Month: April 2021

For years, I’ve had a book on my shelf: The Way Things Work, by David Macauley. Published in 1988 for “readers of all ages”, it is a delightful visual summary of how basic machines and technologies work. Not sure what a pulley? This is explained, more through pictures than words, in a section entitled “the Mechanics of Movement”. Can you fix that lawn sprinkler? You can learn about worm gears and sprinklers in two fun-filled pages under “Gears and Belts”. Over the decades, as I’ve winnowed my library of printed materials during many moves of work and domicile, Macauley’s book has always made the cut. It reminds me that it is possible, at a very high conceptual level, to understand things that I interact with on a daily basis, especially things invented by humans.

What though of things that don’t work? It is comforting, even empowering, to develop a vocabulary about mechanics, electricity, and the basics of the zipper. Might there be similar benefit to routine expansion of our understanding through the lens of mistakes, misfires, and simply silly human designs, interventions, and efforts?

A jaunt through my recent week offers some examples. Let’s begin with the audio functions of the Zoom call. Pushing the connect button for Zoom is easy; most of us have learned how to do this expertly. What is one to do, however, when the speaker function on the plug-in headset stops working? On Wednesday, I could hear people. On Thursday, nope, they were suddenly muted. All the computer keyboard indicators were properly silent. Could I make it work? Sadly, I could not. What about thinking of ways to assure the audio would not work? Aha! I found it: it does now work to use the microphone option on Zoom audio control when the problem is the speaker function. You see, if the problem is what you are not hearing, it does not work to try to control the other person’s microphone with the setting that manages your own. In other words, I could change the microphone function all day long and not fix the issue – something I can tell you from repeat effort. Why does that not work? Because it is the “speaker” function on the control panel that switches the sound from computer to auxiliary headset. It even says so, right on the control options. Once I found out what didn’t work, I was able to realize what did work and, almost magically, I could hear meetings again through the tiny wire connecting connecting computer to ears, saving my entire household from participating in the meeting experience with me. Thus, through the realization about how audio things did not work on Zoom, family peace and harmony were rescued. And my work productivity soared.

Instances of miscues abound, present all around us should we just look and listen. If watered, for instance, trees on the southern side of a northern hemisphere house eventually grow; it does not work to put solar panels on a roof during one decade when those southern-side trees will block out the sun a single decade later. Why? Trees like the sun. That’s what helps them grow. Consequently, if those same trees absorb the star’s rays before those rays reach the solar display on the roof of the house, well, the panels on that roof will not get rays themselves, and hence will not charge. And kaput goes their usefulness.

It is also difficult to read the pitch and grain of a golf course green when an inexperienced golfer is trying to make a crucial putt during what appears to be a competitive game with friends; it does not work for all three of the other players to provide simultaneous input on the aim of the one nervous golfer’s putt. The reason? The golfer with the metal club in his hand does not know how it use it. He gets flustered and ends up sending the small white ball farther from the cup than where it was when he began.

A young couple traveling through town may, after consuming alcohol in a local establishment, get into an argument; it does not work for a kind-hearted local who does not know the couple but himself previously had some bumps in life to reason with the perhaps ill-matched pair. Why not? Logic from a representative of an older generation cannot easily traverse the neural circuitry of youth, especially when that youthful wiring is bathed by the illogical chemistry of ethanol and its derivatives.

Three unleashed dogs walking on a footpath will, should there be opportunity, invariably leave their owner’s side; it does not work for the dogs’ owner to talk to her four-legged friends as if the group had signed a pre-exercise contract regarding the rules of walking off a leash. How do we know this? It is a well-known fact that most dogs (unless their name is Lassie) cannot read contracts. Plus a dog’s signature is too easy to forge and so none would ever put paw to paper anyway, regardless of the situation. Finally, all dogs know that any self-respecting member of canis lupus familiaris, under contract or not, will stray from its human’s side when said canine gets a whiff of grass or dirt, other dogs (leashed or not), or even the possibility of a squirrel.

The above are only a few observations from my travels in recent days. There were many more. And together we could probably cite other manifestations of the basic principles of non-working things from the arenas of public policy and the media, things such as communication techniques on the science behind vaccines, the application of ancient perspective of gun control to contemporary mass shootings, and a myriad of other topics and themes. There is, in fact, no shortage of evidence regarding the way things don’t work. It surrounds us with too much regularity. Why then, in such a state of abundance, don’t we avail ourselves of more opportunities to learn? What prevents us from breaking through, as a species, and putting our personal and collective experience into productive and collaborative practice?

Perhaps it is the mindset associated with change. Or maybe we just enjoy focusing on what is working rather that what is not. No one likes to look into a mirror and see their flaws. It’s too easy to do that with others. And yet our own flaws are usually all we see in the mirror, if we are being honest. Which is maybe why we like to see them in others. Which we in turn chide ourselves for doing when we look into the mirror. Which motivates us to turn away from the mirror as we age, tired of seeing our own blemishes, especially the ones behind the skin, eyes, and hair we see in our reflections.

But might it be easier if we found more humor in ourselves and our circumstances? Later in her life, my mom would sometimes start to laugh at herself, typically (but not always) when she thought no one was looking. Occasionally I’d be visiting and would catch her shaking her head, calling herself by name, and chuckling. If she caught me catching her, she would just smile and say something about how foolish she was. For a long time I thought that she was practicing the art of humility. Now I realize taht it may have been deeper than that. She may have been finding joy in the realization of the many ways that things – many for which she had accountability – did not work. Amazingly, she may have figured out how to make that work.

The identity candidates clamor for recognition, crowding together as if on cue. 

