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Yes, it has only been one calendar year. Although the past twelve months may have felt like twelve years, the earth has only completed a single orbit around the sun. In recognition of the continuing ability of interplanetary dynamics to maintain a semblance of cosmic order amidst the chaos of terrestrial life, a top twenty (rather than ten) list of personal reflections is offered below.

1. Put to positive use, human intellect can accomplish much.
2. Put to poor use, human intellect can destabilize a planet and everything that seeks to thrive and survive on that planet.
3. Pandemics require redirection of resources and recommitment to core values. A species blessed with intellect that cannot agree on its core values can find itself in real trouble during a pandemic.
4. There are good people in the world – lots of them. But a few bad actors crooning seductive siren songs can really disrupt those good people’s ability to sing in harmony – routinely.
5. There is too much data in our world and not enough wisdom.
6. It helps to be reminded by people who have died just how precious life is. This year I heard the 1993 urging by former basketball coach and passionate human being Jimmy Valvano to “laugh, think, and cry each day” replayed on sports TV and recited by a religious leader. The surprising alignment of church and state made me laugh, think, and cry.
7. Morning sunshine warms all upturned faces, no matter how cold the night.
8. For all our bragging, we really don’t know very much. Take the basic question of how and why life came to be, or the question of what happens after it ceases to be. We remain clueless in these areas. The nature of things may be for us to be clueless in these areas.
9. A person’s feet gradually reshape themselves over time. What begin as beautiful baby phalanges became gnarled senior roots as someone ages. Shoes with wider toe boxes bring comfort, despite their unflattering appearance.
10. You meet the most amazing people when you volunteer to stand in a stadium parking lot and help thousands of people receive a vaccine. Imagine what the world might be like if we routinely planned such large scale displays of humanity for food, clothing, or other basic needs.
11. Life has an incredible ability to heal.
12. Not all individual life forms heal; many suffer through a healing process only to die. Some simply die. A magnificent flowering vine in my backyard did that last year. So did millions of beautiful human beings and a myriad of other animals, plants, and unique embodiments of spirit. We should grieve all such loss.
13. Grief, like ritual, is vital to life yet woefully misunderstood.
14. The older I become, the less I know. Despite this reality, and in the face of confronting change such as shoes with wider toe boxes, I enjoy aging.
15. Sleep, a hug from a friend, a smile from a stranger, and a kind word from anyone are all under-rated.
16. The present is an elusive concept. Everyone reminds me to live in it yet all do so from outside it.
17. It is invigorating to reconnect with people we have known in previous portions of our lives. It can be enlightening to connect with people we have only recently met. People of both types have real insight and wisdom, especially when they aren’t trying to have insight and wisdom.
18. We need each other. Our planet, and the solar system in which it orbits, need us to need each other.
19. There is more to our world and existence than our intellect can perceive. Humility can bring peace, inspiration, and comfort.
20. Kneeling by my bed each night is an acknowledgement of my individual inadequacy and an expression of my abiding hope. The habit of doing so was perhaps my greatest learning from the year 2021.

May 2022 bring you peace and your own wealth of reflection and learning.

Gratitude is an important part of being; expressions of appreciation, even small, can serve as balm over the myriad of minor abrasions scraping the skin of a single sleep-wake cycle. But there is another soothing salve to routine experience that should not be overlooked, a unique liniment of soulful analgesia that I have too often undervalued in my life and the purposeful way that I live it: the compliment.

It’s curious that a single letter substitution in the word – an “e” for the “i” – changes its meaning yet maintains something vital in terms of its nature. To complement is to enhance or improve, to bring towards perfection. To compliment is to praise or admire, to commend another person for an action, communication, or something simply inherent to who they are.

How you responded just then was very helpful. You have really developed a nice way of responding to adversity. I’m impressed by how much you’ve grown. These expressions are important examples of feedback in response to something said or done. Your smile lights up a room. You have a beautiful voice. That color suits you. These are observations related to the perhaps inherited essence of another human voyager. Both types of supportive expressions are typically warmly received.

How often do you compliment others?

Some time ago, I was leaving a coffee shop, fresh cup of tea in hand, when a guy sitting on a stone wall with a dog called out to me. There was a clear itinerant air to the man’s situation: ruffled hair, unshaven cheeks, clothes that may have missed some wash cycles. “What’s your name?” he asked. I could have said nothing. I could have made something up. I could have pretended that I had not hear him. For some reason, however, I stopped, turned, and told him my given name.

“Very strong!” he replied, stroking his dog’s ears. “Your mother chose that one very purposefully.”

The comment took me off guard. Although my mom had passed years before, I had just been thinking about her, in fact, and had been wondering what she might, in turn, be thinking about me (assuming that she had inclination to do so in the next life). “Yes, she did,” I said, as if somehow I knew from conversations we had while she was alive. There was a pause, and I half expected the fellow to ask me for some money.

“There’s history in that name,” he concluded. “Respect that.” He turned away. As did I.

Now here I am, five or more years later, remembering that brief encounter, a sliver of a snippet of my total years spent thus far on this planet. Unexpectedly, that moment made me feel good. It still does.

The other day a colleague texted me some dimensions. “A 24 inch diameter base would fit fine,” the text said. I had no idea what this referred to. “Did you mean to send this to me,” I texted back. “Oops!” he answered, “Believe it or not, an artist doing a piece for us has the same name!” Well, the nerve of someone else to have the same name, I laughed. On a whim, I googled my name on LinkedIn and learned that actually over 600 people have profiles with the same name as mine. Yep, over 600 people with the same first and last name have profiles on a single English language app. How many more have the same name, I wondered, but don’t have profiles? Out of curiosity, I checked the website out for the artist in my state who has the same name. “He’s pretty talented,” I texted my colleague. “Both people with that name have significant talent,” the colleague replied.

