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I’ve been pretty wasteful. By definition, I am therefore prodigal.

That’s not the way I’ve tended to see it, however. The biblical story of the prodigal son has always left me with the impression that the selfish and wasteful son was prodigal by virtue of his return. A greedy guy had left and been lost. Later, he returned and was found. To the kid who would hear the parable once a year in church, and even to the adult who might reference it on occasion in a metaphor or analogy, to be prodigal had more to do with return than with departure. Being prodigal – to this kid and adult, at least – was a sort of renaissance, a rebirth. I didn’t need rebirth, not personally, because I had never left, not that I knew of. It was others who had veered away, from family, values, or themselves. That veering, when corrected, was somehow the essence of the prodigal. The return was what mattered.

Which it does, in both moral teachings and perhaps in life. But the return is not, by nature, the prodigality. The departure is. The spendthriftness. The recklessness. The waste.

And not all prodigality leads to rebirth.

This may seem fairly elementary. Besides, what does it matter, after all, that I misunderstood the adjective in the context of the tale? Is not the important message – the moral – of the story within the act of acceptance from the father when the wayward and bankrupt son decides to return?

The story of the prodigal son is not one unique to the Bible. There is evidence of it in ancient Buddhist teachings as well. While some features are different, the main plot line is the same: selfishness, loss, return, and redemption. It seems to be part of the human story. Someone else’s, in particular.

For most of my life, that someone else has been fairly predictable. It was the self-centered businessman who, upon financially failing, discovers charity. It was the morally decrepit politician who, through personal grievance, encounters justice. The hospital administrator who, when sick, learns about compassion. The angry child who, upon the unexpected death of a parent, yearns for forgiveness. The prodigal was the other. It was him or her. It was you. It was my own brother.

It was never me.

And so I have likely missed a myriad of opportunities for insight, for learning, and for, dare I say, grace. Because waste does not need to occur in prodigious quantities for it to matter; a person doesn’t have to lose everything in order to qualify as prodigal. Small aliquots of intemperance can suffice. Recognition of life’s little excesses and improvidences offers repeated portals of potential renewal and regeneration.

Every September, in the Catholic church, this week’s gospel is the story of the prodigal son. I know this not because I attend church sufficiently to be familiar with the liturgical cycle. Instead, I know it because this week is also the anniversary of my mother’s death. Nine years ago, two days after she suddenly died, I slipped into the back of one of the churches where Mom worshipped, hoping to meet the priest after mass and ask if the church was available for her funeral service the following day. When I entered, mass was in progress. The first thing that I heard when I stepped through the church doors was the reading of the gospel of the prodigal son.

How ironic, I thought. I wish my brother could hear this. After all, he was the one of us most at odds with our parents. Of course now, given what had happened to Mom, he would probably rush across the metaphorical field of time to support our emotionally distraught father. And Dad should embrace him. As Dad did. And I would not feel jealous. As I did not.

I felt something worse: quiet judgment. Through the lens of the parable, I smiled at the “biblical” nature of our situation. I heard the message of parental acceptance and filial renewal and I vowed not to let my own ego interfere. It did not; it just missed the whole message of the moment. For when I heard the gospel of the prodigal son that morning, I identified myself with the brother who had never left, the one who had, it appeared, been prodigal. And so I wasted the opportunity for my own return.

You see, only this week did it occur to me, through a brief series of unexpected yet welcome communications, that I don’t really know my brother. Not really. I know what he has done in his career, yes. I can give some details about the arc of his life but only like a sports fan can recite the statistics of an athlete. I don’t understand who my brother is, who he has been, or who he aspires to be. I’ve always seen him through the prism of certain character features rather than the unfiltered perspective of a whole person. I’ve never tried to get to know him on his own terms.

The same might be said of many of my relationships: they’ve tended to be somewhat stereotypical. Given the choice of being the welcoming father, the loyal child, or the prodigal son, I have – metaphorically and sometimes consciously – worn the mental garb of loyalty. In doing so, I’ve muffed chances to recognize my own prodigality. And I’ve undoubtedly missed many moments to embrace the return of others post their own prodigal departures.

I have, in short, wasted my wastefulness, through both unawareness and inaction. Here’s hoping I can better learn to see some of my lapses sooner, so that the opportunity to learn from my prodigality will not continue to be needlessly squandered. I may not, in many instances, desire return or deserve redemption. Therefore, I seek only attentiveness and gentle awareness – and the patience of fraternal grace.

Perhaps as evidenced by my repeated reflections on it, the ego subject – at least for me – can be confusing. And confounding. Frustrating too.

