Hoping against hope....

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

 - President-Elect Barack Obama (November 4^th, 2008)

This is likely another historic day in American history: not only the election of our 46^th president, but also of the first African-American female vice president. A day to be celebrated, for sure, especially after the abject regression of the past four years. And yet I’m not really that happy today, and maybe even a bit wistful, which I’ve been struggling to figure out for several hours now and think that I have.

One reason that I’m hesitant to be fully joyful, to celebrate this moment as deeply as it should be, is that I remember 2008 and what followed. I cried that night as Barack Hussein Obama took the stage in Grant Park with his beautiful, all-American African-American family and ushered in a new era not only in our politics but our civic life: I don’t know a single one of my friends, especially the African-American ones, who believed that we’d see a Black president in our lifetimes … and suddenly he was there, all hopey and changey and inspiring, straight out of central casting.

And then America, especially white America and the GOP-controlled Senate, made his and our life hell far too often over the last six of the next eight years. Yes, he rightfully inspired hope, and, yes, he did affect some meaningful change, but as the opposition to his every effort – and, truth be told, his very existence in that ultimate role – proved, he was still Black and America reminded him of it every chance it got.

It didn’t matter that he fought successfully to create the first national healthcare program in a half-century that dramatically reduced the number of our fellow citizens who were uninsured. It didn’t matter that he sang “Amazing Grace” beautifully and helped us heal after the tragedy at Emmanuel AME church. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t whiff or hint of scandal during his entire time in office – other than the manufactured outrage about his tan suit and proclivity to remove his suit jacket when working in the Oval Office – and that he was the very moral exemplar of who we hope our presidents to be.

It didn’t matter because he was Black.…

As I watched this spectacle play out and contested every supposedly well-meaning colleague or friend who dared to suggest that the country was showing itself to be “post-racial” somehow, my capacity for hope dimmed. Though he may have occupied the office, it was clear that, in reality, America really wasn’t ready for its first Black president.

And then, thanks to that pernicious gift of slavery at our country’s founding, the Electoral College enabled the installation of a singularly unqualified and unworthy individual as his successor, one whose popular vote count trailed his female opponent’s by over 3 million. So, not only did we end up with minority rule by the GOP, but we showed that the country wasn’t ready for its first female president, either.

Say what you want about Hillary and critique her ’til the cows come home, but you cannot, in any credible way, compare her qualifications for the office to her opponent’s. Seriously, other than being white, male and (supposedly) rich, what were/are 45’s bona fides? Beyond the myth that so many wanted to believe – in part, I believe, because it allowed them to look past his narcissistic, pathological inhumanity – the reality of his allegedly successful business career was actually a series of bankruptcies, burned banks and investors and stiffed small contractors. Now, shockingly, in just four years, he’s done much the same to our country. Who could’ve seen that coming? Oh, wait.…

And what’s been the nature of this administration? Simply put, narcissistic, pathological lying and unconscionable inhumanity at scale inflicted both domestically and internationally. Except, of course, if you’re in the 1% who garnered 83% of the benefit from his sole legislative triumph, the deficit-exploding tax cut of 2017. And please don’t get me started on the overt and abominable racism, sexism/misogyny, xenophobia, etc.

Sadly, it’s difficult to pick a nadir because there are so many embarrassments and transgressions from which to choose. This week, I think I’ll go with kids in cages at the border still, having been reminded of this in recent weeks by the revelation that our government has begun deporting ‘illegal’ immigrant children to Mexico even if this isn’t their country of origin. Don’t think on that too long or you’ll get completely enraged, especially because damn near half of the country just voted to perpetuate this and the myriad other forms of inhumanity that have been perpetrated by 45 and his sycophants and enablers.

This being said, I suppose we shouldn’t forget that he’s become one of only three presidents in our nation’s history to be impeached. It really says something that this historic reality is but one of many embarrassing and immoral aspects of his legacy.

And I haven’t even mentioned his unconscionable abdication of leadership of our country during a global pandemic that’s claimed the lives of nearly a quarter-million of our neighbors while afflicting more than 120,000 new ones each day….

As a Person of Color, I have watched in horror at how systematically he and his enablers have not only targeted and undone much of his predecessor’s beneficial contributions but also witnessed him demean, diminish and disenfranchise The Other and The Dispossessed with a consistency that is as contemptible as it is damning.

And his and his enablers’ broad, continual and too often successful efforts at voter suppression? Well, my proper southern mother raised me right and taught me not to say anything if I didn’t have anything nice to say, so Ima leave that right there.…

So now we stand again on the threshold of history: it appears that the Biden-Harris ticket will prevail. I am truly joyful about this, but I’d be lying if I didn’t also admit to a sense of foreboding. Not only did the eagerly anticipated Blue Wave not materialize, but this likely leaves the Senate in GOP hands – and especially those of several of the highest profile partisan hacks who were not tossed out of office as so many had hoped – which means that every attempt of the future Administration to remedy the sins of the current one will likely be thwarted (as well as even the successful attempts challenged in the newly stacked and ultra-conservative courts). In other words, we’re in for another period of stalemate in our national politics when we have so many serious issues to address in real time.

Seriously, America, WTF?!?

Perhaps the primary reason that my erstwhile excitement is virtually completely subdued is that we’ve learned something especially troubling this week: that virtually half of our fellow citizens support the pathology and inhumanity of the current administration and voted to continue it.

Again, America, WTF?!?

So pardon me if it’s hard to be especially hopeful despite the historic significance of this week’s developments. It’s truly a good thing that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be leading our country. It’s just sad that they’ll likely have to do so in the face of continuous, nihilistic and immoral obstruction.

And I really don’t want to be hurt again: as I read the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates a few years ago in a piece in which he essentially explained the inevitability of 45 as the backlash to 44, I realized that my faith in my country had been greatly shaken. That 45 has proven even worse than we expected has turned this from a painful bruise into a gaping, oozing wound that’s only partially healed by the likelihood of his being relegated to the dustbin of history soon. After all, the inhumans who’ve supported him are still very much here, as we’ve been reminded yet again this very week….

I’m hurting too much to hope now, but I have to: too many of the ancestors sacrificed so/too much, so I have to continue the fight to goad this country into living up to and into its professed creeds for the first time. America never has been the Land of the Free for so many of its citizens; now is the time to make this promise real.

It starts by acknowledging that…

Black Lives Matter,

Latinx Lives Matter,

Asian Lives Matter,

Indigenous Lives Matter,

Women’s Lives Matter,

LGBTQ+ Lives Matter,

Muslim Lives Matter,

Etc.

