paulmuses

I was once a 6th grade student. And then I became a 6th grade teacher. I learned something about freedom from each experience.

The Decorah City council passed Ordinance 1257 on Friday, August 21, 2020. The ordinance began with 17 WHEREAS’ listing a variety of justifications that lead to a NOW, THEREFORE, followed by these words: “All persons present within the city of Decorah shall wear a face covering that covers their nose and mouth when inside a business building or public space…”

When I was a kid, I would occasionally day dream about how great it would be to live alone on a deserted island. That’s before I saw Walt Disney’s 1960 movie Swiss Family Robinson after which I still wanted to live by myself, but worried about pirates messing up my island.

THE STUDENT

I remember the first time I had that fantasy. It was in 6th grade and my teacher was Sister Mary Robert Cecile. Sister demanded detailed work. She made us put JMJ – Jesus, Mary & Joseph, – at the top of every homework assignment page. No JMJ there would be the words “do it again, Paul.” Two pages of homework every night, with proper headings, and the JMJ.

Beaten down with days of “do this” and “do that” something must have happened on the last day of 6th grade because Sister kept me after school. I hear that Sacred Heart School in Davenport is no longer there, replaced by a parking lot. But I am still standing at the window in the 6th grade classroom on the second floor alone with Sister Robert Cecile watching Bus #2 slowly move through the playground not to return until August.

I thought “Mom, dad and Sister Robert Cecile will never stop telling me what to do.” So they won’t be on my pirate-free island and I will be able to drink as much orange Hi-C as I want, never, ever have to eat peas, and no homework. My biggest problem was other people. If I could get rid of other people, I would be free.

Mom, dad, and Sister Robert Cecile are dead. But there are still plenty of people telling me what to do, including the Decorah City Council. Instead of Sister Robert Cecile telling me to put “JMJ” on the top of my homework, the Decorah City Council demands that I wear a mask. If freedom means “being able to act without constraints,” I am less free today than I was on Thursday, August 20, the day before the mask ordinance.

The ‘6th grade kid part of me’ still resents any demand made upon me by other people. Its bad enough when family and friends limit my options but when it is government coercing me to pay taxes or my bank requiring a minimal number of checking account transactions, the deserted island image creeps back into my consciousness. But the adult part of me who spend 46 years in front of classrooms now shoulders aside that 6th grade kid.

THE TEACHER

My first classroom was a 6th grade class in 1972 at St. John’s Elementary School in Burlington, Iowa. I started on December 1 and replacing a teacher driven into early retirement by a teeming class of 40 students. The principal who hired me was looking for someone to bring order to this class. I am guessing she did not talk to Sister Robert Cecile.

Up to that point in my life, I had never really thought about order or even given much consideration to how a group of individuals is molded into a functioning community. I had been a part of groups all my life – family, parish, neighborhood gangs, Cub Scouts, and 6th grade – but only from the perspective of me, the individual. Now that I was in charge of one of these groups, another 6th grade, I had to think hard about how to make this group work. I faced Steve, especially Steve D., but also Greg, Beth and Kathy none of whom wanted to be told what to do.

I quit every night during that long first year. Steve D. especially drove me crazy. Not only did he do whatever he wanted during school, after school from across the street he would give me the finger. The game changer was a conversation I had after school one Friday with Sister Mary Ellen Schulte who taught Math and controlled the classroom across from mine. “How do you do it,” I asked? “No secret,” she said. “You have to show them that you love them and then you have to firmly tell them what they can and cannot do. And by firmly I mean you must start out hard and then you can loosen up. You cannot go the other direction.”

I put Sister Helen’s ideas into action over the semester and slowly but surely my 40 students began to become a community of learners. It was not easy but I began to get through even to Steve D. I took no crap from him but he knew I liked him. I saw more than a little of me in Steve D.

