the planet to pay attention to her, right now, right this instant.

“You’re doing it again,” I heard a family member say.

“Try this,” the server announced, placing what looked like a rapidly whipped concoction of ice, juice, and yoghurt in front of the young woman. “The sun is very hot.” The woman grabbed it and began drinking.

Treatment in place, I tried to watch surreptitiously as the girl sipped and sighed her way through the cold drink, her color improving with each inhale through the straw. When the glass was empty, the red blotching was also gone from her face and neck. She was not going to require an active intervention from a stranger at the next table.

“You were looking pretty overheated,” I said in a voice loud enough for her to hear.

The young woman turned and smiled. “I probably shouldn’t have done that hike in the midday sun,” she admitted. “But I do feel better now. Thank you.”

Our tables had a brief conversation during which we learned where the young woman was from, where she had been, and where she was going. It was very polite and cordial. Shortly thereafter, she left, waving as she did. There was no further staring.

Look, fish eyes aren’t usually appropriate, I grant you. If a big carp came to the edge of an aquarium tank and just watched me, I would definitely think something strange was happening and would probably move away. So I’m glad that humans can blink, pleased that we can turn our view in an assortment of directions so that we don’t so easily invade the space of lifeforms around us.

But sometimes the world needs to be seen with fish eyes. Sometimes we do need to stare. Not mindlessly. Just purposefully. With intention. With a focus that permits pattern recognition and potential engagement and action. With an intensity that lets each other know that we aren’t separate and disconnected.

Decades ago, I was driving home from work one evening when, driving through a construction zone, the four cars in front of me had a pile up. While there were some obvious injuries, none seemed life-threatening. As I was running back to my car to get some supplies, an elderly woman asked me to check on her husband. It didn’t seem necessary. A guy of about eighty, he was sitting in the passenger seat of the van, talking. The van had minimal damage. He was even moving his arms and had no cuts or bruising. “I can’t feel my arms,” he said, after I climbed into the van and asked what was bothering him. Seconds later, the guy stopped breathing. I remember focusing on him with an intensity that sears memories. This must be a spinal cord injury, from rapid flexion and extension of his neck. The guy needed traction on his neck, immediately. In order to do that, he needed to be out of the van and on the ground.

The fellow was huge; his tiny wife wasn’t going to be able to help me move him. She was chattering about where they were heading and how they had recently been married. That’s when, through the front windshield, I saw a construction worker standing at least a hundred feet down the road, talking to someone from another vehicle. My hands were busy, trying to stretch the elderly man’s head in the van’s passenger seat away from his shoulders. So I shot a fish-eyed stare through the van windshield as if it was some sort of communication device. The look was instinct. It was meant to send a beam of energy across space that would get the construction worker’s attention. Amazingly, it did. He turned, squinted, and saw me. Somehow he interpreted the movement of my head as a gesture to get himself over to the van as fast as his feet could carry him. Together, we lowered the large, unresponsive newlywed to the hard highway pavement. I then pulled the poor fellow’s head away from his body, hoping that the traction would relieve pressure on his spinal cord. He started breathing again. And he kept on breathing, all the way through the helicopter ride to the hospital, through surgery, and, I later heard, through his discharge home after hospitalization.

Yep, fish eyes can be freaky. Like so much of life, however, they do have their place and time.

Sometimes we need to live without blinking.