Our Weak-Kneed Media

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Vince Reardon

“The media are desperately afraid of being accused of bias. And that’s partly because there’s a whole machine out there, an organized attempt to accuse them of bias whenever they say anything that the Right doesn’t like. So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column—in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally—was that if Bush said the Earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: ‘Shape of Earth—Views Differ.’ Then they’d quote some Democrats saying that it was round.”
― Paul Krugman

Russell Bank’s “Affliction” and the Myth of Redemptive Violence

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Vince Reardon

Russell Bank’s riveting novel Affliction poses an enigmatic but essential question, “Why do we inflict pain and suffering upon others, especially those dearest to us?”

At its tragic climax Affliction suggests that brutality towards others is the desperate but failed attempt to save ourselves, redeem ourselves, through purifying, justified violence.

“The belief that violence ‘saves’ is so successful because it doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least,” said Walter Wink, the late Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. “Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts.” (2012)

This perverse attitude, which is called redemptive violence, is at the core of the cruelties several of the novel’s principal characters inflict upon each other, in particular Glenn Whitehouse and his son Wade, who as a youth was beaten regularly by his father.

Affliction has much to say about child abuse, but I’ll focus on three of its revelations, which suggest that child abuse is: 1) passed from generation to generation; 2) distorts the victim’s thinking, and 3) often produces avengers who seek to deliver themselves from injustices – real and imagined – through anger, rage and often redemptive violence.

Trans-generational Transmission

A 41-year-old, hard-drinking well-driller and part-time cop in a bleak New Hampshire town, Wade is struggling to make sense of his chaotic life. In a matter of days he loses both his jobs; his aging mother dies of hypothermia in her unheated house; he doesn’t have $300 to get his car out of the repair shop; he can’t get a dental appointment to extract an abscessed tooth; his long-suffering girlfriend Margie leaves him; his 10-year-old daughter is frightened to be with him; and he thinks his young friend and protégé Jack Hewitt has murdered for fast cash a union leader, Evan Twombley, on a deer-hunting outing.

Ironically, Wade was not always without promise or happiness, especially in his late teens when he was in love with his girlfriend and soon-to-be first wife Lillian. What happens over the next 20 years perplexes Wade as much as it alienates those who love him.

Now remarried and living in tony Concord, Lillian puts the blame squarely on Wade, who was known for beating his wife from time to time: “You’ve never loved anyone in your life, Wade. Not even yourself. Whatever you once had, you’ve ruined it.”

But Rolfe, Wade’s younger brother and narrator of the novel, suggests that the tragedy of Wade’s life is not entirely his own; it is a family tragedy perpetuated by alcohol and abuse reaching back through generations of dysfunctional Whitehouse men:

“All those solitary dumb angry men, Wade and Pop and his father and grandfather, had once been boys with intelligent eyes and brightly innocent mouths, unafraid and loving creatures eager to please and be pleased. What had turned them so quickly into the embittered brutes they had become? Were they all beaten by their fathers; was it really that simple?”

Yes, it is that simple and that profound. Pears & Capaldi (2001) show that child abuse is transmitted from generation to generation and that a parent’s history of abuse will often determine the parent’s own abusive behavior toward his or her children.

Distorted Thinking

“No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched,” said George Jean Nathan. Throughout much of Affliction, Wade’s fists are clenched and his thinking is muddled. He consistently reads people and events incorrectly.

As his life disintegrates, he obsesses with proving that Jack is a contract killer in cahoots with several prominent locals. Of course, no one in town believes him. In fact, everyone understands Twombley’s death for what it is — an unfortunate but all-too-common hunting accident.

When Gordon LaRiviere, Wade’s boss, attends his mother’s funeral and serves as a pallbearer, Wade thinks he must have ulterior motives. He doesn’t; he simply feels compassion for his employee. When Wade’s attorney succeeds in doubling the number of times per month he may now visit his young daughter, Wade sees only defeat and humiliation. He wanted complete custody of the girl, an utterly unrealistic goal.