Then, and only then, when these move beyond being mere admirable sentiments and ambitions to becoming the experience of all of God’s children in this country, will we be able to say that, in alignment with our (aspirational but flawed) founding documents, truly, All Lives Matter.…

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

- President-Elect Barack Obama (November 4th, 2008)

‘Cultural Thinning’ and Other Costs of Progress: The Ebbing of Our Blackness….

 

The only thing we know about the future is that it is going to be different.

 - Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Practices, Responsibilities (1973)

 

 

Our future is greater than our past.

 - Ben Okri, “Turn on Your Light” (1999)

  

My kids are significantly less Black than me, as I was compared to my forebears. Such is the path of progress, and of its cost. Of course, we’d like to think of this progress as linear and complete, but history, despite our attempts to ignore or reframe it in convenient ways, suggests otherwise.…

I was reminded of this today as I read a fascinating and important book: Prof. James W Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me. As he deftly and definitively parses and pierces the myths of our history, the Professor also prompts reflection. I’m about to tackle Chapter 5, which he’s entitled “Gone With The Wind” to frame his exploration of “The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks.” Pray for me.

I’m still recovering from its predecessor, “Red Eyes,” his fileting survey of our country’s shameful and genocidal treatment of Native Americans. Yes, despite its being glossed over, I knew that our country’s ‘real history’ with respect to ‘American Indians’ was horrific, but surveying it in detail is at once frightfully enlightening, completely enraging and powerfully dispiriting: truly, with respect to our history, we Americans are People of the Lie.

When, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation, you explore and embrace the truth of who we are and how we’ve come to be, it’s a wonder that People of Color aren’t more enraged than our country is finally realizing us to be.…

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time – and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: it isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country. And their ignorance.

 - James Baldwin (1961)

Among Prof. Loewen’s themes in exploring this aspect of our history is that, as is typical, our texts do so from a particularly self-serving and Eurocentric perspective. But if we consider it through ‘Red Eyes,’ the experience of the Other – in this case, Native Americans – then we’ll see a decidedly different picture that forces us to reconsider the truth about our history and our society. As he observes:

Indian history is the antidote to the pious ethnocentrism of American exceptionalism, the notion that European Americans are God’s chosen people. Indian history reveals that the United States and its predecessor British colonies have wrought great harm in the world. We must not forget this – not to wallow in our wrongdoing, but to understand and to learn, that we might not reek harm again. We must temper our national pride with critical self-knowledge.… History through red eyes offers our children a deeper understanding than comes from encountering the past as a story of inevitable triumph by the good guys.

Further, he notes that in the past half-century “the United States is beginning to let Natives acculturate successfully, albeit on Anglo terms” and yet “this poses a new threat to Native coexistence,” which is that “it is much harder to maintain the intangible values that make up the core of Indian culture.” In other words, ‘progress,’ no matter how ultimately beneficial, still comes at an appreciable (cultural) cost.

So it is in my own family, and, I suspect in yours, too: as we move into the future and away from the past, we evolve, developing new experience-based cultural components and leaving behind those that no longer serve our purpose as well even if we treasure them.

My sister Maria can bake Aunt Bert’s roles very well … but nowhere near as perfectly as my late, great great aunt. I consider myself a grill master … but I can’t even approach much less touch Uncle Web’s gift for barbecue: no restaurant will ever pay me for the recipe for my secret sauce. Even more, in this modern era of too busy lives, who’s got the time to tend the meat all day as it cooks ‘low and slow,’ lovingly basting and turning it every five to ten minutes while listening to the Tigers game on the radio?

I can cook some hella collard greens and will argue that my fluffy mashed potatoes are better than my elders’ … but I’ll never be able to delight my grandchildren with the savory experience of Sweet Georgia peaches and cream for breakfast or of fresh, hot, sweet and delightfully sticky Krispy Kreme donuts and an ice cold glass of milk or the sheer delight a cold Coca-Cola on a hot southern day as my maternal grandmother did. I can only aspire to delight them in other ways.

Which is the point: of necessity, the experience of those who follow us will be different, no matter how important we believe the need to appreciate our history and that of our elders to be. No, I’m not as Black as my parents and grandparents, whose lives were shaped (if not largely defined) by Jim Crow America. Thanks to their sterling example and advocacy, I’m a child of the American mainstream, having benefited greatly from the opportunity to experience life beyond the cocoon of the African-American community solely.

But I’m still Black, as our fundamentally and structurally racist society reminds me virtually every day. So though I’m not Black in the way of my forebears, I'm still very much The Other. In other words, I’m doing Black differently … as will my children and grandchildren relative to me. This cultural evolution – which feels more like ‘cultural thinning,’ as it does reflect some appreciable amount of assimilation – is both natural and lamentable, but inevitable if one seeks a better life in this society or any other. We want to believe that we can stay the same and have the world appreciate and celebrate us for who we choose to be and are, but this isn’t the way it works: the world doesn’t meet us on our terms, we meet on its….

Among the impacts of this meeting is that we lose parts of our history as we live into a new one. Truth be told, despite our reflexive wistfulness, meaning has always been transitory: for example, what it meant to be Black in America in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries is very different from its meaning in the last third of the twentieth and more different still than what it means today. And, more accurately, we should always speak of the range of any such cultural association, because it’s just as if not more so true today that there’s no one way to be Black as, it was two hundred years ago when, though the vast majority of us were enslaved, a few of us lived free.

Being Black will be different for my children than it’s been for me, which is actually a good thing despite my now joining the unbroken line of ancestors bemoaning the loss of critical aspects of our unique racial culture and history. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve instructed them in the ways of the Black Experience throughout American history, and especially that of the last more than half-century of my lifetime, but, admittedly and of necessity, they carry this far more lightly than I do.

As much as I may want them to appreciate, value and revere the victories that’ve afforded them such relatively privileged lives, it’s the nature of this different and better experience not to be overly burdened by a decidedly less affirming past. As much as I may decry that they ‘just don’t get it’ with respect to how lucky they are to be living in this more enlightened (but by no means completely so) time … yet couldn’t – or didn’t – my parents say the same of me?

 

It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.

 - Soren Kierkegaard, Journals IV A 164 (1843)

It’s funny, but perhaps this inevitably partially unfavorable perspective on our heirs is itself a reflection of the double-edged gift of history: on the one hand, we want to respect it and carry it with us, and yet, on the other, in order to live fully into the future, of necessity we must leave some or most of it behind. Such is the tension of generational progress….