Now that was surprisingly unnecessary. I wasn’t fishing for flattery; my artist namesake has some serious ability and I was acknowledging it. Nonetheless, it was kind of my colleague to send that note. It meant something to me. It made me smile.

Which reminds me of the power, and the role, of compliments in the humdrum hustle and daily bustle of our 21st century world. We are busy. We are frequently adrift in our respective internal thoughts and self-absorptions. But a simple authentic expression of tribute can stop most of us in our tracks. You didn’t need to say that, we might think or respond. That’s right, the person’s eyes or face respond. I didn’t need to. And yet they did.

Spontaneous accolades, however seemingly trivial, have great amplifying potential. In fact, the best ones are tiny, are shared spontaneously, are not offered without fanfare, prelude, or expectation. They are honest expressions of , unwrapped benefactions, bequests delivered humbly, freely, to people we love, people we call colleagues, people we don’t even know. I see you, a compliment says. I recognize your worth. You. Someone who isn’t me. Someone who is named. Someone who is named by others. Someone who shares a name with others. Someone who, despite the conventions of what and how we call one another, gives birth, often accidentally, to the magnificent and the magical, to the unique capacity of all life to shine, regardless of its so-called title. You. I celebrate you. I honor you, especially when you step, either mindlessly or mindfully, outside the ego boundaries of what it means to be separate, to be an individual, to be named, especially when you do so without interest in any acknowledgement associated with that generous journey.

As we turn the page on another year in the western calendar, as the earth spins closest to the sun in its annual orbit in one spiral arm of a galaxy we call the Milky Way, as many of us hurriedly purchase presents to exchange with people in our closest friendship and family circles, let us recall the gentle, unassuming gift of the unscheduled, unrehearsed compliment. It may represent a continuous complement to the physical exchanges of caring we make on the basis of an annual holiday.

Compliments hold the cosmos in their hearts.

Suppose I were to ask you to take a trip with me.

“To where?” you might ask.

“Around the world,” I reply.

Your questions follow. “Which direction? How long will it take? Will we get to see all the continents? How are we traveling?”

My answers: “Whichever direction you’d like. As long as you’d like. Sure, if you’d like. By foot.”

Our theoretical conversation is not likely to inspire confidence. Aside from the obvious problems associated with geography (there are large bodies of water to traverse), weather (it gets really hot and cold in some places), and logistics (they don’t make backpacks big enough for such travel), I have presented no itinerary or budget. And I have proposed that we, uh, er, um, that we … well … that we walk.

What?

You are quickly recalculating my sanity, your eyes searching my words for a glimmer of reason, so I offer you an even more astounding observation: “I’ve already done it twice, you know. It’s not as difficult as you may think.”

I have, actually. And it’s not, honestly. In fact, you may have already completed one or more trips yourself.

Here’s how. The circumference of the earth is just under 25,000 miles. Given that an average person takes almost 7000 steps a day, it is possible for anyone who lives a typical human lifespan to walk the equivalent of two or three global circumnavigations.

The calculation left me, at first, nonplussed. Wow. That’s a lot of steps. Then I thought about all the small journeys in a single day, the shuffling from one room to another, the purposeless meandering and the purposeful plodding, the traverses of hardwood, pavements, sidewalks, and fields, and I realized how strange that all that movement, most circular and without directionality, adds up, that if you stack it all together it amounts to the equivalent of one or more earths in a human lifetime.

It is important to note that we are discussing averages. Some people have longer legs. Some do not have functioning legs; my father wheeled rather than walked his way through most of his life. But he, and others, still accomplished their fair share of journeying.

Just think how far we might get, individually and together, if we adopted the mindset of alignment, of direction, of purpose?

The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu is credited with the expression “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Little matter that Lao Tzu put in writing what perhaps generations before him shared through oral tradition. The point is that we have long realized, as a conscious race of bipeds, that incremental change makes a difference. And we have celebrated the prudence and potential associated with the cultivation of that awareness and the providential power inherent and immanent in its enactment in human personal and social activities. Where we struggle, however, is trusting the process. We want, and seem to need, assurances. We are too easily distracted by the steps themselves to maintain focus on the cumulative impact of those steps. Little can blossom to great, if nurtured, if valued, if believed. Seeds become great trees, ideas become social movements, commitments become stirring stories of the commonplace transformed to the extraordinary – if only we nurture them, if only we share them, if only we live them on a daily, hourly, and even minute-by-minute basis.

Uncertainty can really stink. Am I worth anything and do I make a difference? Are you worth something more and do you make a greater or lesser difference? Our globe has been spinning through space for billions of years. Since life was born, it has been under continual threat. I am convinced that the essence of people who have died has not been extinguished. But daily I am confronted with tales of woe, reason for despair, evidence of the intermittent unworthiness of human existence. I peer into the eyes of my loving four-legged dog and cat and I begrudge them their ability to accept, to be, to not (perhaps) think about tomorrow, or yesterday, or broad sweeps of history stretched behind this present moment or poised unrealized before it. They live. They yearn. They stretch. They rest in the warmth of the afternoon sun and the respite of timelessness nestled within tranquil naps and narrow-eyed stares into the world just outside the glass windows of our home. They are not burdened by the capacity to calculate the number of steps taken in a lifetime. Their focus, from what I can tell, is now – especially if that now is close to another meal, or a nap, or an ear scratch, or a walk.

Ah, again, the walk. The steps. The physical ability, either through motor movements of our bodies or power-assisted resources of our technology, to propel ourselves forward. The mental ability to do so through intentions, purpose. The spiritual ability to bring tiny influence and impact through better thoughts, less selfish decisions, and small acts of otherness.