Wade exhibits numerous distortions in thinking and perception, which research indicates is common in victims of child abuse and among substance abusers. Wade’s chief distortions are: 1) short-term thinking (He often focuses on how he is feeling now and in the next few minutes rather than next month, next year, or the rest of his life), 2) “good old days” thinking (He remembers the highs of his life with Lillian, but forgets all the pain and suffering of their life together), 3) over-reaction (He often makes mountains out of molehills such as seeing a conspiracy where none exists), 4) all-or-nothing thinking (He believes Jack is guilty of murder on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence), and 5) “feelings are reality” thinking (If Wade feels something is true, then it must be true). (Najavits, Gotthardt, Weiss & Epstein, 2004; Burns, 1980).

Avenging Angels

Wade’s long-repressed abuse by his father and his numbing dependency on alcohol prime the catastrophe that engulfs the final pages of Affliction.

In an explosion of self-righteous rage, Wade kills his drunken father who had hit him from behind with a whisky bottle. Then, he tracks and kills Jack Hewitt, who is out hunting on the last day of the deer-hunting season.

Wade is an avenging angel who must vanquish and cleanse the earth of these two supposed evildoers. It is all that Wade can think to do to save his wretched life from shameful oblivion. Then he disappears into Canada where he is never heard from again.

Haunted and guilt-ridden, Rolfe interviews those who knew Wade, trying to fathom his brother’s mayhem. Ultimately, he offers this assessment of Wade’s chances of adapting to anything resembling a normal life: “…[O]ur stories, Wade’s and mine, describe the lives of boys and men for thousands of years, boys who were beaten by their fathers, whose capacity for love and trust was crippled almost at birth and whose best hope for a connection to other human beings lay in elaborating for themselves an elegiac mode of relatedness, as if everyone’s life is already over.”

Ironically, in the years following Wade’s disappearance, his small New Hampshire town comes back to life. It’s transformed into a bustling ski resort site. Had Wade only listened to the counsel of cooler heads – his attorney, his girlfriend, his boss — and their interpretation of events, he might have weathered the storm and gotten back on track.

But given Wade’s history of abuse, his distorted thinking, and his avenging rage, he could only do what he did. That is the heartbreaking reality that Affliction exposes like a raw and rotten tooth.

References

Burns, D. D. (1999). Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York, NY: Avon Books.

Najavits, L. M., Gotthardt, S., Weiss, R. D., & Epstein, M. (2004). Cognitive distortions in the dual diagnosis of PTSD and substance use disorder. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 28(2), 159-172.

Pears, K. C. & Capaldi, D. M. (2001). Intergenerational transmission of abuse: a two generational prospective study of an at-risk sample. Child Abuse & Neglect 25, 1439–1461.

Wink, Walter (2012, May 12). Facing the Myth of Redemptive Violence, retrieved from January 27, 2013, from Ekklesia website: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/cpt/article_060823wink

Oprah, Our National Confessor, Meets Lance, Our National Penitent

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Vince Reardon

Nothing has filled me with more anxiety than going to confession. Growing up a Roman Catholic in the 1950s and 1960s, I was expected to whisper my youthful indiscretions to a priestly confessor who sat in a dark, wood-paneled and curtained box every Saturday afternoon.

The surprise was upon leaving the confessional. I always felt light, clean and, yes, forgiven. After this brief, mysterious exchange, I could start afresh with God who, I was told, loved the penitent.

Today Catholics don’t go to confession much anymore. But that doesn’t mean that they or we non-Catholics don’t need confession. We do, and that’s where Oprah comes in.

Penitent Meets Confessor

On January 17^th Oprah will interview Lance Armstrong. Interview is perhaps not the precise word. It’s not as if Armstrong is being interviewed on 60 Minutes by the late Mike Wallace. Now that would be an interview! Wallace would get beneath Armstrong’s scripted message points and remorseful mask. He’d ask uncomfortable questions of the former cycling champion’s alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, his repeated and aggressive denials of such usage, and his suspected, elaborate cover-up.

Oprah? No, Oprah is a safe interview. Armstrong knows she won’t ask questions intended to embarrass the tarnished icon. Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Gay explained Armstrong’s appearance on Oprah perfectly: “Questions will be asked, questions will be answered, but that’s not really the point. It’s about trying to clear a road ahead.”

Gay says Armstrong wants to compete in sanctioned triathlons from which he is currently banned. By “confessing” some misdeeds on Oprah, he will try to change the hearts and minds of viewers, race organizers and their all-important sponsors.