So it’s incumbent upon me to accept that my kids are no less Black than me – and thus not lesser – but they’re Black differently, which is actually a good thing. It’s the privilege of the present to live fully in it and into it, guided by the past but not confined by it. So as I lament that my kids have lost so much cultural treasure – though I’ve gotten them to eat it, none of them can cook traditional African-American cuisine as I learned to do (partially) in my youth – I also have to accept that they’ll gain so much more. So I won’t be able to define what their version and experience of Blackness is – and therefore come to peace with it in the present – and will likely question its value in some appreciable part: who among us hasn’t turned into our parents and lamented this ‘music’ these kids listen to today?

This being said, perhaps my father’s example is instructive here: even though he preferred the old, ‘classic’ stuff, he did make the effort to stretch himself and understand the new sounds of the 70s, be they R&B or rock. Now it’s my turn to stretch … though, truth be told, clearly I’m not quite as open because I just can’t get to almost any of this rap music nowadays (says the former DJ).

So, too, with my mother’s example: she pushed me out of the protective womb of our comfortable Black middle class existence into the great unknown of elite white educational institutions and the virtually exclusively white business world while being well aware of the risks of this proposition but remaining convinced of the greater benefits to be garnered. Her faith in the future and in me have propelled me ever since while largely proving her right: it hasn’t by any means been a perfect life, but it’s been an objectively blessed one and appreciably better than those afforded to her or any of the elders who’ve come before me.

It’s this understanding, experience and perspective that now compel me to (re-)gift this to her grandchildren and other progeny. I can only hope that their experience of Life, and of Blackness, is ever better than mine, though it will most assuredly be different (and not lesser). Cultural thinning, it turns out, is an illusion: while our history is important, it doesn’t define our future, though it should inform it. So our Blackness, of necessity, will evolve, which is a very good thing indeed. Though it may appear to successive generations of elders as less essentially Black, it’ll nonetheless represent an effective adaptation to an ever-evolving world.

So while I may lament that my kids will never experience the gustatory delight of Aunt Bert’s rolls, I pray that their kids will develop a similarly sacred experience in their own time. And I’m also pretty sure that they’ll likewise join me in the unbroken ranks of ancestors who shake their heads at this music these kids listen to today.…

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

 - John F Kennedy, “Address in the Assembly Hall at Paulskirche” (1963)

  

The brutal truth of us and why we must confront it now.…

  

The only way to keep an entire group of sentient beings in an artificially fixed place, beneath all others and beneath their own talents, is with violence and terror, psychological and physical, to preempt resistance before it can be imagined. Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing. All that it needs from bystanders is their silent complicity in the evil committed on their behalf, though a caste system will protect, and perhaps even reward, those who deigned to join in the terror.

Jews in Nazi -controlled Europe, African-Americans in the antebellum and Jim Crow South, and Dalits in India were all at the mercy of people who would been fed a diet of contempt and hate for them for them, and had incentive to try to prove their superiority by joining in or acquiescing to cruelties against their fellow humans.

- Isabel Wilkerson, “Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means of Control,” Caste (2020)  

In her powerful, prescient and disturbing new book, Caste, Isabel Wilkerson notes that “Human history is rife with examples of inconceivable violence, and as Americans we like to think of our country as being far beyond the guillotines of medieval Europe or the reign of the Huns.” Yet, for most of this country’s history, institutionalized, racially-driven violence has been the norm rather than the exception … and our failure to accept, embrace and address this fact of history that continues to this day is evidencing itself in the undoing of our polity. The question on so many of our minds is whether this commitment to White Supremacy is greater than to our very democracy.

Of course, this historical amnesia isn’t merely accidental; it’s very purposeful, as it enables the dominant caste to absolve itself of a responsibility older than our country itself: to deal with the reality that along with statements of soaring values that are the envy of the world we must acknowledge that our system, our supposedly enlightened structure of participative self-government, is actually built on institutionalized inhumanity that continues to this very day. Among many such present reflections, how else can one explain the Electoral College, a racist relic that’s thwarted the will of the people twice in this century already?

I understand: if I were the beneficiary of unearned Privilege, soaked as it is in the blood of millions, I, too, would want to avoid its acknowledgment and address … but I’m not that fortunate, as I’m descended from the recipients of this extended cruelty. My roots remind me that my ancestors were owned and abused both for the amusement of their captors and to maintain the system of their own degradation, dehumanization and involuntary servitude. My inheritance is having to overcome all of these barriers – both visible and not, though undifferentiated in provable and proven power to constrain – that such a system created and now our slightly different system perpetuates.

So, I have to call out the realities of our history, not only to ensure that we don’t forget, but also to ensure that we choose to address them now, decades and even centuries too late.

The crimes of homicide, of rape, and of assault and battery were felonies in the slavery era as they are today in any civil society. They were seen then as wrong, immoral, reprehensible, and worthy of the severest punishment. But the country allowed most any atrocity to be inflicted on the black body. Thus twelve generations of African-Americans faced the ever-present danger of assault and battery or worse, every day of their lives during the quarter millennium of enslavement.

This casual disregard for black life and the deputizing of any citizen to take that life would become a harbinger of the low value accorded African-Americans in the police and vigilante shootings of unarmed black citizens that continued into the early decades of the twenty-first century.

Although the vast majority of our fellow citizens would prefer not to acknowledge it, America’s legacy is just as much about institutionalized inhumanity as it is about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We choose to ignore this damning fact because it’s at once profoundly wounding and unavoidably obligating. So we pretend that, by perhaps different means, ours isn’t a society in which African-Americans – and others of The Different – aren’t reminded of their place and often brutally remanded to it every day.

One enslaver remarked “that he was no better pleased than when he could hear … the sound of the driver’s lash among the toiling slaves,” for then (the historian Edward) Baptist wrote, “he knew his system was working.”

If you don’t see the vestiges of caste continuing to suppress The Other every day in our society, you’re not paying attention … on purpose.

It’s fashionable today, even (or especially?) in elite circles, to be historically amnesiac. Though it creates a toll of appreciable cognitive dissonance, truth be told, choosing not to remember is far easier than embracing the reality of who we were and, in appreciable part, still are. You can do that when you have Privilege.

But I’m sure that some of you will object and say, but what of African-Americans and others of The Different, what responsibility do they bear for understanding this history and addressing it? To this conveniently diversionary response, I offer two rebuttals:

First, asking the victims to address their own dispossession is yet another craven demonstration of the inhumanity to which they’ve been subject since time immemorial. Racism, especially in the structural form that powerful whites have created and perpetuated throughout this country’s history, is a white problem and therefore the primary responsibility of whites to address and eliminate. Yes, we can and should assist you in this endeavor, but don’t ever get it twisted that it’s our problem, not yours.

Further, I realize that such an approach is ahistorical: as Frederick Douglass noted long ago, power concedes nothing without demand. Therefore, it’s imperative that you whites realize, our role is to demand this of you … so consider this one of my many individual contributions to this collective demand.