I began to develop a teaching philosophy that emphasized firmness, clarity, and compassion. I wanted students to know exactly what I expected – firmness and clarity worked in tandem to establish an orderly learning environment – and that I cared about them as individuals, the work of compassion.

MY TWO 6TH GRADES

I imagine being back in my 6th grade classroom on that last day of class. I look at that little boy and understand the island fantasy built upon a genuine yearning to decide what is best for me. But then I turn my gaze to Sister Mary Robert Cecile, erasing the blackboard and putting her desk in order. She knew Paul’s freedom to do what he wanted limits not only the freedom of others but also his own future freedom.

I see the Decorah Mask Mandate ordinance as a civic version of Sister Robert Cecile or me explaining to our 6th grade classes why members of the class have to act in a certain way for the benefit of others in the class and for their own benefit.

None of us want to wear a mask. None of us want government or a private business to tell is we have to wear a mask. But there are members of our Decorah, Iowa and American communities dying of COVID.

Death ends life on earth and thus is the ultimate unfreedom.

And other frustrations life throws at us.

In this blog, I will tell you two stories and describe how stoicism has helped me manage life’s frustrations. I believe it can help you, and Ginger.

GINGER”S STORY

“I alternated between feeling angry, sad, and numb during the experience, and also felt trapped, because this was a potential identity theft issue and I felt powerless to get it resolved.” These are the words of my friend Ginger who was put on hold three different times over two days for a total of about two hours. Thankfully, the matter was eventually resolved but, says Ginger, “it took an emotional toll on me.”

“Please be advised that we are experiencing higher than normal calls. We apologize for the delay.” Who among us has not heard a version of this from some company that has taken our money for some service that is not, well, working out too well.

We all have frustration stories that arise from “unresolved problems.” My frustration story started with a letter I received eight years ago from from America’s Internal Revenue Service.

PAUL’S STORY

It was an innocent enough looking envelop, not thick, that contained one page. As I started to read, my eyes locked into the number, 25,000, and the words “you owe $25,000.” “How could this be,” I thought? Almost in a trance, I found my recent tax returns, and stomped out to the car, with one thought, “to go see my H & R Block & Bank of the West advisers ” a few blocks west on Decorah’s Water Street.

Backing out of the garage, I paid no attention to whether there was a car traveling down Williams Avenue. Fortunately, there wasn’t and so I proceeded half a block to Water Street. Stopping briefly, I lurched the car into the street narrowly missing cars in each lane. I remember the image of Charlton Heston playing Moses in the Ten Commandments parting the Red Sea. I was Heston/Moses traveling down Water Street with cars and people parting to let me get to my destination.

My Bank of the West adviser spotted a two decimal mistake in the tax audit of savings we had used to pay for our son’s college education. H & R Block sent this information to the IRS and settled the matter. However, my trance-like response to this frustration bothered me. From the moment I left the house that day, especially while I was in my car, a 3000 pound lethal weapon, there was no separation between my anxiety and me. I thought “there has got to be a better way to manage the frustrations of life.”

STOICISM AS A SOLUTION TO LIFE’S FRUSTRATIONS

The Stoic philosopher, according to Marcus Aurelius, practices to “become an athlete in the greatest of all contests – the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.” The IRS letter had overwhelmed me. Surely, worse things will happen. How will I handle them? Three insights from Stoicism have helped me manage frustrations. I believe they can also help Ginger and you.

Learn to recognize one’s automatic thoughts

When things happen, most of us immediately begin to tell ourselves stories about what has happened. The first story I told myself as I read the IRS letter was “how can this be happening to me?” With that thought came an emotional surge, that sent me out the door, into the car, and my Moses-inspired trance. Through practice I have learned to judge those thoughts with the intent of separating myself from what Stoics call “faulty judgments” and “irrational impulses.”