Which is what kindness is: otherness. It is me getting past myself, just enough, to see you, to listen to you, to realize that the divine, if and as it exists in this world, has as much spark and flame within you as it may have in me, probably more, when I consider how lazy I can sometimes feel, how tired, how indifferent. It is the indifference that is the poison. Sure, I may feel fatigued yet how ungrateful it is for me to use weariness as an excuse for indifference, for turning away from others’ pain, for forgetting that the journey of each human circumnavigation of the world begins with the first roll of a newborn, the first crawl of a baby, the first step of a toddler. We are driven to move forward; it is in our genetic code. We are capable of helping others do the same; it is in our life code.

There is so much noise in the world today, yes, so much acrimony, hate (real and feigned), and judgment. Yet there is also so much potential. We are a species capable of walking around our earthly world! Together, five of us accrue enough steps in our lifetimes to walk to the moon. As a species, we have even traversed the galaxy and beyond with our accumulated footfall. Imagine what more is possible if we only turn our collective thoughts towards common goals and purpose. Our thoughts – each of us has an estimated 25,000 of them a day, eerily similar to the number of miles in the earth’s circumference. If each thought was a step, every human has enough to awake in the morning, turn east, and journey through the joys and needs of the entire planet by the time we close our eyes at night for sleep. Suppose only one thousand of those daily thoughts were turned towards others. Suppose we learned how to share, with one another, a mere one hundred of those otherness-oriented notions. What might we accomplish if we focused on alignment rather than competition, on the whole instead of its parts?

We can travel far, oh so far, if we only remember that we have a choice on where we go and how we travel. Will you take the journey with me? I’m all packed. So, I hope, are you.

Who do you know you would consider wise?

I must admit that I enjoy exploring the structural foundations of language. No etymologic expert, I am more the casual linguistic journeyman, a ruffled hair, wrinkled-shirted Sunday morning amateur who finds fun in the occasional rummage online so easily accomplished from the comfort of one’s couch, favorite chair, or rumple-pillowed bed. A cup of tea stimulates the insides. A subtle infusion of caffeine suffuses the boundary separating sleep from thought. Questions float into an awareness that I have come to consider my own. And the great Google search engine connects me, somewhat instantaneously, fairly miraculously, to a world of expertise loitering just beyond the tips of my fingers.

To be wise originally meant “to see”.

Perhaps your brain conjured an image of a blind Greek sage when you learned that the root meaning of wisdom is related to vision. Mine did. Fascinating how, when told that wisdom first meant to see, I might imagine an aged oracle who does not need eyesight in order to see, to perceive, even to know what is true.

Yes, the original meaning of wise, I know, did not include anything about truth. But it seems apropos, does it not, for the concept of truth, of what actually “is”, to be part of what it means, fundamentally, to see?

This past week brought me its routine share of wisdom encounters. I call them routine because they are usually there, snippets of the wise of seeing, if I let myself recognize them. Please don’t misunderstand me: the exposure of the wise in the world is not anything for which I feel personal ability. Rather, it is what others, often quite innocently or unintentionally, reveal to me. The odd phrase, the emotional outburst, the tilted-head observation, and especially, yes, most especially, the share-preceded-by-the-sigh — these are all examples of how wisdom is active in my life. Are you not familiar with the share-preceded-by-the-sigh? I bet you are. Think of a time when someone, maybe even you yourself, inhaled deeply, then exhaled, and with the exhalation said something personal, or meaningful, or true, or difficult to say. It is as if we inspire into and through the pores of our being, occasionally expanding the collective lungs of human history, when we take such deep breaths, when we gather an expression or idea from the previously veiled awareness of the unexpressed, when we dip the formless fingers of our souls into the cool touch of transparent sincerity and we let something that is seen by the inner eye be honestly and simply said.

Not all that is wise, however, is dredged from such deep wells. Children often say things, or ask things, without extraordinary effort. Adults can do the same, when they stop worrying about how they may be judged. There is beauty in the humble observation that the warmth of the autumn sun feels good on the exposed arm, that the sound of the overhead plane reminds me of lying closed-eyed in the afternoon summer grass of my childhood home, that the cradle of my wife’s hand the first time we hiked together are all comforting, are all still with me, are all part of the good fortune that has been my life. There is wisdom, perhaps, when we feel and say these things, and then how we observe, internally or aloud, how wonderful it is to feel and say these things, how lucky we are to be able to feel and say these things, how mysteriously marvelous it is to feel and say these things – without having to explain them.

I am never met a blind sage seated by the side of the dusty road, or a cross-legged guru perched atop a rocky mountain, such as the wise men and women of an ancient tale or tradition. I’m not opposed to the experience; it just hasn’t happened. What has happened though, what continues to happen, is that, regularly, I meet and interact with some pretty insightful fellow travelers who are, like me, stuck in the daily muck of this thing we call a human life. And so many of these people – people such as you! – “see”, and then say, the most amazing things.

Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for sharing that wisdom when you are not trying to be wise. The gift of true sight is perhaps best shared humbly, freely, and without attachment. Just sensing that makes me inhale a deep breath, hold it, and feel blessed to be alive.

Describing a good friend is like holding water from a mountain stream in your hands. You can touch the essence, you can cradle the wonder, you can even sip the clean majesty of the transparently authentic – but the experience is fleeting, it humbles any effort at definition, and it leaves the soul with a unsteadying sense of impermanence.

I first selected the word “steadying” rather than its opposite. Only when I let myself recall the recent sensation of releasing a lifelong friend from a departing hug did I recognize how profound a feeling it is to let go of something which cannot be held. Despite the unwelcome aura of separation, and the visceral acknowledgment that moments of grace move through us like rain descending in an autumn morning, there remains an acceptance of the unstable, a peace inside the impossible, a safety nestled in the tingle of connections which always will be.

Can there be security found in the inherent wobbliness of individual being? Is the ricketiness of difference in some way an entree into the groundedness of the universal?