Second, I agree that we should be both more aware and actively engaged in our own liberation, but it’s one of the more ingenious and craven aspects of this racist system that the education that we’re afforded purposely obscures this reality of historical and present subjugation. As he details exhaustively in his profound and incisive book Lies My Teacher Told Me, Prof. James W Loewen observes that the history books from which we’re taught not only avoid or give short shrift to this unseemly but nonetheless real aspect of our history, but they purposely diminish the myriad contributions of The Other throughout it.

There’s a reason that we were never taught about Africans and Phoenicians who sailed the world’s oceans long before Columbus, or that the latter’s true contribution to world history was the legacy of brutality and enslavement that’s afflicted the West since his ‘discovery’ of it.

By the way, how does one discover a land already populated by millions of Indigenous people?

Or why do we celebrate the Pilgrims at Plymouth more than the Virginia settlers who predated them by a dozen years? Could it be that: 1) the history of Jamestown is so problematic – you know, cannibalism and genocide being so taboo ‘n’ all – that we prefer to make up lies about the Plymouth settlement; and 2) the story of the Plymouth Rock and all of the other tales of heroism and community – like, say, the First Thanksgiving – are completely fabricated myths of our own making to help establish the greatest of these animating fables, American Exceptionalism?

Funny, we remember the Pilgrims as heroic – and, in fairness, for their bravery in setting out to make their way in a ‘new world’ they were (despite personal profit being the primary motive of most of those who sailed on the Mayflower) – but how much credit were we taught to give the Indigenous who sustained them? As Prof. Loewen notes, “Like other Europeans in America, the Pilgrims had no idea what to eat or how to raise or find food until American Indians showed them.” And how was this life-saving kindness repaid? Well, that, too, is an aspect of our history that’s been purposely whitewashed and largely forgotten.…

---

 

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because

they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)

 ---

Because examples like this are so numerous and dispiriting, I’ll move on while noting that such indoctrination is itself designed not only to inculcate a false sense of our own moral superiority in history but also to absolve the dominant case of the myriad and ubiquitous sins attached to its ascent and perpetuation to this very day.

And yet, as the consequences of our historical amnesia become ever more evident and costly, should we continue to sustain it? What is it that we fear so much as to avoid it, as we have, literally, for centuries? That the truth of how inhumane so much of our history has been will further rile The Dispossessed? No doubt that, to an extent, this is true … but we never seem to ask whether the cost of continuing to lie to ourselves is even greater.

I think it is.…

Ultimately, I think that James Baldwin had it right when he noted that not everything that is faced can be changed but that everything that is changed must be faced. In this spirit, I urge us to confront our too often ugly history so that we can make amends and move beyond it to create an America that truly lives up to and into its professed creeds.

Of course, the dwindling white majority would prefer that we not do this because of its inherent indictment of their complicity … and yet what do we really think will happen when, in just a quarter century’s time, our nation becomes ‘minority’ in the majority?

Do we truly believe that as People of Color and others of The Different assume evermore of the leadership roles in our society to which they’re entitled by their talent and fortitude we won’t begin to dispel the cardinal falsehood of so much of our history? Why would we wait? Could it be that we’re kicking this metaphorical can down the road to our children and grandchildren because we don’t have the courage to address it, as generation after generation of our forebears did, too?

I can only think that the level of challenge and pain associated with this address increases with every moment of delay … and what makes us think that our children and grandchildren will have more fortitude and evidence more bravery than us, especially given that we’ve deliberately falsely instructed them just as we were dishonestly indoctrinated years before? No, it’s time to lance the wound so that it can heal, which means that we can recover from and move beyond our too often unfortunate history.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the avoidance driven by fear: there’s so much that the vast majority of us don’t know about the reality of our past that our sudden awareness could lead to deep and abiding outrage … but delaying the inevitable won’t change this. And, truth be told, we, The Different, have long lived with the realities of our racist, sexist, heterosexist, religiocentric, xenophobic, classist, etc., white-dominated society. So, yes, when we learn the truth even more of us will be even more pissed off … but I believe that the greatest damage will be experienced by the dominant caste members whose self-image will be revealed to the built disproportionately on a (voluminous) pack of lies.

I hope I’m wrong, but my suspicion is that our avoidance of The Reckoning is less about the fear of The Dispossessed revolting than it is about the Privileged descending. As the old saying goes, you should really be nice to everyone on your ascent, because you'll see them again on the way back down.…

Accordingly, I assert, now is as good a time as any to confront the brutal truth of us and then begin the long and hard work of dealing with it, healing from it and then coming together to create a new and better America in which all of us – and, in truth, many of us for the first time – can share in our uniquely animating and re-imagined Dream. I truly do believe that we’re at an inflection point in our society, a veritable crossroads of history, and that our choice of direction will have profound impacts for years – and, actually, decades (if not centuries) – to come.

I’m reminded that more than six decades ago a relatively small band of brave souls began a similar journey that, though torturous, resulted in profoundly positive change for us all. Did the members of the Civil Rights Movement understand that they were securing not only their own freedom but that of our nation as a whole? Perhaps. But I’m clear that this is the opportunity before us now and hope that we, too, will evidence the courage and fortitude to remake our world in a far more just, equitable and inclusive – and truthful – way.…

 

When you believe in things

That you don't understand

Then you suffer

Superstition ain't the way 

- Stevie Wonder, Superstition (1972)

 

Summer Fools

 

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.

 - Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (1843)

 

One of my favorite songs is an obscure classic from the funk-jazz saxophonist Ronnie Laws entitled “Summer Fool.” It wasn’t a big hit in its day, but it’s always been special to me. Can’t say I associate it with a specific, particularly meaningful memory, but I’ve always been entranced and uplifted by its pumpin’, contrapuntal beat, the soulful sax, synthesizer and other solos and its lyrics, which, in Mr. Laws’ interpretation, have always spoken to me in a way that I just can’t explain fully rationally but can feel to the depth of my soul:

 

Songbird sing, sweet melody

Reminds me of the way it should be

Sing the song I wanna hear

Lets me know summer’s here

Sun is bright, feels so nice

Let’s have some, everything is alright

 

All day long, love’s in the air

Nature’s mood, make it so clear

Got to go, can’t wait to cruise

Tells me I’m a summer fool

 

The song has always made me feel alive and free, in tune with the effervescence of life and the universe’s endless possibilities.

So, perhaps it’s a bit surprising and/or paradoxical that it’s so on my mind at this moment, as autumn dawns along with its chill for which I’m not yet quite ready and amidst the insanity of our lives at the moment, constrained in association and imperiled by a continually spreading global pandemic and dismayed by the steady flow of eruptions from the seeming underbelly of our society that’re serially on display of late.