How do I do this? Three mental devices work for me. First, whenever something frustrating occurs, I pause knowing the first thoughts and feelings may not be helpful. Second, I imagine there is a part of me doing the ‘pause’ and observing my thoughts and emotions. Three, I recall the IRS/car/Moses incident from this observer point of view that tells me the place I do not want to be. These three devices work to give me the distance to decide what to do next and make it less likely I will make a “faulty judgment” or act on an “irrational impulse.” In my mind I replace Charlton Heston’s Moses with Ben Kingsley’s Ghandi.

Learn to distinguish between events we can and cannot control

Ginger had to talk with someone from her insurance company; she had to dry her clothes. The IRS’ $25,000 decision, mistaken or not, was beyond my control until I reasoned, not emoted, a solution. The Serenity Prayer is a popularized version of learning to distinguish events we can and events we cannot control.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

courage to change the things I can, 

and wisdom to know the difference.

Any day now I will hear about whether my application for another Fulbright award to teach in Romania fall 2021 has made it over the first hurdle. I remind myself daily this decision is beyond my control. These reminders do not immunize me from the disappointment or sadness that will come with a no. These are normal negative feelings and stoicism is no antidote against them. However, reflecting on how I did the best job I could regarding the application helps me at the same time accept that the decision at this point is outside my control.

Learn to anticipate the worst.

Two years before I received the $25,000 IRA letter, I took out a $75,000 line of credit to pay for an addition to my house. Three years before I paid cash for a new car. What’s the point? I am solidly in the American middle class and learned to save from my parents. Concurrent with the “faulty reasoning” and “irrational impulses” after the first reading of the IRA letter was a feeling of panic prompted by the thought “I do not have $25,000.” Could I borrow the $25,000 if necessary? Of course, just as I had borrowed $75,000.

The stoic way encourages us to “mentally rehearse in the face of anticipated adversity.” This means what life throws at us will never surprise us. When Ginger told me about her hold adventures, I gently suggested the next time she called her insurance company she mentally prepare by assuming the worst, an hour or more on hold, put her phone on speaker, and do something else. Yesterday, to prepare for the email from Fulbright that will come any day, I wrote down in my journal the words “We regret to inform you…” And imagined the experience of reading those lines. Interestingly, and as I played out the scenario of not getting the Fulbright, my mind naturally sought out the advantages of that bad news, pointing me to other paths.

The ultimate goal of stoicism, according to Robertson, is to develop a high frustration tolerance, “an ability to accept the fact when things do not go as we desired.” Many mistakenly believe stoicism makes people passive or indifferent to what goes wrong in life. That is not my experience. Stoicism helps me manage my reactions to what goes wrong. Sometimes that leads me to ask what can I do better to reduce the likelihood of this bad outcome. Other times it directs me to accept what I cannot change.

Ironically, stoicism helps me feel more in control of myself, even as it teaches that I have little control over so much that happens. Control what I can and let the rest go.

*I have taken the material on stoicism, including quotes, from Donald Robertson’s The philosophy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Stoic Philosophy as rational and cognitive psychotherapy. An easier and cheaper read is Robertson’s Stoicism and the Art of Happiness: Practical Wisdom for Everyday life. Years ago the writings of James Stockdale introduced me to stoicism. Most memorable is Courage Under Fire, about his experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and how stoicism helped him survive.

1982

“Life’s not fair.”
That’s what I thought in late spring 1982. It was a Friday, after lunch, and I was exiting an elevator on the 16th floor of Patterson Office Tower at the University of Kentucky, when I ran into Lee Sigelman, Department Chair of Political Science.

Lee told me the department had just decided to limit financial aid to PH.D. program graduate students to three years. I was finishing up my third year at Kentucky after arriving in Lexington in 1979 with an MA from Iowa State. I had completed all the course work, had passed the qualifying exams, and was one year into a dissertation that would take another year to complete.  

Earlier on Friday, I had turned down a phone interview for a three-year position at Illinois State University thinking I could stay at Kentucky to finish the dissertation. The Department’s policy up to that point had been to find money for an additional year for graduate students making steady progress. When Lee told me about the new policy, I thought “that’s not fair.”

