Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Dr. Darrell White's Personal Blog

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Sunday musings…A New Year’s Compilation

2018. Each New Year’s celebration seems to bring with it some new manifestation of the wonders of family. The joy that is family, at least the good part of family. This certainly entails more than a bit of collective selective viewing and a willful effort to let pass transgressions that might at other times be the undersea earthquake that births a massive tsunami. Still, each year some lovely little something lights the hearth fire that warms our hearts.

This year was no different. Yesterday was spent in the tiniest of small town Vermont churches for a family wedding. Big city cousins invited all the kin to celebrate a marriage literally no one saw coming, in a way that not a soul predicted. And it was perfect. A new couple was ushered into familyhood by children, peers, and parents. Hope and love competed in a good-natured contest to see which would be the prevailing emotion.

All in all it was that most lovely of gatherings in which you arrived hopeful and left heartfull.

–There are certain weekends on which it seems OK to re-visit past thoughts. New Year’s might be one of them. In the spirit of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal…

1) Hope. Chief Justice John Roberts gave a commencement speech to a group of 9th graders this year in which he wished them “bad luck”. Now, lest you think ill of the Chief Justice, that he was being churlish and mean-spirited, what he meant was that he wished that these young people would experience some degree of hardship in their youth so that they would develop tactics to persevere as adults when those same hardships inevitably arose.

“I hope you will be treated unfairly, to that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal, because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. I hope that you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life, and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so that you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you have just enough pain to learn compassion.”

My hope for each of you is encapsulated in Justice Roberts’ conclusion: I hope that you will have the ability to see the message in any of your misfortunes, and that you will express appreciation for the people who help you overcome them.

2) Indulgence. ‘Tis the season, eh? Indulgence at this time of year, at least in the Judeo-Christian world, is rather obvious. I watch my nutrition all year so that I can eat pie at Thanksgiving and cookies at Christmas. Neither of which I weigh or measure, by the way.

There’s an aspect of guilt when it comes to indulgence. It’s more than just the occasional treat. An inch of dark chocolate on your Paleo Diet doesn’t really cut it, and if you consider that an indulgence it’s probably time to loosen up a bit. I was thinking that the ultimate First World indulgence is the un-timed hot shower, but anything that occurs on a daily basis probably doesn’t count either.

Uh uh…indulgence involves a certain sense of not only excess but also a bit of “I really shouldn’t”. Jay McInerney: “I find the shadow of guilt always adds piquancy to any indulgence. It’s almost more pleasurable, feeling slightly guilty.” As a boy raised Catholic by a mother who openly admired the way her Jewish friends raised their kids (producing what I’ve come to call “double guilt”), I definitely get the “shadow of guilt” angle to indulgence, especially with ones that only occur on rare occasions.

Others, though, indulge in ways both frequent and grand. Indulgence writ large, if you will. Take, for example, Lilly Bollinger and her approach to Champagne: “I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it–unless I’m thirsty.” Man, THAT woman knows how to indulge. Not much guilt evident, either. I’m sure my Mom wouldn’t approve, and I’m equally sure that Lilly wouldn’t care.

In a perfect world we would all be more like Lilly Bollinger, indulging on a daily basis in something that brings us pleasure with or without a side of guilt. The world, as I’ve said, is messy, no matter where it is you might live. Indulgence is what you make of it, and it’s probably a good thing that we have this Holiday Season during which we give ourselves permission to indulge a bit. Life is messy and life is hard–you’ve earned it.

[Raises flute]

3) Resolution. Let me leave 201[8] with a final thought, inspired by Ben Reiter’s review of the movie “I, Tonya”.

“Each of us, “I, Tonya” suggests, is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done–or, in Tonya’s case, the worst thing she might have done.” In our present days of instantly available and infinitely scalable opinion, we should add the worst thing someone says we did.

Let us, each of us, resolve that in 201[9] we will look first to that which is good about each other, and endeavor to see that each of us is more like the best thing we’ve ever done than not.

Happy New Year.

I’ll see you next week…

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