The other day, for instance, someone was presenting about the importance of establishing ‘ego-free zones’ in a particular line of work. Egos were simply not permitted, the person said. What happened if someone brought their ego to the effort? They were removed from the project, without second chances.

The presenter sighed. “I personally fired four people, on the spot.”

My own ego was no doubt to fault for my internal reaction to the news of the firing. While others nodded, my insides got themselves tangled in a thicket of skepticism. How do you determine that someone’s ego has or hasn’t been checked at the door? Who gets to decide? Why couldn’t the ego-laden project contributors have been coached into more ego-lax approaches?

To be fair, the situation being referenced was high stress; initial impressions could leave a sour, lingering effect on work that was vitally important. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the behavior under review might have been something other than that of people’s overactive egos. Was it possible that something else was going on?

We all know the personality type of the obvious egoist: pushy, lots of “I” and “me”, an unbalanced concern for how circumstances will impact the self versus others. These people are tiresome. They can be domineering, powerful. They often are in charge.

Which is probably why I get suspicious when people in positions of authority talk about ego-empty behavior. My own experience has been that, deep down, I myself have wanted to be personally recognized for high-minded, laudable values when I’ve spoken in public or work settings about the importance of ego-free service. It sounded good, sure – until I learned that the true servant does not need to talk about service because she or he is usually keeping their lips closed, their eyes soft, and their ears open. That wasn’t necessarily the case in past circumstances when co-workers or I have trumpeted the cause of humility and selfless service orientations. None of us were paragons of so-called ‘servant leadership’. Our words were louder than our actions.

And so I’ve stopped admitting that I’ve read certain texts or support particular leadership styles, if the topic of service arises. I don’t trust that I’m able to engage in the subject with the right level of humility.

Unfortunately, that distrust extends to others.

All of us have egos, yes. It is part of the human experience, an inherent component of identity formation and interpersonal differentiation. But the show “between our ears” can become more than just an internal processing platform, a way of making sense of interactions, feelings, and daily activities. It can become an individual form of big screen and stage entertainment, designed and displayed for a solitary viewer. We can see ourselves as saviors, martyrs, role models, change agents, and champions. We can become the sole protagonist of our own unique story. If that happens, we can mistake the mind’s eye magician for a miracle maker or masterful creator. We can become so enamored with the script cried from the internal stage that we mishear our own barker’s call of self-discovery as a message of transformative meaning intended for the outside world.

Sadly, I was suspicious of the easy socialization of ego-unfriendly dictates summarized by last week’s presenter on collaboration. My own internal braggart raised his wiry eyebrows. He wanted to engage my attentions elsewhere. He would have loved for me to peek behind the curtain camouflaging my under-appreciated brilliance. He goaded me to say something interesting and insightful so that others might have a similar view.

I just breathed. I listened to the presenter. I marveled at my own feeble grasp of egoism’s essence.

Is writing about this now itself an act of ego-centricity? It could be. Although I don’t intend this brief revelation to be self-flattering, it is possible that the very divulgence of my recent reaction to the topic of ego is yet another example of my own ego’s manipulative attempt to be heard.

The orator standing center stage in my internal story can be quite the trickster.

How does the Creator find peace?

Much of an individual’s human life is focused on him or herself. The other part is focused on others. If you are anything like me, only when you and those you love are doing reasonably well do you tend to relax, to find something approximating the concept of peace. If a parent, child, spouse, or close friend isn’t thriving, it is a cause for worry. And worry challenges the notion of calm. Of peace. I can meditate, exercise, and use many of the skills of relaxation all I want but my subconscious knows full well when something is amiss with someone I care about. And it does not like to be ignored.

Which has got me wondering: how could God, Allah, the Almighty, or the appropriate term for many religious conceptions of the Creator or prime mover ever feel at peace when so much of creation, including humankind, has so many troubles? How could what many consider the ultimate expression of peace ever Him or Herself feel at peace when there is an overabundance of things to worry about in the world that She/He created?

People are ill. Life is suffering. The planet is deteriorating. How can God not feel at least a little bit anxious?

I believe in evolution. I believe in free will. I believe in a presence in our world that is the essence of kindness, compassion, and love. I just struggle to understand how such an essence of being, even if She represents mercy in humanly unfathomable and incomprehensible ways, can concurrently represent unbounding peace and tranquility.

Sure, I see the paradox. Humans aren’t divine. So we shouldn’t try to understand it. Something that is by nature unfathomable to the human mind will not bend itself to that mind’s efforts to know it. The humble mind should accept this. It should use techniques of silence, breathing, prayer, movement, and the like to grab what it can of peaceful moments, of tranquil time slices.