The Celts believed that the portal to the spirit world opened on or near November 1st. And so they celebrated Samhain (pronounced sah-win), a celebration of “summer’s end”, the harvest, and the transition to winter and eventual renewal. They were not alone; many other cultures have marked this time of year as one of magic and mystery, a time to remember those who have passed before us, an annual opportunity to remind ourselves that the threshold between the physical here and the mystical there is less impenetrable than we like to think. The Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos), All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, and, yes, Halloween are all traditions across peoples and belief systems dating back to early human consciousness and our desire to know, to revere, to seek certainty and protection. And, of course, to have fun. The costumes that have become part of annual All Hallows’ Eve parties, trick-or-treating, and other festivals are meant to honor those who have died but also to poke fun at the living. Tonight is a night to dress as someone else. It is an evening to laugh at or with death – but to do so in a gentle, sometimes superstitious, and often respectful way. Because there is a liminal quality to the air every All Hallows’ Eve, a saturation in the colors, a special way we light the edge of the encroaching night for northern hemisphere winter. We may smile. We may mark the evening with candy, sweets, and small bonfires. We may even go to great lengths to paint faces and wear the markings of the past or the mysterious or the sometimes scary and macabre. We still feel, however, the ritual rise of the small hairs on the back of our necks. We still reflect, if asked, on the passing of those we have loved. We may even still say a small prayer for the souls of those who have departed and for the lives of many who still physically remain.

This year, I will be thinking about people I have been fortunate to know as friends. In the spirit of my Celtic ancestors, I will be remembering the embrace we have shared, whether last week or last century. For this 2021 “summer’s end”, I will remind myself how blessed I have been to have, hold, and experience the kindness that is possible in a world open to beauty and mystery.

And there it is. How remarkable! Already I feel the unsteadying comfort of life beyond my own physical boundary. Like a taproot for an aging tree, there is always moisture within reach, even if I cannot see the source.

I first found the book on a decorative stand next to Mom’s favorite reading spot. She had developed an interest in many subjects later in her life, including the puzzle form known as Sudoku. “Brain exercise,” she once told me. I picture her sitting with eraser ready pencil in a large floral arm chair, one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture ever made. She finishes the final puzzle in a series for experienced Sudoko players and considers its successor perched atop the stack of books to her right: Sudoku for “blackbelts”. 2nd degree. For Sudoku martial artists. You’re next, Mom tells the crease-free paperback. But next never comes, or at least not as anticipated; a devastating stroke cuts short what might have been a dazzling progression in the puzzling arts during Mom’s senior years.

So the martial challenge fell to me. And, contrary to some of my previous demonstrations of headstrong engagement in things labelled difficult, I embraced this new opportunity cautiously, with reasonable pace. Meaning I took it slowly, even reluctantly. How hard could something so seemingly simple be? Start small, with easy puzzles, just to learn the rules. Then advance, as spare time and motivation permitted. Only when I felt ready did I actually open the advanced blackbelt book – have I mentioned it was for 2nd degree students? – and test my ability. The first five puzzles went smoothly, pulling me into the martial Sudoku world, graduating me to the mysteries of the remaining 295 challenges. I did not get them all correct, no. But I held my own for many (?most), especially the ones in the end of the collection. Along the way, I learned new tips, techniques, and ways to solve what I assumed were progressively challenging puzzles. And I did it my way too, when I had time, with snatches of fifteen minutes here and there over weeks, then months, and, yes, years. From start to finish, the entire effort has taken me a decade. In fact, just last week, I entered the final number in the final puzzle, number 300, completing what I thought was both the book and my 2nd degree Sudoku blackbelt training.

I’ve told no one. But, inside, I knew that I had done something noteworthy. On my own, without resorting to any online help, I had cracked the secrets of Sudoku, without peeking at the answers to each puzzle in the back of the black belt challenge book.

This has been no small feat! Hours of time I could have used for other forms of learning, reading, or mindless entertainment were devoted to breaking the Sudoko code. It’s been just me against the empty boxes on each page, my patience, fortitude, and logic matched against the few numbers already placed inside each puzzle. Mine has been a journey of self-discovery. I told myself, repeatedly, that I could figure Sudoku out, that I could learn the techniques to solve any puzzle presented, if only I sat with the puzzle long enough, and let the tactics present themselves.

Which they often did! Even working through the final puzzles of the book, I was finding new techniques, new patterns hidden inside the numbers, tiny adaptations to ruling in or out one small piece of the pattern that flipped a puzzle from impenetrable to easily solvable. And the solution for the final puzzle, the grand number 300, presented itself without much effort. When I filled the last box in number 300, I smiled at the number strings on the page before me, then closed the book with a sense of mastery. “We made it, Mom,” I said aloud. “We’re 2nd degree Sudoku blackbelts.”

Achieving a blackbelt in any discipline is an arduous task. Last year, for example, I successfully reached the level of first degree blackbelt in southern Shaolin style Kung Fu. That accomplishment took multiple years and involved the downing of many servings of humble pie. Now here I was, just fourteen months later, a double blackbelt. True, the Sudoku recognition was not conferred by an external source; the blackbelt title was just something printed atop the book cover. Nonetheless, it still represented an achievement of some magnitude, regardless of its somewhat unofficial status. And it had taken me three times as long as my Kung Fu blackbelt. There have been lessons from both these journeys. Perseverance matters. With age may come patience. Be careful you don’t imagine you have accomplished more than you really have.

What?

Ok, perseverance and patience are important lessons, yes. And they lead to sometimes impressive results. But a blackbelt, even when earned through awesome effort and fairly phenomenal skill development, does not confer supreme status on the awardee. It doesn’t even ensure that said awardee is consistently skilled at their respective art form. As proof, I share what happened when I returned to the beginning of the Sudoku black belt book and decided to apply my formidable experience to puzzles left incomplete during my decade of study. Nothing. That’s right. Zip. No differences. In the past three days, I have erased three puzzles that first left me in a dead end only to find myself, despite application of my techniques, in apparently fresh dead ends – years after my initial failure. Shouldn’t the earlier puzzles be easier? Maybe. How could I storm through the final dozen puzzles only to be mired in mistake and confusion when I revisited puzzles back in the first twenty? No explanation. I have erased one of the those puzzles at least three times, reapproaching it with fresh eyes and steadfast confidence. The results, sadly, have been the same.