Seriously, how did it come to this, a place that feels the antithesis of Summer Fool?

I take no joy in the announcement that 45 and so many members of his entourage have contracted the coronavirus. I can’t get past the 7 million of us who’ve been infected and the almost 210,000 who’re now former fellow citizens as a result. These people, who abdicated their leadership responsibility to – and to protect – the rest of us, perhaps due to Karma, are now ensnared in a trap of their own craven making. Which isn’t a good thing for them or us, especially given the mendacity of those afflicted but still maintaining their grip on the levers of governmental and societal power. It’s perfectly ironically reflective of our time that we even have to wonder if this latest announcement is itself true/real, as so little of what they’ve shared to this point has been….

But I’m also angry, because it’s all so unnecessary: truly, it didn’t have to be….

Perhaps that’s why Summer Fool is so on my mind of late: I need the funky-fantastic feeling of joy and uplift that it always brings, as well as the sense of possibility to help me overcome this largely dark time.

And perhaps I also need something more from it: the dual reminder that summer is figurative and that the world is always full of possibility whether or not we choose to perceive it at any given moment. We can make summer – literally will it into being – if we so choose. So let’s do so.

Thinking of our aching and pained polity, it’s clear that we need to redefine our life in the public square, which invariably reflects the collective outward projection of a reassessment and revision of our interior world. We need to go retro: I’m convinced that our salvation is directly related to our ability to return to that southern sensibility with which I was inculcated in my youth: we treat each other well – each and every one of us – because we’re all God’s children (even, if, truth be told, at that time I was steeped in it, it was largely practiced on an intragroup basis).

Among other things, this requires a certain civility and restraint on all of our parts, which reflects a willingness to dialogue and hear each other out even – and perhaps especially – on the hard topics, ones that we’ve mostly spoken around or even largely failed to acknowledge over the years.

For example, we must admit that structural racism exists and work together to eradicate it. And we must admit that its class complement is also all too real and remediate this as well. And we have to deal with the sexism in our society – truth be told, our behavior reveals that we only respect women to a point – and begin to treat the slightly more than half the population as the fully and artfully human beings they truly are. Same goes with eliminating the heterosexism in our society, especially that driven by religions that exclude hatefully rather than invite lovingly; love is love, even if yours is different than someone else’s and certainly can never be the cause of its antithesis, hate. Speaking of religion, we must insist that its adherents’ behavior match their godly pretense; this will eliminate one of the most tragically ironic of our current realities, that so much evil is perpetrated in the name of the Divine. And….

When we can all feel the universe as one of endless possibility, then our individual and collective vibes will be far more affirming than they are today in our grossly and unsustainably inequitable society. When we can be free to be who we truly are and experience being celebrated for this glorious idiosyncrasy, then ours will clearly be a better world than this one in which we’ve celebrated our lesser angels and found this to lead us ever deeper into darkness and despair. To see and feel the light, we’ll have to choose to be it … especially when it’s hardest (to want) to do so, like, say, at this very moment in our collective history.

For if we don’t choose to seize this potential inflection point in our shared journey, what’s likely to become of us?

Very few among us can look ahead, project where we are into the reasonably near future and see a better world. No, what lies ahead of us is more needless pain and disunity, just like the needless suffering and death that the failure of national leadership has produced from COVID-19.

By contrast, as difficult as it may be – likely requiring almost superhuman forbearance as we learn to Dialogue Across Difference – envisioning a future in which we accept and embrace each other’s humanity offers the possibility for affirmation and fulfillment for us all. No, it won’t be easy to achieve – we’re human (and quite consistently fallible) after all – but it will be worth it: imagine when everyone can feel a sense of endless possibility in life, secure in the knowledge that he/she/they can become and be a Summer Fool or whatever else they want in life….

  

I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.

 

And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to humankind’s problems. And I’m going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn’t popular to talk about it in some circles today. And I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. [...] and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love. If you are seeking the highest good, I think you can find it through love. And the beautiful thing is that we aren’t moving wrong when we do it, because John was right, God is love. He who hates does not know God, but he who loves has the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality.

 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?”

 

Willful Ignorance and Its Unavoidable Impact: The Unraveling of the American Empire….

 

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

  – George Santayana, The Life of Reason:

The Phases of Human Progress, Vol. 1 (1905-1906) 

I’m tired: it was a really long week. And I’m also tired because it’s been a really long year … and, in truth, a really long three years. I’m supposed to be writing several business-focused pieces on important topics today, but I just can’t summon the energy … because I’m tired physically, emotionally and spiritually.…

And yet I am moved to write, as I continue to be dismayed by who we are revealing ourselves to be: the sneering, braying ignorance and arrogance on display so broadly throughout our polity is both troubling and, too many of us, surprising. But perhaps it shouldn’t be.

In keeping with the Best Practice that I discovered while leading my team at work (from Lu, et. al., “To Be More Creative, Schedule Your Breaks”), I’ve chosen to practice Disciplined Switching personally as well. The concept is pretty simple, if a bit antithetical to those of us who were converted to the concept of Flow a few decades ago: in order to stay fresh and to keep our minds from comfort zones that feel productive but have been proven by research to be decreasingly so, we’re well-advised to set consciously artificial but observed deadlines for our chosen activities and then to switch to another activity for a prescribed period of time. The research suggests that not only will we have greater mental acuity during our second activity but that when we return to the first (after a prescribed interval) the same will also be true.

So, instead of a single book, I’m actually reading three simultaneously and switching in a disciplined way between and among them:

The first is Isabel Wilkerson’s powerful and haunting new book Caste, which describes in harrowing detail the astonishing and distressing similarities of three systems of racially-/ethnically-based structural discrimination and disenfranchisement, those of race/structural racism here in America, of the Nazi Third Reich that patterned its murderous xenophobia on the American model and of the millennia-old, stratified system of impenetrable benefit and constriction in India. As it deconstructs the Eight Pillars of Caste, awful ‘eureka!’ moments begin to land with all their distressing and debilitating ferocity: we recognize these patterns in our social relations and gain a new appreciation for how they intertwine to oppress so many and advantage so few. It’s a must-read, but challengingly so: truly, it’s difficult but imperative for us to study how we’ve chosen repeatedly throughout our history as a species to harm ourselves, and often catastrophically.