Buddhism kindly maps a way forward, as do other traditions. Each offers invaluable gifts for someone such as me, someone searching to find balance, enlightenment, and slivers of joy. And when I let myself experience the truths shared from such luminous traditions, I do feel the embrace of acceptance, at least briefly. Sometimes.

But I still worry about my children. And my wife. And people I care for. And other people whom I’ve never met that I learn are suffering in my community and in this world.

I sometimes physically feel their struggles – in some small way – as if they are my own.

“Oh you’re an empath.”

That’s what someone once told me.

“You need to be careful about that, you know. You should learn how to wall yourself off from that. You’ll never survive a career in medicine if you don’t.”

I did try – at least for a while. With some practice, I learned how to form a sort of emotional forcefield around myself. It seemed to make sense that activating that protective buffer, even part-time in the present, was what was required to stay empathetic and compassionate, over a lifetime. Remaining open to the suffering of others could potentially make me suffer as well, and perhaps even make me sick.

I was wrong. Shielding myself did not make me healthier. Instead, it made me less aware. The less aware I was, the less I worried. And the less I worried, the less I related. Relating less was isolating. Being isolated felt contrary to the initial reason for considering the shielding.

We are all “empaths”. It is the nature of our being. We feel things that aren’t happening specifically to us. We sense things that are occurring to others in the so-called external world. Much of our education and cultural experience has led us to believe that we are separate; the nature of adolescence is, in fact, the embodiment of the drive for independence. And yet it is the return to dependence, the recognition that we are more than individuals, even the budding awareness at some point in life that we are mysteriously interconnected that defines the emerging lessons of adult life. There is indeed a forcefield between people. It is not, however, a field that shields. It is instead a force that binds. We share life. Together, with each other and with the animal and plant world around us, we are life.

It is frequently said that we are star children, beings comprised of a limited number of physical atoms and elements that were once compressed into a common density before the universe banged into existence. Such a beginning hardly seems peaceful. Neither does much of the history of the cosmos and the unfolding drama of life on the sphere we call earth.

So why should I worry, even wonder, whether and how the Creator finds peace?

I don’t know. Perhaps it is instinct, a simplistic desire that peace may be both our origin and our destination. Strife and conflict feel contradictory to the reason to be. I long for a return to something that approximates the whole. I need to know that the God of my belief system is such a whole. I want the whole to have a center that holds it together as one.

Maybe I’ve got the concept of peace all wrong. Rather than it being a release of worry and concern, a separation of me from all that is “not me”, might it instead be the experience of everything as interwoven and interdependent, the exhalation of me into the breath that is us?

Snippets. Moments. Glimpses. Peace not as the dissociation of life into the particulate spectrum of color refracted by the prism of human observation. Peace instead as the fundamental integration of sensation and experience into the boundless wonder that is the infinite.

Worry may not be an obstacle to peace. Somehow, it may be a path into it.

We all get lost. If you are anything like me, you may feel at least a little bit lost, some or most of the time.

I’m not talking about the experience of failing to recognize location. Fortunately, I am still blessed with a mind sufficiently sound to read or envision a map and place a mental “x” in it regarding my physical whereabouts. The lost I’m referring to is different to geospatial bewilderment. It’s a sort of purpose lost –  a sense of not knowing where I fit into familiar surroundings, of not having an idea of where I’m heading in those surroundings, of feeling uncertain where I should be heading. There is place – here – and there is direction – towards some there. The two are related but quite distinct.

I don’t mean to sound morose; I’ve grown accustomed to the existential dizziness of directional disorientation. It no longer unnerves me, at least not completely. Being adrift in one’s heading doesn’t necessarily keep a person from being happy, healthy, and enjoying, intermittently and regularly, the beauty of life. That’s why I’m exploring the importance of routines; consistency in schedule can offer excellent comfort during times of turbulence or uncertainty. It’s also why I’ve been trying to learn more about humility. A release to humbleness can offer neat bulwark against the experiential pressure to see ahead in life’s course, to recognize and manage expectations related to current position and the plot of a map for moving forward. It is impossible to know what lies before me. Humility necessitates that I try not to try.

And yet something confronts me when I consider humility and its role in my life. I don’t understand humility, not really. The more I consider it, the more I’m not sure what it is I should be understanding.

On the one hand, humility seems foundational to the search for wisdom. On the other hand, it seems equally contributory to the strengthening of self image as a person ages and seeks, quite naturally, to become wise.

I should live for more than myself. Got it – that’s the humility essence. So I must think less of myself and give more to others, with minimal thought (if I can) about my own needs.