What then have I learned, really, over the decade of my Sudoku journey? Have I sufficiently mastered the form to deserve the lofty recognition of 2nd degree blackbelt?

Clearly not. Or clearly not so certainly.

I am a better Sudoku player – that is probably true. I am still drawn to the challenge of correctly completing a pattern of 81 numbers for which there is just one solution – that is also likely true (although my wounded pride does temper my current enthusiasm, I must admit). I still miss the opportunity to discuss Sudoku tactics with my mom – ah, well, that is definitely the case.

And there is this: the distinction of blackbelt, for a martial or other art form, is not a recognition of arriving but rather an acknowledgment of beginning. Because real expertise, the kind that needs not boast or wave attention to itself, never looks backwards. It is always pressing forward, exploring the limits of its ability, testing and redefining the potential for its growth. The honor of achievement is not meant to be worn, as an adornment. Instead, it is intended to be built upon, as a motivation. It is available for use, as a leverage. It is ready to be settled into our lives as a fortification of our foundation, for continued learning and development.

Perhaps I should get some formal coaching for my Sudoku black belt training. After all, that’s what I did for my Kung Fu training, an experience which taught me, above all else, that we are not meant to discover many of life’s lessons on our own.

They are out there. Daily, sometimes hourly reminders of how easy it is to get stuck inside moments. Old ones, that is. Previous pieces of the past that may feel fresh but are actually quite stale. Small bits of yesterday, last year, last decade, maybe even last lifetimes that replay without rewinding, that return without invitation or practice, snippets of experience that masquerade as something new, as scraps of today, as slices of now that are really not now at all. They are dead pieces of before. They should remain dead pieces of before. Yet they seem very much alive in the present. Perhaps because we treat them as if they are unexpected, welcome them as if we are surprised.

Time loops. Cycles of feeling, of emotion, of thought that repeat themselves. Over. And over. And over in our lives.

I called them reminders but that is not how I necessarily experience them. It takes recognition to stir awareness of repetition. And awareness is vital to the cognitive experience of distinction. Of separation. I cannot become observer of my mental and emotional patterns until I permit myself space to simply acknowledge what I am feeling, how I am thinking. With acknowledgement, however, comes opportunity for pause. For reflection.

For change.

As much as I dislike admitting it, my days are checkered with a fair share of time loops. This past week, I attended a medical conference that should have felt fresh, different: it was centered on the wellbeing of physicians and everyone was required to be vaccinated and to wear masks. That is a scenario not previously part of my past experience! And yet, sitting in a large ballroom of a grand hotel, chairs separating participants by three feet, my own mask pinching at the bridge of my nose, my mind intermittently played its time loop games, vaulting me into feeling states from decades before, those feeling states associating me yesterday and today with the spaces and places I have traversed decades earlier in my training and career. It was as if certain parts of my past, huddled quietly into the recesses of my consciousness, felt compelled to receive recognition. They wanted me to tell colleagues some stories of my training. They urged me to talk more than to listen. They wanted to have their moment of acknowledgment.

Or it may have been closure. But how often do we talk of things that are remembrances of times past only to have those remembrances make unwarranted claims on how we feel and act today, who we are in this moment, and what we should be in the next? Telling a story from forty years before does not ensure it will reach its conclusion. A desire for a postscript, an edited contemporary version of that story, loiters, lingers, and sometimes lurks in the shadows of ego, of subconscious, or whatever word best describes that lagoon of past life that is me, that was me, that should be released from me, that behaves as if it has some claim on me today.

These are not necessarily traumatic events. They are not even momentous events. Just slivers of experience that, once etched into the compressed sediment of my personal evolution, are poised to shine in the light of remembrance should I only point its beam in their direction.

“When I was a surgical intern,” I heard myself say, “I was once assisting in a cardiac bypass with one of the leading cardiac surgeons at the time. There was a crowded team of surgeons in sterile garb around the patient’s open chest.

‘Hold this’, the prominent surgeon said to me. In my gloved left hand he placed a silk suture that was helping gently lift something inside the patient’s chest, something of which I had no view. I was told to stand behind the lead surgeon, to reach around his left side, to keep the right amount of tension on the suture and not break sterile technique. Meaning that my front could in no way touch his side or back.

Was I doing anything useful or was this some test?

‘Keep up that tension’, I heard. ‘And stay awake.’

I’m not very tall. And my arms aren’t very long. Yet somehow I managed to hold something I couldn’t see, to do this for who knows how long, to stare at the surgeon’s left shoulder blade without touching it. And not fall asleep. To this day, I don’t know if I was doing anything useful. How could I? Except someone later told me that I was. Only the sterile fingers of my left hand were needed. And my hand was smaller than others. So many hand was the one balanced in mid-air at the brink of a man’s open chest. The rest of me wasn’t needed. Just my fingertips.”

This happened in 1985. And yet here I was, telling the story many years later, a story I had thought forgotten, a memory I had long since filed (or so I thought) into the shred or discard bin of my life.

Yet when I mimicked the position of my arm and hand, curled carefully around the side of a friend at the conference, I could have easily been there, then, in the operating room of 1985. I could even be there now as a type these words.

But I am not. I cannot be. I must release the feeling of the cramped fingers, hand, and arm, the smell of the room, the sounds of those in it, the thoughts that ran through the wiring of what we call mind and let them all belong to then, to before, to the collective archives of time and our human subscription to it.