But for a man who is used to uphill challenges, it won’t work. Armstrong is about as popular as members of Congress, which is less popular than head lice, according to a recent poll. Millions will tune in to Oprah not to hear Armstrong’s scheming confession but to delight in schadenfreude – taking malicious pleasure in the misfortunes of others.

Genuine vs. False Contrition

What happened to genuine shame, remorse and contrition? They have all but disappeared in the case of celebrities, particularly super-star athletes. Sports icons and their agents have leveraged glittering but brittle reputations into multi-million-dollar enterprises, and have no time or place for shame, remorse or contrition. There are no rows or columns for them on spreadsheets of global, strategic marketing plans. Instead, self-obsessed sports icons have time for one, maybe two, news cycles to sit for brief but shallow “confessions” on talk-show TV or staged press conferences in which the invited “press” is not allowed to ask questions. Think Tiger Woods.

The German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer had a term for shallow remorse and contrition. A martyr of resistance to Nazi tyranny, Bonheoffer called it “cheap grace.” He said, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance…”

The Profumo Affair

When was the last time you witnessed genuine contrition in a celebrity or public figure? I have to go back to 1963 in Britain when John Profumo was at the center of a highly publicized, sensational scandal that brought down the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillian.

Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, had a brief liaison with a prostitute named Christine Keeler. He broke off the relationship after a few weeks but the damage had been done. The damage? Keeler was also sleeping with Yevgeny Ivanov, a known Russian spy assigned to the Soviet embassy in London.

Rumors of the affair and a potential national security breach led to questions of Profumo in the House of Commons. He denied the charges and successfully sued two magazines for printing the story. But when truth of the scandal finally came to light, Profumo resigned from the government and politics in disgrace. No one expected to hear from John Profumo again.

Volunteered to Clean Toilets

Most political figures of the day would have quietly retired to their garden or the crossword puzzle. But Profumo, by today’s standards, did the unheard of. He volunteered to clean toilets in Toynbee Hall, a social services foundation that helps the poor in East London. He worked there for the next 40 years!

Also unheard of by today’s standards, he never again spoke publicly of the Profumo Affair. Can you imagine that today? Why, even Deep Throat, the deepest, darkest insider in the Watergate scandal emerged from the shadows to publish a book and get his 15 minutes of obligatory fame.

Eventually, Profumo was convinced to use his considerable talents as chief fundraiser for Toynbee Hall, which he performed with great success. The charity did not pay him a salary. Profumo and his wife, who stood by him through the scandal and also worked on behalf of the charity, lived on their own income.

The Best of Men

In 1975 Queen Elizabeth recognized Profumo’s charitable work by presenting him a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In 1995 Margaret Thatcher invited him to her 70th birthday celebration where he sat next to the Queen.

In 2003 he was presented with the Beacon Fellowship Prize for his work at Toynbee Hall. He died in 2006 of a stroke at the age of 91. Lord Langford, a politician and social reformer, said he “felt more admiration [for Profumo] than [for] all the men I’ve known in my lifetime.”

Instead of seeking to repair his reputation, what could Armstrong do to become the best of men? Learn from Profumo’s example. First, stay out of the public eye. Lay low. Don’t seek publicity. Second, never speak about the doping scandal again. Ever. Put it behind you and others will too. Third, pursue quiet good works. Found another cancer-survivor and research foundation, like Livestrong, and devote every waking hour to cancer patients and survivors.

Then, in 10, 20 or 30 years from now, people, who have long forgotten a major doping scandal in international cycling, will once again laud Lance Armstrong as an exemplary human being.

Confessions of a Recovering Self-Pitier

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Vince Reardon

The 19^th century Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

If I were to update Wilde’s pithy saying to conform with today’s zeitgeist, which is a culture of pervasive, persistent and litigious victimhood, I would say, “To pity oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” And there’s no better representative than me, a recovering self-pitier.

Self-Pity Triggers Anger

For decades I’ve cataloged every brush off, put-down, cold stare, harsh word, slammed door, unanswered call, passed-over promotion, and even dropped football. I could fill a Tokyo-sized phone book with every real and imagined slight.