So how am I doing, when it comes to living that essence? Well, yesterday , perhaps not so great. I reacted in such and such a way when I should have reacted in such and such a better way. Today, however, I’ve been a bit better. And overall, maybe this week (or month) was better than last.

Am I more humble? I think so. I’m trying to be so. Yeah, on balance, I’m probably more so.

Well – good. That’s progress. I’m learning. I’m advancing. I’m becoming a bit more wise.

And wham!, just like that, I’ve fallen into the humility trap. By trying to be more humble, and by assessing my success along the path to being more humble, I step willingly, even enthusiastically, into the large hole that ego has expertly camouflaged along the trail. Ego’s ambush can be so deceptive that I may not actually notice that I’ve fallen into it. My eyes are still lifted upward. I’ve lost sight of the place where my feet make contact with the earth.

I can become proud of becoming humble. And pride is the antithesis of a humility essence.

It is tricky, this journey we are on. We don’t know where we have come from. We don’t know where we are going. The timing of transitions is obscure. The opportunity for confusion abounds.

Am I to reject humility on the grounds of its close proximity, if care isn’t maintained, to pride?

I think not. But I also think that I should reframe my perspective on the humble. It cannot be a goal. It must, instead, be a value. A virtue. A way to be and not a destination to reach. A color rather than a surface which has color. I should be humble in the moments rather than the hours. I should be outside myself without looking back on whether I’m outside myself.

Maybe feeling lost is not so bad after all. Maybe a focus on contact with the ground is a good approach to knowing where I am – and always being able to be found.

We are awash in rhetoric. The president tweets with abandon. The democrats debate with a lust for power. And the media is flooded with analysis and commentary.

Where is the simplicity of conscience?

I read about the tragedies this weekend from gun violence and I feel deeply saddened. We can do better. We should do better. And yet we debate about the soul of our society as if it is something that can be intellectually analyzed.

It cannot. It must be felt. It must be believed in.

So hello there, Democratic candidates for President of the US. And hello there too, Mr. Sitting President. Please stop with the hatred and the combative language. Give the statistics a rest. This country – our world – may not survive the onslaught of this modern madness unless somebody with a microphone or a twitter following starts to lead with values, with dignity and decency, with conscience.

A person need not follow one type of religion, need not be of one color or class, or need not be adhere to one political tradition to subscribe to a common conscience. It is really quite straightforward: we should care about more than ourselves. We should then do our best to find ways – together – to help each other and to live in a society where success means more than dollars, titles, and authority. We should cherish what we hold in common, not delight in bickering over what is different. We should remind ourselves that it is our core beliefs, our shared values, that will enable us to leave our children a better world than the one we were left.

Where points the moral compass of this place we call the United States of America? This is not a question about the nature of your belief in a supreme being. It is a question about the nature of your belief in good. In collaboration. In the collective. In the us of USA.

I am tired of the predictable yet action-free talk that follows mass shootings. People are dying – unnecessarily. Are we not capable of doing something? Or are we not capable of doing something perfectly, something without disagreement, something without political aggrandizement and recognition? It seems that we are paralyzed by personal pride, the need to be right, and the importance of not upsetting some sacrosanct loyalty to documents signed over two hundred years ago by human beings no less fallible than ourselves. Wake up! The people we revere in our nation’s history would be horrified by our lack of substance – as human beings – our inability to adapt – to contemporary challenges – and our vapid excuses for inaction in the face of preventable malice and calamity.

And, if they were not horrified, they do not deserve the faith we have placed in the documents and traditions they have left us.

So take heed, politicians! Enough of all the blather. We do not need the intellectual babble. And no longer shall we excuse the dividing verbiage of blatantly racist and individualistic views. My support and vote will be for the one of you with the courage to talk about the values that I learned in grade school led to the idea behind this country: unity, tolerance, diversity, and liberty. Will the soul of the United States be decided by the details of someone’s specific plan for universal health care? No. Will the deaths from future mass shootings be avoided by endless circular arguments related to the second amendment of the US Constitution? No.

Stop wasting words. Stand up for common values. Defend what it means to be a society. Inspire us to live with conscience.

e pluribus unum.

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.

Are you ahead in life?

Recently, I took a long international flight. Although I’m a relatively small person, the cramped nature of airline seating still affects me. You don’t have to have long legs or a wide torso to find air flights uncomfortable. The seating space, even on the aisle, feels tight. People bump into you. Elbows jockey for positioning on arm rests. The curvature of the seat back and head rest makes everything turtle inward. Joints get stuck. The breath is constricted. It is difficult to keep a normal alignment of anything.

