John Swinburn

Two dictionaries in my house define courage as follows:

1. the attitude or response of facing and dealing with anything recognized as dangerous, difficult, or painful, instead of withdrawing from it; the quality of being fearless or brave; valor; pluck
2. the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear

I choose to use my own modified definition of courage, marrying parts of both dictionary definitions and adding a condition:

1. the attitude, or quality of mind or spirit, that enables one to face and respond to difficulty, danger, or pain, in spite of one’s fear

In my view, acting fearlessly is not acting courageously. Courage, in my view, requires the conscious decision to behave as if one were fearless in the face of an environment in which the consequences of one’s behavior are likely to bring about difficulty, danger, or pain and, therefore, naturally instill fear.  Yet even my modified definition fails to get to the heart of what I believe courage entails. Courage goes beyond overcoming fear. It involves overcoming the odds, as well. Courage allows one to behave in a way counter to one’s personal best interests in situations or environments in which the likelihood of encountering difficulty, danger, or pain are significantly higher than not encountering those condition. Courage enables behavior that has a better chance of a negative than a positive outcome for the person exhibiting courage.

But there is another side to it; the person exhibiting courage does so in order to increase the chances of a positive outcome for someone or something else. Dashing in front of an oncoming car just to see if one can do it does not exhibit courage; dashing in front of an oncoming car to pull a person out of its path does.

It gets more complex, though, when one’s action or inaction involves multiple ‘others.’ For example, dashing in front of a moving car to save a child may be noble, but if the consequences might be not only in the actor’s death but his family’s anguish, is courage the right word? It takes courage to put oneself in a situation in which one risks death by saving a stranger, but is courage effectively annulled by the potential to cause lifelong grief to a loved one? The action might be viewed as courageous by some, but others might view it as a choice to assign greater value to strangers than to family.

I have no answers. Only questions.

The remnants of something once beautiful. The residue of time, evidence of its harsh treatment of apathy and impudence.

We cannot realistically aspire to lofty ideals if we are unwilling to invest the hard work greatness requires.

Changing the world requires changing, first, ourselves. And that necessity is unreachable when one finally, in one’s later years, realizes transformational change can be successfully accomplished only in youth.

But youth is a period in which change is natural, gradual, almost imperceptible. Radical change, mind-altering change, requires the experience unavailable to youth.

That’s the paradox.

Reading some of my own writing in the evening gives me a brief respite from the chaos. The turbulence of the past eighteen months continues to twist my gut and make my neck and shoulders ache as if acidic poison fills the spaces between muscle cells. But I can escape with my own words. For example, I read a piece I wrote just over a year ago, near the end of September,  in which I invited readers (and myself) to ponder on the life experience of an ingredient in a recipe. More specifically, I suggested pondering on the experience of an ingredient that moved of its own volition. I recommended a shrimp. Reading that piece took away the anxiety that dogs me most days, thrusting me into a different vortex of turbulence.

That different vortex of turbulence is the one I’ve found fascinating my entire life: the nature of existence and experience. And I’ve found that certain things that have meaning to me can change my mood or my belief in the likelihood of an event occurring. Talismans. You know, like a rabbit’s foot. But in my case, it’s my pocket knife. Not just any pocket knife; only the one that reminds me of the one my father carried. I’ve written about that before, haven’t I? No need to bore my reader nor myself with another recollection. But my memory of my talisman makes me wonder: do other people (people like me who do typically believe only in the real world) assign meaning and power of some sort to inanimate objects? I bet I’m not alone. I bet I’m not alone in my deep embarrassment at admitting that fact, either.

Last night, when I wrote the temptation and promise I never fulfilled (I can be an absolute asshole, and I know it), I expected I’d be able to get over my juvenile attitudes for that post. But, apparently, I haven’t. So I’ll end this diatribe by saying something I really mean, with all my heart and soul and every fiber of my being:

I want nothing more in the world than for people to be compassionate and to act with compassion. Literally, that’s my final wish. That goodness will somehow flow over us like a wave and we will be compassionate and understanding and tolerant of every person, regardless of belief, experience, characteristic, or plan.

With this knife I hold so dear, I pledge myself to trying to live up to my expectations of myself. This is so damn hard. My final Facebook post may have been yesterday. And my final blog post may be today. We can never know, can we? Regardless, may we all dwell in compassion and peace. I care about what we’ve done to ourselves. I hope we can find the cure. And, by the way, I love you. I will continue to write what I think and feel. It’s the only way I can stop myself from using that treasured knife to slit someone’s throat, maybe my own.