The second is Robert P Jones’ White Too Long, a fascinating if similarly harrowing and challenging exploration of how American religion – especially that of the Protestant, evangelical variety – and White Supremacy have become and been dismayingly intertwined and powerfully punishing throughout our country’s history. It, too, is a hard read, but a required one for People of Faith: if we truly believe in a uniquely virtuous Divinity, then we have to face the damningly contrasting reality of what so many of us have done in His/Her/Its Name.…

The third, the latest entry into the rotation, is a purposely disruptive exploration by Prof. James W Loewen entitled Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. Convincingly argued, the short answer is that we were all fed a sanitized version of our country’s history, the consequences of which can be seen in the societal upheaval that we’re experiencing now. This, too, I consider required reading, both because it explores the realities of the myths that we were taught and because it helps us develop a more incisive and nuanced assessment of the present state of our polity (as well as, perhaps, some correctives that’ll enable us to go forward differently and better…).

What do all three of these books have in common other than being challenging reads? They remind us, implore us and demand of us, achingly so, to face the truth/reality of who we are and what we’ve done, as well as to explore and elucidate the enormous and incalculable costs of our historic failure to do so, both over time and in the present moment.

Here are just a few examples:

Do you realize that in constructing the evil that became the Third Reich, the Nazis actually studied American racism and specifically the legal apartheid known somewhat euphemistically as Jim Crow in order to construct their singularly immoral and inhumane regime? If you read Caste, you’ll learn this and a good deal more about our recurring historical tendency to structuralize the dehumanization of and discrimination against groups of our fellow human beings. 

Do you realize the extent to which ‘Christianity’ in both its theological and institutional forms has been used to suppress African-Americans and privilege whites? For example, did you know that (white) religious were some of the major proponents of America’s racist and exclusionary residential policies, and, in fact, were often named plaintiffs in lawsuits to prevent integration of communities throughout this country? Or that, to this very day, the official state song of Mississippi – “Go, Mississippi” – is based on a jingle from 1960s segregationist Gov. Ross Barnett’s campaigns, which were endorsed, propelled and backed financially and otherwise by the leadership of the most influential Southern Baptist and United Methodist churches in the state, and that, in this century alone, four separate efforts to replace this racist, religious relic have failed? If you read White Too Long, you’ll learn that so many concepts and events that seem familiar are actually far more sinister in nature than we’ve been led to believe largely because they’ve been cloaked in racist religion.

Do you realize that a century ago we had a rabid white supremacist president who segregated the federal government, welcomed racist propaganda into the White House and endorsed it broadly, engaged in unauthorized, interventionist foreign mini-wars (including fighting on the wrong, “white” side of the Russian Revolution) and was wildly and widely despised in his time though he’s been sanitized and transformed into a hero in our popular imagination as well as our children’s textbooks? If you read Lies My Teacher Told Me, you’ll learn this and so much more about the lies you were told about Woodrow Wilson and the other myths that you were trained to believe about our history. Suffice it to say that, if you do, it’ll be much easier to understand the studied commitment to arrogance and ignorance exhibited by so many of our fellow citizens and why so many are so completely enthralled by the increasingly mythical concept of American Exceptionalism that becomes ever more divorced from reality each day.

Here’s another little tidbit: what were you taught about Helen Keller? Chances are that it was the hero story of her overcoming being blind and deaf, which led to her being transformed into a safe but inspirational icon of perseverance in the face of adversity [which itself aligns nicely with the American myth of individualism]. This has been accomplished by focusing on the formative years of her life and ignoring the last six decades of it. As Prof. Loewen notes: 

The truth is that Helen Keller was a radical socialist. … Keller’s commitment to socialism stemmed from her experience as a disabled person and from her sympathy for others with handicaps. … Through research she learned that blindness was not distributed randomly throughout the population but was concentrated in the lower class. … Thus Keller learned how the social class system controls people’s opportunities in life, sometimes determining even whether they can see. … Keller … never wavered in her belief that our society needed radical change.

Funny, but that’s not the Helen Keller about whom I learned; what about you?

All of which brings to mind the enormous cost of our tendency toward historical amnesia and hagiography: to paraphrase the song, what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget or, often, to ‘misremember’ (i.e., to remember very differently than its reality). Which brings us to the 21^st century and the most immoral, inhumane and unqualified president we’ve had in quite some time, whose greatest legacy (other than hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID-19 deaths) will be the mainstreaming of unreality and bald-faced lies as the currency of our societal exchange.

What these three powerfully incisive books remind us is just how great the cost of such willful and willing blindness and ignorance can be and is. Simply put, our past failures to acknowledge the whole of our history and our consistent practice of whitewashing its uncomfortable parts has led us to a place where this latter practice is the rule rather than the exception and where we’re exhorted repeatedly to overlook what we can see plainly with our eyes and instead to believe something very different and routinely untrue.

Seriously, does any one of us truly believe that basing our lives, our collective/social relations and our engagement with the world in unreality and falsehood is a good idea?

If not, then how did we get to this place where we seem, collectively, to be on the verge of adopting such a practice permanently?

The answer, I believe, is in our failure to learn and deal honestly with our history, which is both destroying our present and imperiling our future.

So, what can we do to arrest this long-standing but pernicious practice (if not tradition)? Vote. But, even more than this, commit to the full and unyielding embrace of Truth in our lives both individually and collectively. Among other things, this will force us to challenge ourselves to assess whether our perspectives are based in reality or stem from the rosy lens of how we’d prefer that our lives and experiences have been and are. And it’ll force us to demand the same of those who would presume to lead us, as we owe it to ourselves and each other to enhance the likelihood of our collaboration and shared progress.

But make no mistake: if we choose to conceive of ourselves and believe that we are a peaceful people whose country just happens to have been at war for more than three-quarters of its existence; or that because our founding documents, laced though they were with the imprint of slavery, proclaim that we're all equal, there’s no structural racism/White Privilege or sexism or religiocentricity or heterosexism or xenophobia, etc., in our society; or that, even though two of the five times that the Electoral College has been invoked to decide the presidency have occurred this century, so many of us cling to the fiction that our individual votes don’t count; or that.…

Well, you get the picture: if we choose not to believe the truth, the likelihood is that we’ll further imperil our ability to craft a better future for ourselves and our successors.

And pardon me for being a touch cynical, but isn’t this what we Baby Boomers claimed that we’d do differently a half-century ago in our youth? You know, we assailed our parents for having sold out, but we, in our cock-sure righteousness, were going to change the world for the better, right?

Perhaps it’s time for us to admit our often abject failure at this aspiration and pass the baton to younger, less delusional generations. Although it’s by no means been universal, the young have had access to far more information than we had, so the majority of them have moved closer to the complex truth of who we are and how we’ve come to be.