What has it gotten me? A lot of heartache. As it circulates through my mental and emotional circuitry, self-pity sparks anger, which triggers sarcastic words and hurtful deeds. Psychologists call this “anger-out”. It can also lead to “anger-in,” which triggers withering self-criticism, or what I like to call “shame and blame,” of myself and others.

Perhaps no one has described the morose state of the self-pitier better than Shakespeare in the first half of Sonnet 29:

“When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least…”

Addictive, Pleasurable, Unreal

So why mope around feeling miserable day after day, year after year? John W. Gardner offered an astute explanation: “Self-pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it’s addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.”

I mentioned I’m a recovering self-pitier. What is helping me break away from my lifelong love? In the past several months I’ve been attending a men’s group and have became aware of this “two-step” – self-pity followed by anger or rage — that I perform unconsciously again and again and again.

For example, recently I was waiting in line at the Post Office to buy stamps. The queue wasn’t long but it was moving slowly because only one clerk was on duty. At first I was calm and unconcerned. But gradually my anger began to mount as the line remained stationary for about five agonizing minutes.

But this time I caught myself getting angry. Examining my self-talk, I realized my anger was preceded by the following thoughts: “This isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to wait; I have a lot to do today. This line should move more quickly because I want it to.”

As Gardner accurately diagnosed, self-pitying thoughts and their attendant feelings are addictive, momentarily pleasurable, and unreal. For starters, none of things I said to myself were true, but they gave me a pleasurable sense of superiority. I wasn’t being treated unfairly and I wasn’t in a hurry. If anyone was being treated unfairly and was in a hurry, it was the stressed-out clerk who was working anxiously to serve her customers.

Gratitude, Not Self-Pity

I short-circuited my rising anger by telling myself how grateful I was at that moment. I was grateful to have the day off to go to the Post Office. I was grateful to be able to stand in line, while the woman ahead of me was sitting in a wheelchair. I was grateful I had friends to whom I could send holiday cards. No doubt, there are plenty of people who have no one to send holiday wishes.

My epiphany in the Post Office signaled a change. I was beginning to weed my garden of self-pity and allow more healthy buds to bloom. There is no place in your garden for weeds, just as there’s no place in your life for self-pity.

Several years ago I had the privilege of interviewing David Lim, a Lieutenant with the Port Authority Police Department, who survived the collapse of One World Trade Center. He lost friends including his partner, Sirius, a bomb-sniffing dog on 9/11. If anyone had a right to feel self-pity it was Officer Lim. At the end of our three-hour conversation I asked him if he could offer any advice on how to live a more meaningful life. Two things he said remain with me to this day: “Live more in the moment and appreciate what you have.”

You don’t change a life-time of behavior in a couple of months. I don’t doubt for a moment that I will continue to “go to self-pity” when confronted with a stressful situation. However, I am confident that in time I will “go to gratitude” more often.

Victor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, offers added hope: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

If Only I Had [Fill in the Blank], Then I Would Be Happy

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Vince Reardon

What do you say to yourself during the day? If you could read a transcript of your daily self-talk, how would it read?

Would it be positive, hopeful, and encouraging? Or would it be negative, hopeless and discouraging? Perhaps it would be a mixture of both?

Recently, I discovered something I’ve been saying to myself with terrible consequences. In fact, I’ve been saying this phrase to myself for so many years I no longer hear it; it has sunk into an unconscious, deeply-held attitude.

The attitude might be called “conditional happiness” and it is expressed in the following phrase: “If only I had [fill in the blank], I would be happy.”

For years, I have filled my head with self-talk that sounded like this: “If only I had that career…that salary…that car…that house…that accomplishment…that promotion…that upgrade to first class…that woman, then I would be happy.”

Recently, I became aware of this unconscious attitude and realized how it destroys happiness. By placing conditions on happiness, I prevented myself from experiencing it. In its place, I was consumed by envy for what others had.

Humor columnist Harold Coffin once said, “Envy is the art of counting the other fellow’s blessings instead of your own.”

But envy, like volcanic lava, doesn’t stand still; it moves and usually wreaks destruction in its path. In me insatiable envy would mutate into self-pity and then anger. “I don’t have the things I want and need, but I sure as hell deserve them!”