So I flex the fingers of my left hand, take a long breath, appreciate the perspective out the window of the bedroom where I sit, and I am thankful for the opportunity to snip that loop from the shaggy wig of life that likes to hide today from yesterday, the tangle of time that also veils the view of forward, of future, of what may be if I just let it. And I smile at the image of the past resignedly sweeping that snip along with others from the floor beneath and behind me. I hear yesterday sigh as it gathers the curls of released time loops in its cosmic dustpan and disposes of them in ways I do not need to know or imagine. And I purposefully press new loops of potential into the film canister of tomorrow.

I smile at the great fortune I have to be part of something yet to be.

A fact is something known or proved to be true. By itself, a fact is unemotional. It is neither good nor bad. It simply is – something based on a preponderance of evidence from careful study, systematic observation, or collective experience.

On average, humans are living longer than they did one hundred years ago. Medical discoveries and advances in waste water management have largely contributed to our lengthened life expectancy. Fewer children die or are permanently disabled in a world with equitable access to, and use of, vaccines. These are all facts because they are clearly measurable and documented. They should be beyond dispute.

Unfortunately, in a world increasingly plagued by the relativism of extreme individualism, in the cacophony of media-fueled commentary manipulated by those who would seek to destabilize social trust through deliberate confusion or woefully inaccurate opinion, a growing number of people have come to disbelieve in facts and objective reality. This trend does not make facts any less true. Facts remain. The trend does, however, make facts the subject of disheartening debate and misguided understanding. It threatens the foundation of the fundamental social contract we call representative democracy. It makes certain facts sad to some who would prefer that these truths were different, a subset of whom in turn invest harmful energy in ignoring and even trampling the tremendous effort that it took to establish these facts – and the improvements in human social life often associated with them.

Here is a representative sample of 8 “sad” facts:

1. Since early 2020, the new coronavirus has killed more than 650,000 Americans and over 4.5 million people worldwide. Most of these people would have lived had they not been infected by the new coronavirus. We have lost these people – our family, friends, and global community members – because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. Simple protections, if used consistently, decrease the chance of becoming infected with the COVID-19 virus. These measures do not eliminate the chance. But they decrease it, just like a surgeon who wears a mask in an operating room, or a nurse who wears a mask while caring for hospitalized patient with influenza pneumonia, decreases the chance of spreading or acquiring an infection.
3. The COVID-19 vaccines work. They are not perfect. Their immunity may fade in some recipients. And a small percentage of people experience side effects, some of which are serious. But these vaccines save far more lives than they cause temporary side effects. They do not change a person’s DNA or alter a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant. They have saved countless lives.
4. A person with a public megaphone is not necessarily an expert. A megaphone can be a pen, a microphone, or a TV camera. People with such megaphones sometimes share misinformation. Some of these people do this on purpose.
5. Many human beings today are afraid – of infections, of mistreatment, of inequality, of weather pattern changes, of what the future will bring. “Fear”, as it is famously said in the novel Dune, “is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.” Fear can make someone forget that there are facts, that some people know facts and can be trusted, that some other people distort or subvert facts for their own gain. Fear makes any living being subject to erratic and sometimes destabilizing decision-making.
6. Freedom does not mean I can do what I want, when I want, and how I want. When one person’s choices place other people at risk, a representative democracy can and should place limits on that person’s choices. The U.S. Supreme Court has long acknowledged this core principle, including a ruling at the turn of the 20th century upholding a fine for one Massachusetts man’s refusal to get the smallpox vaccine. Since that time, smallpox has been eradicated. Vaccines eradicated smallpox.
7. My personal belief in God, Buddha, Allah, or any supreme being is no shield for my moral and social duty to others. In the United States, I am free to have and express my religious and spiritual beliefs; I am not free to impose those beliefs on others, even indirectly, such as when I behave in a way that places others at risk. My individual liberty is not absolute. It is not threatened when I remain in a country that mandates certain vaccines and I am personally protected by the decision of others to receive those vaccines – yet I myself choose not to be vaccinated. The reverse, in fact, is true. A government comprised of elected representatives can pointedly remind me of my constitutional and ethical duty to my fellow citizens to be vaccinated. I can be held accountable to live by the terms of the social contract in which I otherwise derive great benefit.
8. We are a country of citizens – not taxpayers. There is a cost, a commitment, associated with the benefits that we derive as citizens of the United States of America. As a child, I was inspired by these words from John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country”. I remain inspired by those words, and am humbled by the additional words that President Kennedy used to conclude his sole presidential inaugural address: “With good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

The human enterprise is messy. We must continuously nurture our common purpose and compassionately negotiate our response to the dynamic circumstances of our world. Challenges, such as pandemics, remind us of our frailties, our vulnerabilities. The future is uncertain. But we stand ready to greet that future, together, when we have the courage to stand firm upon a foundation of fact, of truth. We ask for blessing. We seek and pray for spiritual help. Here on earth, however, God’s work must truly be our own.

Where does the soul go when the body is asleep?

I suppose it could sleep too. That, however, seems counter-intuitive. The soul is the life spirit, that within us which persists no matter the physical state – alive or dead – of the body. If souls exist outside of evolution, they should not need sleep, an historical byproduct of the light-dark cycle of earthly days.

Of course this presumes that souls or spirits or whatever you’d like to call the “I” that watches the “me”, the feeling of observing outside of acting, the essence of continuance beyond the physical form, truly exist. There are some who believe that consciousness is nothing more than an epiphenomenon of the intricate interactions occurring within the cloistered confines of our skulls. To folks who believe this, there is no place for anything to go when we sleep because nothing exists to go anywhere. I think, because I am awake. I think not, because I sleep.

And yet I wake up each day the same self who closed its eyes hours before.

“Patterns,” the non-spiritual enthusiast would argue. “Neurological circuits. Nothing more. The wiring of your house doesn’t wonder when it will be turned on if the light switch is off. Neither does the so-called self. There is simply no current. No one is home.”