Physiology, the loudest calls, all of these tissues, organs, and limbs. There
are more cells in a single human body than people who have ever lived. There is matter, lots of it, shaped into a the unique form of you. 
True, shares an invisible view, except there is mind too. The ability to think and reason, the awareness
of joy, sadness, and suffering, the desire to know literature, science, history, art, language, mathematics, the potential to create -
Nay. Nay. 
There is a restlessness to speak. But spirit shall first have its say.
What is a "me" without the soul? spirit muses. What watches over mind when it thinks, when it
challenges in grand style the notion of continuous being, when it rests and sleeps, when it meditates, when it watches the rise and fall of the chest.
There is the sky though. Yes, the wind whispers. That is really the best 
way to find answers, or at least the birds and mechanical forms that inhabit it. 
And don't forget color, sound, and general sensation. Notice how perception organizes, into music and art.
A rustling beneath a bush inquires about creation. From whence does it arise?  The author may be quail, or squirrel, or perhaps the rattle of a disturbed snake.
Take care! An eagle alights with confidence on a pine tree, to the left side. An apprehensive 
ant carries its oversized cargo, down here, with frantic effort, on the right.
The boy in you would have stepped on that traveler, the clouds sigh. Nature nods, wonders how man learns to conserve his might for more wholesome interactions, for struggles that matter, for grand considerations 
such as the self.
Somewhere, cars are honking. People are pushing. Seas swell, ice shelves melt, walls are built, and
civilization presses itself together, expressing its will. Microbes proliferate. Some kill. Others bring health.
Sometimes there is balance.
What though of beauty. What of sorrow. What of the ability to glance toward a morrow that
may, indeed, yes, may always still be better, at least compared with the frame we name today.
Who gets to say? 
In the silence that follows, 
the group shrugs.
They are full of replies. None are answers. They know. As do I. 
We celebrate this: the ability to move. To read. To share. To notice the breath while the chest expands width and life probes for depth.

Where do I begin and end? How about you? 
Is it for me to judge? Does it have anything to do with
God. Yahweh. The Creator. The first cause.
The infinite.

I am - here now. You are - just the same. The universe is - always.
More? Nothing is for sure.  
The whole though, that must be. That is. That is what is.

Perhaps I am not who. Nor, then, are we, too. The universe though, it still is.
And the infinite remains. Call it what you may
yet recall that we are born amidst a great

mystery.
Such is the nature of mercy.
Such is the peace cradled by a simple 
smile.

Just there, ah, right there - I feel myself - 
if only for a short while.

Fear, greed, and success can be powerful motivators. But love is by far more influential.

I met an amazing young woman yesterday, someone I will simply call M (not the initial of her real name). Sitting in the passenger seat of a large vehicle, M had just received her first dose of the COVID vaccine at a mass public vaccination event in Phoenix. Before I approached the van, a colleague shared with me that M lived with a developmental disability and had been hospitalized three months ago with a serious COVID illness. Consequently, after M and her mom told me that she was feeling ok, I congratulated M for getting better from COVID and for bravely coming with her mom to receive the first dose of the vaccine.

“You were in the intensive care unit, weren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes,” M replied. “My dad was there too. Except he died.”

My heart ached. My instinct registered the momentous importance of the vaccine, both for M and for her mother. My eyes clouded with emotion.

A few words tumbled through my mask. “I bet your dad is proud of you right now.”

M smiled. Then we talked.

The temperature of the afternoon, the fatigue I had previously felt, the concern that I might wilt like a desiccated flower under the heat of the sun and tarmac and line of automobile engines all evaporated without effort. I was unexpectedly standing within one of life’s majestic and humbling moments, a timeless blink of existence when the world is no longer present, when individuality blends with universality, when breath, truth, and all the rich aspects of being resonate like the extended notes of a harmonious chord reverberating in an ancient cathedral. This experience, however, had no walls or roof. There was no container capable of defining or holding it. It was, quite simply, boundless.

Dare I say that I felt enwrapped in beauty? I have no intention of minimizing M and her mother’s loss; the pain it has brought their family was all too evident in their eyes, in the soft sadness of the air, in the spaces among that air, our words, and the bonds enabling hydrogen and oxygen to form the tears that swelled within me. Yet the love they felt for the father and husband who had been lost to a virus was as palpable as a gentle embrace from my own deceased parents. I was deeply grateful for M and her mother’s willingness to share that love with me. I felt a surge of strength that perhaps is best described as inspiration.

“Your dad is with you right now,” I heard myself say. “He wants you to know how much he loves you.”

I have no defense for the presumptuous nature of my remark. After all, I was only a clinician at a large community vaccine event. My job was to observe people briefly for possible reactions to the vaccine, to monitor and help reassure most that what they were feeling was not a serious problem, to identify the rare reactions that might occur, and to share information and try to answer questions. But I am a father. And a husband. If offered the opportunity, I would willingly and unflinchingly offer my own life should such an overture save the life of own daughters, my own wife, or the life of someone I love. Had M’s father made a similar offering when he and M were simultaneously in the intensive care unit? Would the Creator and the prime forces of life ever accept such an offering? It is impossible to know for certain. Yet given the story of the Easter and the Paschal sacrifice, I must believe that, at least sometimes, She/He/They would. Leaning against the driver’s door of M’s car, I had no doubt that They did.

Our time inside these bodies is precious. It passes quickly. None of us know what the hours may bring and when the moments of transcendence may hold us. Yesterday I was blessed with the beauty of M and her family. Today I am inspired by the majestic memory of spiritual sacrifice and rebirth. Tomorrow, if granted, is further opportunity to grow amidst the pathos, joy, and baffling sublimity of this thing we call a human life. Within our lifetime, there is the marvel of love. Within that love, there is always hope.