But I do believe that we elders have a role to play: it’s incumbent upon us to acknowledge the reality of our failures and to share these insights – along with the learnings from our triumphs – with our successors. Apparently, they’re far more capable of accepting both the troubling and inspiring aspects of the legacy that we’re bequeathing them, so perhaps they’ll be able to help us evolve in constructive ways that might just allow us to reclaim the ideal of the American Dream and yet have it be reality-based for all for the first time.…

When you fight reality, you will lose every time. Once you accept the situation for what it truly is, not what you want it to be, you are then free to move forward.

– Jenni Young McGill

September 18th: A Day in Life and a Reminder of Its Blessings….

 here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

 - e. e. cummings, "[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]"

As Facebook reminded me yesterday morning, I have four friends born on September 18th. Like most days, initially, I reflexively prepared to move on to the next notification, but then something caught my eye and I paused to appreciate it: it was the day that four special people, each of whom has played a unique role in my life, were born and now that only three of them are still with us physically, I stopped to ponder a moment over the blessing that each has been and is. In this spirit, I’d like to share my reflections with you, in hopes both that they touch you in the present and, more importantly, motivate you to reflect on, appreciate and celebrate those in your life whom you hold or have held dear.…

I’ll start with Vinnie Wilmot, a college friend and fellow DJ whose moniker at the time was “Neon”: as I remember it, a sly reference to the reality that he’s one of the highest-yellow African-Americans you’ll ever meet. He was also one of those scary-smart people who wasn’t the most socially graceful but was uniquely capable of casually dropping a powerful observation or insight into a conversation and moving on as if nothing of consequence had occurred.

Honestly, I don’t know when the last time I’ve seen Vinnie is, but I suspect that it wasn’t this century, which means that it’s been quite a long time indeed. He’s a great example of why I’m so thankful for Facebook, despite its myriad flaws, because he and I reconnect through this medium on occasion and I’m reminded of the many, many times Neon would drop some knowledge on us or, even more often, a humorous observation, anecdote or joke that would keep us laughing for days. If memory serves, he’s in the DC area now and doing some sort of consulting or engineering or other endeavor where he’s using that powerful mind of his.…

Julie Devine is a college classmate of mine whom I came to know when she went by her maiden name, Friedli. I always thought of this as a variation of the word “friendly,” because that she surely was and is. In fact, she’s one of the most effervescent people I’ve ever known and, in her adulthood, has matured into one of the most compassionate and passionate as well. It’s funny how life works, but at college she met a high school friend of mine, one year our junior, and married him. The college sweethearts have been together for decades now and raised a family, several members of whom have attended our alma mater as well.

And there’s more to the story: that friend of mine whom Julie married is actually the younger brother of my high school classmate to whom I lost the election for the presidency of our student senate. It was a crushing blow at the time, compounded by the infuriating reality that I lost by a handful of votes but about ten of my classmates whom I considered friends had skipped school that day and missed the election: man, did that suck!

More representative of how funny-wonderful and strange life can be, a year later that younger brother ran to succeed his older one – who had, in fact, succeeded an even older one – and his opponent, now a Jesuit priest, asked me to give his nomination speech. There was a bit of a kerfuffle when word got out that I had agreed, to the point where the administrators in charge of the election actually censored my speech. But Tim went on to win and serve brilliantly in the role and then join Julie and me in Cambridge a year later … and the rest, as they say, is history: he and Julie met, they’ve been together ever since and had a wonderful life together and Tim has gone on to enjoy great success in his career as an attorney, including in its latest iteration focused on the public interest.

It’s funny how life works, but I’ve seen Tim and Julie just a few times in the past few decades, but, again, via the medium of Facebook, have come to know them even better as adults than I did when we were students together, and, even better, my esteem and admiration for them has grown even more so.

One of the most indelible memories of our last class reunion is reading Julie’s heartfelt, raw and amazingly honest meditation on her concern for our society and the role she felt compelled to play in addressing its challenges in our Class Report. As I read it, I couldn’t help but think that she couldn’t have found a better and more aligned life partner than Tim, which brings me joy to this day. I’m so happy that they found each other and that I’ve been blessed to know them individually and as a couple throughout this journey of our shared adult lives.…

The person whose birthday notice caught my eye and drew me in was none other than Jon Isham, a dear college friend who’s now a professor at Middlebury. Jon and I were cool but not especially close in college, though I shared one of my most memorable adventures with him back in the day. Since our time together, he’s gone on to craft an impressive and impactful career in academia, highlighted by his application of economic science to real world social issues and concerns. How do I know this since I haven’t seen him this century? Yep, Facebook.

In addition to his sterling and contributory career, Jon’s raised a family, shared a sabbatical year with them teaching in Africa and become an influential and socially aware and engaged pillar of the community in Vermont. But when I first got to know him, he was my club brother who lived in Central Square – which, at the time (long before it was gentrified), was considered a bit seedy – and commuted to campus via bicycle. And he always looked a little shaggy and, dare I say, ‘informal’ (read = scruffy), so I assumed that, like me, he was a working- or middle-class kid work-studying his way through our tony Ivy League college.

Wow: how very wrong I was, it turned out! Which has been a lesson that’s stayed with me ever since.

In reality, Jon is about as WASPy as one can be, the scion of a distinguished family from Newport, Rhode Island. I can only speculate as to their wealth, but what was most impressive is that it was so old that they’d reached the stage where rather than advertise it, they lived simply and humbly so as to seem without it.

But one weekend I was treated to a fabulous adventure: as part of its pledging process, our club decided to have a series of weekend road trips, including two in which I participated, one to New York City and one to Newport. The latter would not only reveal a completely contrasting picture of the one I had of Jon to that time, but it proved so indelible that I’ve never forgotten its lesson: never, ever judge a book by its cover or a person by his or her appearance. Here’s why:

We piled into somebody’s car – or possibly Frank Foster’s dad’s customized, carpeted and tricked out ‘n’ tacky Econoline van (you know, just like the one you’d expect every uber wealthy, patrician Texan to have) – and proceeded on the less than two-hour jaunt to Newport. We would be staying at Jon’s house, which, given how modestly he lived, struck me as a perfect venue for a bunch of rowdy college bros and their aspiring associates. As we arrived in town, we took a left turn onto Ayrault Street. Sitting in the front passenger seat, I gazed ahead and saw one of those beautiful mansions at the end of the street, the kind that make you look twice and think to yourself “Wow, whoever lives there must be rich as hell!” And then Jon instructed us to pull into the driveway!

How incredible was his family abode? Let’s just say that it’s the only home in which I’ve been – and Lord knows I’ve been to many incredible homes as well as lived in a few myself – that featured a central five-story spiral staircase with a glass skylight at the top that we let in sunlight so radiant that the entire place glowed warmly. In a word, the Isham abode named, appropriately, Ayrault House, was splendiferous! In fact, the only memory I have of it now, in addition to first seeing it positioned strategically and majestically at the end of its eponymous street, is that incredible spiral staircase which, for a poor boy on work-study and financial aid from inner-city Detroit became my inspiration: someday, I promised myself, I would live in such an incredible mansion.