Can you change a long-held, deeply-ingrained attitude like conditional happiness? Can you really change a habit of the mind? Yes, you can.

Today, instead of gazing at the heights I assume others have soared, I recall all the blessings that have been bestowed on me and my family.

I no longer say, “If only I had _______, then I would be happy.” Instead, I say, “I am so grateful for _______.”

The medieval Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ‘thank you,’ it would suffice.”

Tomorrow start your day the way I now do, by saying “thank you” at first light.

How to Lead a Miserable Life in Three Easy Steps

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Vince Reardon

What does a miserable life look and feel like? The comedian Louis C. K. gives us a nice behind-the-scene’s look-see: “Every day starts, my eyes open, and I reload my program of misery. I remember who I am, what I’m like, and I just go, ‘ugh’.”

As many of you know, there are few people in life more miserable than comedians. But that doesn’t mean you can’t join their ranks. You can, and I’m here to help.

The great thing about misery is it’s an equal opportunity employer. It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, educated or ignorant, a prince of the city or a redneck in the pumpkin patch. If you want the job of being miserable, you can have it! All you have to do is follow one or more of my three easy steps.

Step #1 – Follow someone else’s dream, not your own. Of all the people I’ve met in my life, there is no more miserable person than the one who doesn’t follow his dream, but follows someone else’s idea of what he should do.

In New York in the 1940’s an 18-year-old man’s dream came true – he got a chance to try out for a major baseball team. After the week-long audition, he was offered a contract to play for the team’s single-A minor league team in Florida.

But the young man’s parents didn’t approve. They thought his dream of becoming a Major League baseball player was foolish. His father wanted him to “grow up” and “get sensible.” He wanted him to return home and get a real job. The young man did as he was told and got a real job, which he hated every day for the next 40 years. The man? I knew him well. He was my father.

But my father’s experience was not wasted on me; I learned from his mistake. If you have a dream, go for it! If it turns out that you can’t make the dream a reality, at least you tried. But don’t quit dreaming. Find another dream and pursue it.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.”

Step # 2 – Give up easily. The second most miserable person I’ve met is that poor soul who has a dream but don’t persevere in attaining it. She gives up because she thinks her dream is too hard…too time-consuming…too risky. You fill in the blank. There is never an end to her excuses.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s there were thousands of female private pilots but no female commercial pilots. Over the years female pilots would apply for the airlines’ top job, and over and over again they would receive either deafening silence or the standard brush off — “We’re not hiring at this time.” Most gave up; only a few persisted, undeterred by disappointment.

In the late 1960s Emily Warner was a flight instructor in Denver training men to become commercial airline pilots. One day in 1967, she decided she wanted to become a commercial airline pilot too. She submitted her resume to several major carriers and waited to hear from one of them. But she never heard a word.

When she called carriers for an interview, she was told there weren’t any openings. Of course, she knew that wasn’t true because she trained male pilots who were quickly hired by the major carriers.

Did Warner give up? Nope. She persevered for seven — repeat, seven — long years until she was finally hired by Frontier Airlines, a regional carrier in Denver. Ironically, as soon as she was hired other major airlines hired a few female pilots.

In 2010, just over 7% of certified civilian pilots (both private and commercial) in the United States were women, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

If you want to succeed, don’t give up easily and don’t shy away from obstacles. As aphorist Frank A. Clark once said, “If you choose a path without obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

Step #3 — Be a victim. If you’re going to lead a miserable life, you should assume one, supreme attitude – victimhood. How do victims think and feel? They believe someone or something – one’s boss, one’s spouse, one’s kids, the government, a political party, or the economy — is always to blame for their misfortune or unhappiness. It’s never them!

No one had a greater right to feel like a victim than Chinese dissident Harry Wu. In 1960 he was arrested by Chinese authorities, accused of several false charges, and sentenced to a labor camp. Four years earlier at a Chinese college forum Wu had criticized the 1956 invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union as a violation of international law. Naively, he assumed he was free to speak his mind at the meeting.

When his three year sentence was up, Wu learned that it had been extended indefinitely. He summarized his two decades in China’s “laogai,” a network of forced labor camps harboring millions of political prisoners, in these terse words: “Every day, labor. Every day, self-criticism and confession. Every day, the struggle of finding food.”