So, for my recent trip, I upgraded to a seating class called premium economy. While it wasn’t a whole lot of money to upgrade, from the perspective of being cost-conscious, it wasn’t a small amount either. But it had benefits. Our section had wider seats. There was more leg room. Food was provided off a menu.

This wasn’t business class; those people pay a lot more for the pleasure of reclining and having their own toilets. And who knows what first class looks like because folks in first class turn left on boarding an international flight as the everyone else turns right. Still, this upgrade was something. It was “premium”. It had footrests. It was better.

How quickly the experience of something better can lead to the perception of actually being better! Yes, there’s a certain feeling of financial entitlement; I paid for this, you didn’t, and so don’t give me that look when I walk past you headed to use the same airplane toilet. But, sadly, there is more. There is, in some small way, the “I’ve worked hard in my life to be able to pay for this so don’t give me that look when I walk past you headed to use the same airplane toilet”. There is even – dare I say it – a sense of personal entitlement, the self-satisfied feeling of having made it further in life than others, than the masses, than everybody seated in regular economy. I am a bit ahead in life. I have succeeded. I deserve to be seated in “premium”.

The entitlement perspective on a plane has exceptions, for sure. Some people simply are bigger and need more space. Some have travel anxiety. Some are ill. Some in fact need to be alert on arrival because work or a life situation requires a heightened state of readiness after disembarkation.

Still, there is a shift in mindset. It isn’t massive, it’s not necessarily constant and it is, perhaps, barely perceptible. But the segmentation is there. For the most part, passengers on airplanes are segmented based on financial means. And financial means is, unfortunately, often associated with the self-satisfaction of feeling that you or I have “made it”. The flight travel experience can provide a very visual and palpable cue of where a person is on the western scale of life progress.

I hear you objecting. “Wait a minute! Life is more than making money. It is more than feeling physically or situationally comfortable. There is emotional growth, spiritual progress. There is purpose.”

I agree. I am, however, admitting the difficulty I sometimes have of sensing that purpose and not trying to quantify it. My experience has patterned me to seek milestones, to evaluate myself in terms of progress. I look at my daily circumstances, my work, my relationships, my bank statements, my health, the image of myself in the mirror and the depth of compassion or self-awareness that I see in my face and eyes. I look at all these things and I wonder: am I making the most of myself? Am I getting better? Am I living up to some intangible potential that is the essence of being me?

I know – there probably isn’t a score for living. I’m just admitting that I wouldn’t mind it if there was. Imagine receiving, once every year, a glimpse of that score. Wouldn’t that be nice? A number written in the clouds, a single letter grade on a postcard, even a word whispered to me in my sleep. I sometimes would take anything. It would be helpful to have an objective assessment of my value and how useful an investment I have been for the planet, for the universe, for evolution, for God, Allah, Buddha and everything the human species has ever called the prime mover in the world.

Am I approaching enlightenment? Do I have deserve a spiritual afterlife?

The core of our experience is probably not about a score – at least as long as our consciousness is permitted or is able to inhabit the human form. It is, most likely, about grappling with the absence of such an external evaluation, at least as long as we breathe. And yet something tells me that there is or there should be, after the last breath, some review, analysis, or score. I can’t accept that the heart stops, the lights go out, and there is nothing. I can’t accept that there won’t be some reckoning when I disembark from the final ride from “this” to “that-which-is-more-than-this”, that which is more than nothing.

One thing I feel certain of: my ability to sit in premium economy will not be part of such a reckoning. And I suspect that there won’t be different classes of seating arrangements on whatever form of transportation is used to take me to whatever it is that comes next.

A memory suddenly reminds me that I may be wrong about all this. Just before he died, my father told me that he was worried of how he would be received when his spirit approached the gates of heaven, as he believed in it. “Are you worried about what St. Peter will have to say?” I asked, smiling. My dad tilted his head and aimed a look at me from the depths of his soul. “I’m more worried about your mom will have to say.”

Are we supposed to help each other keep score? Is that the scoring system readily available to me, each and every day? If so – Yikes! The thought of evaluation from fellow humans, from people I love – from you – is somehow more unsettling than the notion of receiving a progress report from an all-forgiving supreme being. You are living something similar to me. Your review won’t come with any warranty, assurance, or guarantee. I think I have more life to live before I’m ready for that sort of feedback. It may be too accurate. It definitely won’t be the grade I’d like to receive.

Because I’m a guy still trying not to feel superior to people who can’t afford premium economy on an airplane. Please bare with me then while I prepare myself to stop worrying about places on life’s seating chart. I need to earn your trust. I need to get ready to offer you my seat.