Well, some charge must be persistent for the brain to still live during sleep.

“A different state of activity,” the unsouled believer argues. “The brain is made of cells. Just like all the other cells in the body, brain cells get tired. They need rest, recovery. Why seek an explanation for something – the soul – for which we have no real proof exists?”

For years, I have had a conflicted relationship with sleep. How could such a beautiful state of suspended animation, something so inevitably inviting, be marred by the unwelcome and unexpected interruption of a nightmare or a bizarre dream? It seems unfair that some nights end with a dream of flight while others arouse us with a frightful encounter. It feels gratuitous to explain dreams away as unprocessed experiences or neurotic tensions. It is intellectually naive to interpret the rare and startling real vision revealed in lucid, healing, or prophetic dreams as neuronal cleaning.

Still, the time we spend dreaming is small compared to the remainder of the time we sleep. And we sleep, on average, about a third of the time we live. So there is quite a bit of human life spent in a state of unconscious dreamlessness, supposed nothingness. Allegedly, we are consolidating memories, processing emotions, and detoxifying our brains during all those hours of emptiness. I smile at the subtle conceit nestled within such explanations. They make sense, as explanations go. But who has ever witnessed a memory being consolidated or an emotion being processed? And, uh, if that is the purpose of sleep, why and how do things from decades ago suddenly present themselves for reprocessing? Please don’t offer me the facile response that my brain didn’t it right the first, second, or five hundredth time around. That’s like saying the sun rises at daybreak because every morning when I awake there it is. We need some perspective on matters in order to draw certain conclusions. Fortunately, we have off-planet views of the relationship between the sun and earth. No similar off-personal body vantage seems possible when it comes to the strange experience of life from the perspective of my brain.

My brain. My life. My self.

It is odd how we act so possessively when it comes to our individual body parts, personal histories, and lifetimes of experiences. Stranger still though is how we don’t adopt the same attitude about the nonlocal or timefree “everywhen” nature of being. It is interesting to observe that I can be so connected to you that we think of or call each other at the same time, or that two or more people separated by space can physically feel similar sensations when only one is affected by a local force. We are all comprised of the same original atoms released at the Big Bang, we smile. We are more than individuals, we nod. We are interconnected, interdependent, we agree.

But we are nothing, we are inactive, our souls are without intent and engagement when we lie in dreamless states?

I posit something different. After more than sixty-two sun cycles, it has finally occurred to me that some essence, the core vitality I have come to believe is more than my body or my mind, is busy during the hours that my body and mind are relatively immobile. What is that “soul” doing? I can only imagine. Is it still within my form? Doubtful. Does it interact with your spirits, with those who have lived before or even after us, during the hours each day when the metaphysical is not required to supervise the sometimes disappointingly bumbling journeys of the physical? Possibly. Something else? I seem ill-equipped to reply.

If a soul can be released when a body dies, then so too can a soul travel when a body sleeps. Because there is wonder and beauty within the release of spirit to greater purpose and good. There is light from spirit within the darkness of night surrounding the body.

The soul I call mine may be at work when my body and mind are not. I think of that each night before I stretch into sleep, offer some prayers and good intentions to help direct and support my soul’s itinerary while I slumber. That reminds me that perhaps only part of “me” is really asleep. It is refreshing to feel active when I appear most at rest.

Should you find the idea too fanciful, yet are someone who believes you have a soul, do you think that the Creator/God/Yahweh/Allah sleeps? Can something that is always ever be nothing?

In the fall of 1985, I was a surgery intern at a busy inner-city hospital. Already seasoned by a few months of training, I felt somewhat accustomed to long work hours, tense clinical situations, and regular exposure to human suffering. If survival was the goal, I seemed part-way there: I was still standing, even if many patients, through no obvious fault of mine, were not.

This was a unique time in medicine. Discoveries in laboratory and radiologic testing were occurring. A new understanding of human biology and physiology was emerging. Clinicians could make a difference in people’s lives, not just as compassionate bystanders but was informed actors, interveners. Lives could be saved, at least temporarily, through emergency procedures, dramatic surgical interventions, and new pharmaceuticals.

Or so many of us thought.

I was working on the vascular surgical service. An extremely busy team, we cared for people with all sorts of blockages in blood vessels. Whether due to chronic conditions such as diabetes, traumatic injuries, or a host of other causes, arteries, large and small, can become obstructed, limiting their ability to bring oxygenated blood to the range of tissue and organs in the human body that needs a routine supply of it. New techniques had been developed to help open clogged vessels, or bypass them with grafts of vein from other body locations. Once a blood flow could be re-established, or even minimally improved, cells and tissues starved of nutrients could recover. And patients’ symptoms, which often included severe pain, could be alleviated.

This was not a time when regulatory agencies monitored residency work hours. As an intern, I was often on-call every other night. That meant that I started rounds as early as four in the morning, worked until the following evening, and then, after whatever amount of sleep was possible, returned at four the next morning. Forty hours of sleepless duty (unless I was seated in a mid-day teaching rounds – during which it was fairly impossible to stay fully conscious), followed by eight hours of fitful shut-eye. That was the cycle. I learned to live on sandwiches, Cream of Wheat, crackers, and diet Pepsi. Lots of diet Pepsi. Plus whatever sleep and exercise was possible.

I am not complaining; despite the rigor, it felt good to be connected to something with purpose. I believed that I was part of something worthwhile. The struggle was not without meaning.

A surgical intern’s role is not glamorous. While I did have my share of dramatic intervention moments, most of the time I was charged with the more mundane, yet vital, tasks of preparing people for surgery or post-surgical discharge. It was common to admit fifteen people to the hospital the night before their surgeries, help assure they were properly ready for their procedures, round on them the evening after their surgeries, and help discharge them the next or a subsequent morning as indicated. As interns, we did the histories and physical exams, wrote the admissions orders, drew the labs, placed the peripheral iv’s (or larger central venous catheters), responded to routine questions and emergencies, stood in the operating room to hold retractors, and then reversed the process after the operations. It was anything but dull. The hours flew by. Sleep while on-call was little more than a head briefly cradled in an arm on a nursing station counter. Yet that brief cradle, even if only five minutes long, was always welcome.