In 1979 he was released from prison and “rehabilitated” under the regime of Communist General Secretary Deng Xiaoping. Resuming his career as a geologist, he eventually left for the United States.

In 1986 Wu experienced a major turning point in his life. He gave a talk about China at the University of California at Santa Cruz and was shocked to learn how uninformed most Chinese-Americans were of the labor camps in China.

Since that day Wu has fought for human rights in China. He is the founder of the Laogai Research Foundation, which gathers information on the laogai system, products produced by laogai prisons, as well as the marketing of organs of executed Chinese prisoners. In 2002 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire.

If you want a miserable life – and I doubt that you do — you must: live someone else’s dream of what to do with your life; if you have a dream, give it up easily; and finally, be a victim, not a victor.

However, if you want to live a fulfilling life, go where your heart and your head tell you to go. Not someone else’s heart or head, yours. Never ever, ever, ever give up your dream. And be a victor, not a victim. Remember, you’re the captain of your fate, no one else.

Jack Coleman, the former president of Haverford College and author of “Blue Collar Journal,” who I profiled in Legacy: Passing on Cherished Values in a Values-Starved World, once told me, “When I die, if I have an epitaph on my tombstone, I want it to read: ‘I’m glad I did rather than I wish I had.’”

This quote alone is an excellent antidote to leading a miserable life.

Gifts — More Important Than Achievements and Possessions

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Vince Reardon

“Gifts are more important than achievements or possessions. That’s because we live in a society of achievements and possessions and it turns out we can’t live by them. The older I get (79!) the more I’m aware that the receiving and giving of gifts really amount to the most.

I would start with the gift of life, which is a gift of God, and the continuing gift of life by God. But then that is mediated through us by our mothers, family, good neighbors, good civic systems, such as education, medicine and libraries.”

~ From a recent conversation with theologian and Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann for my forthcoming book “The Most Important Lesson Life Taught Me.”

We Humans Are Plug-In Compatible

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Vince Reardon

Here’s an interesting comment by Stephen M. Kosslyn, a psychology professor at Harvard and an associate psychologist in the Department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The entire article is entitled, “On the Evolution of Human Motivation: The Role of Social Prosthetic Systems.”

“[N]otepads and calculators are not the most powerful or common prosthetic devices we use. More interesting, in my view, is that we rely on other people as extensions of ourselves. Specifically, we rely on other people to extend our cognitive and emotional capacities. Others help us formulate alternatives, evaluate options, and make decisions; others also help us interpret and control our emotions. Evolution has allowed our brains to be configured during development so that we are ‘plug compatible’ with other humans, so that others can help us extend ourselves.”

Copyright © 2012 by Vince Reardon

On Grieving the Death of an Adult Child

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Vince Reardon

In Misery Anton Chekhov depicts a world too busy, too distracted to share the grief of one heartbroken man.

On a cold, snowy night, Iona, a horse-drawn carriage driver (today’s cabbie) transports Moscow’s finest through the cavernous city. During each transit, he tries to tell the fare that his son has just died. No one listens, no one except a gentle creature at evening’s end.

Here is how Chekhov closes his classic short story:

“That’s how it is, old girl….Kuzma Ionitch is gone….He said goodbye to me….He went and died for no reason….Now, suppose you had a little colt, and you were mother to that little colt….And all at once that same little colt went and died….You’d be sorry, wouldn’t you?…The little mare munches, listens, and breathes on her master’s hands. Iona is carried away and tells her all about it.”

As I read Roger Rosenblatt’s Kayak Morning, I kept flashing back to Chekhov’s short story again and again. At times I felt like Iona’s self-important, oh-so-busy customers; at times I felt like Iona’s attentive little mare chomping on his words.

During the first half to three-quarters of Rosenblatt’s grieving meditation on the loss of his beloved 38-year-old daughter Amy, I kept asking myself – and almost shouting at the author — “Why don’t you move on?” “Why don’t you just get over this? What purpose does all your sadness serve?”

Of course, the fault is mine, not his. I am the one who refuses to enter the sorrowful lowland in which he lives. I’m the one who will not listen to his dispatches, in which he reports, a full two and one half years after Amy’s passing, that death is overpowering, and he is still inconsolable.