Last night, I suspended my Facebook account, perhaps for the final time. Though I’ve ‘threatened’ to get off Facebook for quite some time, and have taken plenty of breaks, it feels different now. I’ve spent the last few days glued to the television and news feeds on Facebook, only to find more and more and more vitriol and venom and loathing and hate. And, on occasion, I was part of it. And I despise that I’ve allowed myself to become accustomed to that. Though it bothers me, deeply, I’ve grown accustomed to it. It has become part of the social threads that weave the fabric that encircles me, defining my shape; and I do not like the cloth that drapes my brain, telling the ugly story of who I am. I need time and space and distance to help me explore my own depths; or my own shallows. I need to breathe in purified air and listen to voices of humanists and philosophers and gentle souls who might guide me to a place of peace.

The problem of finding peace is this: the search for peace requires intellect. Intellect seems to have become a target for the scorn of people who neither have intellect nor any interest in acquiring it. And there it is again; even in my search for solace and peace, I am able to heap indignities on people who may simply not have the same capacity to understand as do I. Or, perhaps, maybe they have the capacity and it is I, instead, who lack the capacity for understanding their plight and their motives and their reasons to behave in ways I find appalling and oppressive.

In my view, if there is anything of value in religion it is this: religion (at its best) articulates goodness and defines behaviors that express goodness. The underlying stories that suggest that decency arises from one ore more deities matter far less than the expression of and the utterance of what constitutes, and defines the value of, decency.  Again, in my view, the far more crucial and fundamental message of religion is the requisite behaviors that constitute humanity, rather than the beliefs that predicate religion. When I hear evangelical preachers suggesting that the literal interpretation of the Bible is the only path to salvation, I feel a strong inclination to euthanize them. Not because I think they are bad people, but because I think they are grooming others to be bad people. I know that’s a nasty thought; but I’m trying to be honest here. And I understand, too, that my words across paragraphs argue against the precepts presented in others. I acknowledge that dichotomy of my thought processes. I wish I knew. I think I do. But I don’t.

Here, in a nutshell, are my beliefs about society and our responsibilities for humanity. You need not read them now; you have important things to do like feed yourself and clean yourself and sleep and walk miles and miles and miles into the woods. These beliefs might take you (and me, for that matter) years to comprehend. And comprehension may never come. But here goes:

Okay, I’ll pause to replay an edited post of one I made on another of my blogs years ago:

I suppose it’s possible that we’re all living lives of mass hysteria. Nothing is real. It’s all imagined. The daily drudgery, the surprise birthday parties, the unexpected attraction to happily married women who return the favor. It’s all fantasy, hiding the reality buried deep under the dry, gritty sand.

I listened tonight to “Take This Waltz,” a Leonard Cohen classic, and I wonder why it seems true and final.

Take this waltz, take this waltz, it’s yours now, it’s all that there is.
With its very own breath of brandy and death, dragging its tail in the sea.
My mouth on the dew of your thighs.
I yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross.

The thing, the unexpected yet utterly unsurprising thing is that it’s all fantasy. It’s all artificial. It’s all built from plastic made especially to assuage the bewilderment of the ones among us who question the legitimacy of the corporate elite. We are products of our imaginations, either smooth and elegant or crusty and brittle, inelegant remnants of people who never should have been.

But here we are, back at the beginning. I am off Facebook for at least awhile to try to recapture whatever might be left of my sanity and my decency. The vitriol on Facebook makes me want to euthanize half the population (plus 50%), so following my Facebook friends is dangerously unhealthy.

Forgive this manic-depressive post; that’s who I am, dear reader. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the ugly beast beneath my geezer face. And long hair. And earring. Am I attempting to regain a youth I do not recall? That’s a question for another lifetime. Or maybe later in this one.

A man I never met, but saw perform once, has died. Leonard Cohen, the man whose poetry and music molded me like no other, is dead. Believe me, I do not worship celebrities; I scoff at hearing of people who cry or otherwise emote over the death of movie stars and the like. But tonight, on hearing of Leonard Cohen’s death, I cried. I wept. My wife tried to console me, but I could only continue weeping, wishing I had been his friend.

I wish I could have spoken with him about life and love and death and remembrance and disease and hatred and acceptance and a thousand other topics. When I listened to his music or read his poetry or prose, I felt like the man understood me like no one ever has. I felt like I lived through his words. My emotions were practice for the way he described them with his words. He was a genius, a man who understood emotion better than anyone understands language or art or mathematics.

Tonight, especially tonight, I am grieving for the loss of a man I will always consider the mentor and guide I never met. Leonard Cohen, your life meant so very much. It meant more to me than you, or anyone, will ever know. I survived thoughts of suicide because of you, my friend. Your words were never dark to me. They were light in the form of love.