Elective surgeries on the vascular service took place in multiple operating rooms on a regular schedule. I don’t remember the details. As interns, we worked hard to get people medically and surgically ready for their procedures. Often, we would temporarily “scrub out” of a surgery to check on someone or address an issue while the surgical attending staff and more senior residents and fellows remained in the operating room. They had all been interns. We understood that next year, or in the years that followed that, other junior physicians would stand in our shoes. So we just kept going. We tried not to think too far ahead.

One day, following a particularly busy night, I was standing at a patient’s side in one of the hospital’s many operating rooms. It was, I think, mid-afternoon. Who knows when I had last eaten. What I do recall is that I was relieved this was the last scheduled case of the day. It was a fairly simple one: a trans-metatarsal amputation. Unfortunately, the blood supply to the patient’s toes and distal half of his foot was unable to be repaired. The tissue for that area was dying. We were therefore removing the portion of his foot that could not be saved.

“Here you go.” The lead surgeon, a senior fellow who was specializing in vascular surgery, handed me the scalpel. “This is your case,” he said.

I think I had admitted this patient. But I had admitted so many patients the previous night that the details of this person were a blur. Interns were not often asked to take the lead in the operating room. We did everything from occasional first assist duties to standing with one hand on a sterile retractor holding some tissue or organ we could not see, with finger, hand, and forearm muscles that often fatigued and cramped. It was usually the latter. It was almost never the person with the scalpel.

We proceeded. Somewhere into the operation, a doubt about the patient’s consent crept into my mind. Was this the correct foot? The surgery was well underway. My hands are performing the amputation, guided by the surgical fellow’s voice. My mind, however, could hear nothing except the echo of uncertainty. And that echo got louder and louder inside my consciousness. A procedure of this type goes quickly. Within minutes, it was mostly completed – or completed at least past the point of return. I started feeling dizzy. My stomach, heart, and everything intertwined with them fell to, through, and below the floor. The earth seemed poised to open and swallow me. This, my mind screamed, was the wrong foot! Had I double-checked the consent form before scrubbing for the case? Why hadn’t the anesthesiologist, or the OR nurse, or the circulating nurse, or someone, ANYONE, noticed, said something, stopped the procedure, stopped us, stopped ME before it was too late? And it was too late. The bad half of the foot had been removed. We were closing the tissue that remained, cauterizing bleeding vessels, assessing for viable tissue, bringing skin over the stump, suturing, approximating skin ends, suturing, placing the sterile gauze, wrapping the foot, removing the surgical drapes, removing our own sterile gowns.

The surgery was over. I had been part of the unthinkable. I had said nothing.

“Nice job,” the surgical fellow sighed. “Get the orders done and I’ll see you on the floor.”

The anesthesiologist’s eyes followed me. Surely he knew. He said nothing. I crossed the few feet that separated us to retrieve the patient’s chart, to write orders, to check what I knew I would find. I remember the color of the small stool that, after traversing what seemed a high wire tightrope of worn floor tiling, I pretended to nonchalantly use. Breathe, I told myself. Own the mistake. Learn from this. The chart was thick; this patient had unfortunately a host of medical problems and previous hospitalizations. Still, it took no time to get to the page I wanted because I was pretty adept at finding my way around a complicated chart. My balance, though, my sense of equilibrium, well, that was something else.

The surgical consent form had my handwriting and signature. It had the patient’s signature. It also clearly had the foot indicated that needed to be amputated. A flood of confusion ran through me. We had operated on the correct foot.

Orders. Some brief conversations with nursing and the post-op team. A paragon of efficiency, I moved forward. Then I shuffled to the surgical locker room. I sat on the bench, rested my head on the front of my locker. I was not cut out for this. I was not good enough to do this. Patients deserved more. It didn’t matter that we had done the right procedure. I had not spoken as soon as I was uncertain. I was no better than those case studies we heard about and criticized.

My beeper went off. In those days, there weren’t cell phones. Nor were there digital pagers because digital technology did not exist. We had beepers, small one-way walkie-talkies that carried the voice of someone communicating from inside the hospital. It was the operator. I had an outside call.

The rotary phone in the locker room sat on the wall. A long cord connected the handset to it. I stood, grabbed the handset, dialed “O”, and leaned back against a locker, sliding to the floor. This was probably a physician transferring another patient. Or it was someone’s private doctor. Or maybe a patient’s family member.

It was my father.

I will never forget that call. Dad apologized for interrupting my day. He knew I was busy, he said. But he was just thinking about me and wanted to say hello. Hi, I said. Dad said some other things; I honestly don’t remember what they were. He probably mentioned something about Thanksgiving. Maybe he told me about my mom or siblings. All I know is that I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t fit to be a physician let alone a surgeon, that I was a failure masquerading as a model of success, that I wasn’t as tough as people thought I was, that I didn’t deserve anyone’s kindness right now. Dad had carried on in life after being paralyzed by polio. I couldn’t even keep track of whether I was operating on the correct side of a patient’s body. Even worse, I couldn’t speak up when I thought we were not.

“Sounds like you knew something to eat,” Dad said.

Food. Glucose. All of our cells knew sustenance. So do our spirits. Something awoke inside me when he told me to eat. People cared about me. The universe and its creator cared about me. This call was not random. Nor was my life, my day, and the role I had to play. Get up, something called to me. Eat something. Maybe you aren’t a perfect surgeon, or even a surgeon at all. But you can still try to be a good physician, you can still work to be a good person, and you still have people to take care of before you next sleep.

So I did.