I am not prepared for this. Haven’t bestselling grief manuals assured us that the sting of grief’s scorpion bite softens in 12 to 18 months? Don’t the essayists say that “Those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either”?

I want reassurance; I want my MTV. I want my sorrow cauterized, enclosed, controlled. I want to be comforted that life goes trippingly on, that I go merrily on, unhampered by profound, debilitating grief.

But Rosenblatt will not subscribe to the popular myth that bereavement is a hop, skip and jump on the road to “normalcy.” He will not offer a quick fix or false hope. In his lean and sinewy kayak, he is like Lear on the heath — he has no delusions. He knows he will never see Amy again – the brilliant, beautiful daughter, wife, mother of three, and doctor.

Doctor? Yes, a pediatrician. What an inconceivable thought! Young doctors who are mothers of three are not supposed to die suddenly. Her unexpected death is almost as inconceivable as its cause from “an undetected anomalous right coronary artery.”

But life is not Scrabble. No matter how hard he tries, RosenbIatt cannot rearrange the letters that compose that diagnosis. He cannot make them say something benign.

Henry David Thoreau said, “Experience is in the fingers and the head. The heart is inexperienced.” In final sections of the book – Rosenblatt’s second book about Amy — I finally begin to listen to this savant of sorrow, this experienced heart, as he points out some of the landmarks of this country we call sorrow.

Setting his narrative in the metaphorical frame of a kayak, Rosenblatt finds comfort, plying the watery byways of Quogue, Long Island. Sitting poised between empty sky and the silent deep, he could not have found a better place to pour his rage and grief.

But he’s not alone; we share his hull and eavesdrop hungrily on his musings (What is the difference between grief and mourning? Mourning has company.), snippets of poetry (That neither present time, nor years unborn, Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.), memories of Amy, outings with grandchildren, random cultural observations (Everyone embraces, even those we hardly know.), literary reveries (The literature involving fathers and daughters runs nearly one thousand titles.), history of kayaks, fears (When you love someone, every moment is shadowed by the fear of loss.), and an angry, out-of-character longing for violent death (Hook me in the gullet. Slice me down the earth’s meridian, from north to south. Lay my bones outside my skin.).

I’m not sure if Rosenblatt is a religious man. He doesn’t sound like one, although he says he believes in God. His religion offers none of the comfort and support we find in faith. His enchantment – the curtain of fantasy we draw across the terrible reality of death – is not religion but Nature. A powerful beauty animates Nature in Kayak Morning, and we marvel continuously in its freshness and refreshment.

“For some seven hours I have been out here. I could go the whole day, into the evening and night. I am not alone, after all. The sky and the water are with me. The insects and the birds. They are with me impersonally. See that thrush half hidden in a tangle of leaves? The red berry beside it? And that yellow wildflower? That that one? Hardly alone. What am I trying to recall?”

Perhaps he is trying to recall a new, dawning realization: he doesn’t have to grieve inconsolably to hold onto Amy. The Scottish poet Thomas Campbell said, “To live in hearts we leave is not to die.”

Rosenblatt says as much on the final page, “Love conquers death…Amy returns in my love, alive and beautiful. I have her still.” Then he writes: “I aim my boat toward the shore.”

I hope Rosenblatt writes another book soon, and I truly hope it’s about anything or anyone but Amy. But if it is or it isn’t, I’ll be first in line to buy it.

The Secret Power of Symbolic Gestures

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Vince Reardon

Who doesn’t enjoy a big, dramatic gesture? In sports they are the stuff of legend. One of the most iconic gestures in baseball was when Babe Ruth allegedly pointed to the outfield fence, signaling he intended to put the ball over it, and then did so.

Sports are also no stranger to the “symbolic gesture.” In a country riven by racial segregation in the 1940s, few examples of racial harmony compare to an on-field moment shared by Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson.

In 1947 at Crosby Field in Cincinnati, Brooklyn Dodgers’ first baseman Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball, was taunted, heckled, booed, and hurled death threats by the hometown fans.

They weren’t alone. Some of Robinson’s teammates were circulating a petition to have him removed from the team. Reese, a Southerner from Kentucky and Robinson’s roommate, refused to sign it.