That Jon was embarrassed to be found out was one of my favorite memories of the trip: no, he wasn’t some regular kid workin’ his way through college, he was a silver spoon scion too down to earth to ever let anyone know … until he hosted that pledging party, that is. Thereafter, I could kid him legitimately, because it turns out that he was to the manor born but playing a working-class kid on the make, while I actually was one.

What I didn’t realize at the time was just how intellectually aligned Jon and I were. Sure, we had many pleasant conversations about things somewhat meaningful to twentysomethings as well as about trivial ones, but we never really discussed our shared intellectual and academic interests. It’s perhaps ironic that Jon took more African-American history courses in college than I did, but, I’m happy to report as an adult that he, too, is a passionate student of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among other shared heroes, and is one of the most socially concerned and influential of my friends.

Not surprisingly, my appreciation for Jon has grown greatly in recent years, but, so, too, has a sense of regret: man, what a missed opportunity it was for us not to connect on our shared academic and intellectual passions back when we had hours of free time to indulge them! We chat occasionally over Facebook (Messenger) now and I find myself invariably Liking or otherwise responding to his posts, but I’m ever mindful of what could’ve been: imagine how much closer we could have been and could be as friends had we fully appreciated our shared interests and passions before the world and our adult lives took us on such widely divergent paths. Simply put, Jon’s among a select group of college friends who remind me just how blessed I was to come of age physically, emotionally and intellectually in such a fertile environment with such incredible and incredibly gifted people. I’m thankful for them every day, even though the gift of them dates to a century and a decade long past.…

The fourth and final of my friends for whom September 18^th was his birthday is the hardest to write about because, even a decade later, his passing still hurts. He was a young man of such promise who didn’t live to fulfill it fully; indeed, a tragic loss for us all.

Dominic Morabito was on my leadership team and served as our in-house tech guru. Simply put, Dom had a gift: I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed to be able to figure out just about anything having to do with technology eventually, so I both admired him as a young professional and felt undeservedly fortunate to have such an incredibly talented young man on my team.

Don’t get me wrong, Dom wasn’t an angel: as savants are wont to do, he had to learn to overcome his innate impatience with those not technologically inclined either from a skill or will standpoint. Suffice it to say that I had to intervene more than a few times with several of my most senior and influential financial advisor colleagues whom he had managed to anger with his precociousness. Yep, one of Dom’s “developmental opportunities” was to develop the ability to serve others far less gifted as well as less inclined to learn, at least about his domain of mastery. After several quite candid and even pointed conversations, he began to take my guidance to heart and thereafter was a joy to behold: sharing his gifts so freely but more effectively was an inspiration to us all.

Like most tech geeks, truth be told, Dom was a bit socially awkward. Once you got to know him, you couldn’t help but love him … but he wasn’t the easiest person to get to know, at least initially. In other words, he was an older version of my eldest son, who at the time was entering his double-digit years with incredible gifts with respect to technology, music and automotive pursuits but was not exactly particularly socially adept. He and Dom hit it off immediately, and I made an effort to include Junior in as many opportunities to hang out with Dom as I could. On occasion, I would bring my son to conferences that I sponsored so that he could hang out with Dominic and help him run the tech infrastructure that animated the event. They were both in their glory.

So when Dominic passed away a few years later after some struggles with depression, it devastated both of us and all who knew and loved him. To this day, I think back to the last conversation I had with him the week before he died in which he expressed pride in having mentored a family member successfully to make positive choices in his young life. He was really looking forward to being this young man’s older brother by proxy, a role that I hoped he’d also play in my son’s life as well. But it was not to be.…

A few years before I retired and left the company, one of my last adventures was to treat my wonderfully diverse, extremely hard-working and supremely successful team to a half-day paintball extravaganza. Even those of us who’d never indulged in this pursuit previously, or had any awareness of the huge subculture associated with it, had a blast. And I learned something about my protégé on that day: Dom was a paintballer, and a highly skilled one at that. Though we switched up the teams several times, I had the opportunity to benefit from his exceptional skill more often, thankfully, than I was subjected to it.

Someone took a picture of the two of us, mid-stroll, reviewing our learnings from the last session and plotting our strategy for the next. It’s one of my most treasured memories of him and every year when it pops up in my Facebook feed, I smile broadly and then begin to cry. I miss my friend and protégé dearly and am so saddened for all of us who knew and loved him and for the world that he didn’t live to manifest his beauty and brilliance fully. He deserved that, as I hope, did we.

But my most indelible memory of Dominic is a private one: he called and asked if we could meet, just the two of us, because he wanted to seek my guidance. It turns out that after the tragedy of 9/11, he’d been searching for a way to be of service and to help heal the wound that we all felt, lingering so long as it did after that fateful day. He had considered pausing his career and joining the military, but instead decided to become a volunteer paramedic.

In order to do this, however, he needed a favor from me: his training would interfere with his regular work schedule and he needed me to approve a modified one so that he could pursue both of his service passions. I look back and laugh a little about his discomfort asking me: he was truly nervous that I might say no. I laugh because there was never any chance of a negative response given that his choice filled me with such pride that I was honored to be able to grant his wish.

He went on to serve for several years with distinction before he met his own untimely end. Truth be told, I don’t know that any of us who knew and loved him have fully recovered since….

So on September 18th each year, I thank God for the blessing of Vinnie and Julie and Jon in my life and shed several tears for dearly departed Dominic. Collectively, they represent the wonder and wounds of life: beautiful people who’re blessings but also gifts whose term is unknown, as is our own.

Yesterday, I cried a little more than usual as I realized that Dom’s been gone for a decade now, though I’m also heartened by the continuing and ever-increasing realization how great a blessing he was in my life. So I carry his spirit forward with me and remind myself to slow down occasionally and revel in the continuing gift of his fellow Virgos, a diverse and wonderful bunch they are.

Each of them remains forever in my heart and, I hope, in yours as well, though for you they’ll have different names and have gifted you with different memories and moments of meaning. Ah, youth: that time of life when we’re bestowed with so many blessings and yet too often insufficiently mature to appreciate them fully.

While I can’t go back and change the past, I can be sure that I carry these cherished souls with me now and into the future with an ever greater appreciation for who they were and are as unique souls and beautiful human beings as well as for the profound sense of gratitude that they’ve engendered by being such blessings in this, my one and only life.…

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot

And days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear

For auld lang syne

We'll take a cup o' kindness yet

For days of auld lang syne

- Robert Burns (Traditional, 1788)