Sports writer Ira Berkow of the New York Times quoted Reese’s son Mark in a 2005 article: “My father had done his own soul searching and he knew that some fans, teammates, and yes, some family members didn’t want him to play with a black man. But my father listened to his heart, and not to the chorus.”

At some point in the game at Crosby Field, Reese, the Dodgers’ shortstop, trotted across the infield, stood next to Robinson, and put his arm around him. That simple, understated gesture said: “This man you are insulting is my friend, and whatever you say or do is not going to change that.”

What Are Symbolic Gestures?

Why do we thrill to such gestures? If we were to examine the DNA of a symbolic gesture under a microscope what would we see?

First, symbolic gestures tend to be decisive and action-oriented. They are likely to be performed by men or women who believe in “put up or shut up.”

Second, they are powerful and they empower. By vicariously “living through” the hero’s symbolic gesture, we can become aware of our own untapped powers.

Three, they are memorable. We recall symbolic gestures long after our own mundane experiences fade from memory.

Four, they express wide-ranging emotions. From righteous anger to heart-stopping generosity, symbolic gestures span a world of broad feeling.

Finally, they are performed on life’s small and large stages. Most symbolic gestures are minor and interpersonal. For example, a friend is unkind to you. Bristling from the slight, you make a symbolic gesture. You neglect to send her a birthday present, a custom the two of you have shared for years. Defiance of your annual ritual gets her attention and she calls you to clear the air. But many symbolic gestures are enacted on a large national or international stage.

Uplifting, Positive Symbolic Gestures

Here are four remarkable symbolic gestures from recent history. Please note, I’ve chosen only positive, uplifting symbolic gestures, not negative ones, of which there are many.

Defiance — On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, returning from work on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat in the “colored” section to a white rider. The 42-year-old secretary was arrested for disorderly conduct and violating the segregation law of the Montgomery City code, sparking a national conflagration — the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the U.S.

In her lifetime, Parks received numerous awards for her dedication to civil rights work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When she died in 2005, Parks was laid in state in the Capitol, becoming only the first woman and second non-U.S. government official to be accorded this honor.

Reconciliation -- When South African prisoner No. 46664 became South Africa’s first black President in 1994, Nelson Mandela sought reconciliation, not revenge, with his white countrymen and former oppressors.

Wishing to reassure white South Africans of his good intentions, Mandela proclaimed shortly after taking office that South Africa would have two national anthems, not one – Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika and The Call of South Africa. In time the two national anthems were shortened and combined into one, reflecting the long strides both communities — white and black — had taken toward national unity.

Solidarity – During his first visit to his homeland, Pope John Paul II, the first Polish Pontiff in the Church’s two thousand year history, was greeted by two million wildly enthusiastic Poles in the streets of Warsaw. Throughout the visit, the Pope subtly communicated to his fellow Poles that they were no longer standing alone against their communist overlords.

General Jaruzelski, communist Poland’s last leader and briefly its first post-communist President, said that “the role of the Pope was enormous in the transformations that occurred in Poland and, following in Poland’s footsteps, in the whole [communist] block,” according to Tad Szulc, a biographer of Pope John Paul II.

Nobility or Grace – In 2007 Charles Roberts, a truck driver, stormed into an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and shot 10 school girls, killing five. He then shot and killed himself. Incredibly, the Amish community forgave the killer, attended his funeral, and expressed condolences to his wife and three children. Later, the same Amish community donated money to the killer’s family.

National Public Radio’s Joseph Shapiro quoted Jonas Beiler of the Family Resource and Counseling Center on the Amish tragedy: “Tragedy changes you. You can’t stay the same. Where that lands, you don’t always know. But what I found out in my own experience if you bring what little pieces you have left to God, he somehow helps you make good out of it. And I see that happening in this school shooting as well. One just, simple thing that the whole world got to see was this simple message of forgiveness.”

What do a caring ballplayer, a defiant bus rider, a reconciling President, a liberating Pope, and a forgiving community have in common? They are all practitioners of the subtle art of the symbolic gesture, an art that can lift others up and fill them with hope, dignity or high moral purpose.

How can you make a powerful symbolic gesture, large or small, in your life? To paraphrase Norman Thomas, “If you want to make an effective symbolic gesture, don’t burn something down; build it up.”

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