I went back to my little graduate student cubicle and called Sherry, the Illinois State Political Science Department’s PA, to see if we could re-schedule the interview. Sherry Stiegerwald, who would become a good friend over the three years I would spend in Bloomington/Normal, Illinois, chuckled, said “yes” and so later that afternoon I had the interview and the following Monday would accept a job offer.  I would learn a few months later that Sherry’s ‘chuckle’ came from her knowing just how desperate the Department Head Hibbert Roberts was to fill this position this late in the school year.

2020

I think of all the people I would not know had Lee and I not talked outside that elevator door on that Friday afternoon in 1982. An ‘unfair policy’ set in place a chain of people, places, things, and experiences that have brought me to this chair, typing these words, on this MacBook, sitting next to that chair Rebecca will be sitting in when she gets up around 7AM. Looking back from 2020 is so different from looking forward in 1982.

It is easy to think of life in categories. “Life is unfair” is one of the ways we label something that captures a bit of the truth in the moment. But it is only part of the truth, even in the moment. Looking back to that “unfair” moment in the late spring of 1982, its momentary truth is overwhelmed by the people, places, and things I would not have experienced were I to have stayed at Kentucky for another year.

Yesterday

Rebecca and I power-walked through Decorah’s Palisades Park. Two older humans swinging their arms up and down the winding road through Palisades wanting to finish up in time to hear Jon Lund, Director of Luther College’s Center for Global Learning, Zoom talk on “Twenty Years of International Students at Luther.” Back at 409 East Water Street with one minute to spare, Paul opened up his computer only to discover Jon’s talk is next week. “LIFE IS NOT FAIR,” darted across my mind.

FOLLOWED BY:

LIFE IS; THAT IS WHAT MATTERS.

AND

LIFE IS ONLY UNFAIR WHEN IT IS OVER

How our memories help us today.

THE PAST: THREE MEMORIES THAT LINGER

A Monday morning in 3rd grade. He walks in the door of Sacred Heart grade school and down one flight of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs and just ahead is the girl’s bathroom. That’s scary enough to him. To the left and down another flight of stairs is the gym that doubles as a lunchroom. Lunch, can he make it to lunch? Today his 3rd grade class will practice the cursive L, both lower and upper case. All weekend he has worried that he will not be up to writing the cursive L.

The kitchen table in 6th grade. He is sitting at the table with the geography book open. “Who, what, where, when, why and so what?” is the assignment. His complexion is yellowish as he has been home with Hepatitis for a week. English, math, and religion books cover the rest of the table. But it is the Geography assignments that overwhelm him. All those W’s. His mother stands behind him yelling “how stupid are you?”

A first date, at 16. The date started pretty well. He pinned the corsage to Sharon’s fishnet green dress. The fishnet part threw him a bit but got it attached in the ‘right’ place, without sticking here. But on the way to Davenport Assumption’s 1966 homecoming dance in his parent’s car, he heard a pop followed by a rumble from the back right end of the car. He had never changed a flat tire and had no idea what to do. He walked to the closest house and asked for help and 10 minutes later they were on their way.

On the way home, at the corner of Davenport’s Locust and Brady Streets, they stop for the light. Tom Jones’ Green Green Grass of Home is playing on the radio. He looks over at Sharon sitting about two feet away, in that green fishnet dress, with the corsage still hanging-in there, and thinks “I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I AM DOING.”

THE CONTEXTS

I started Kindergarten at 4 and my mom always said I was not ready and she wished they had waited a year. Throughout elementary and high school especially, I remember feeling overwhelmed by anything new, like learning cursive L’s.

The kitchen story, so much to add that explains my mother’s frustration. I was the oldest of three boys and my dad was away a lot on business. He is not part of my kitchen memory and so I assume he was out of town that night leaving Mom home-alone with 11 year old Paul, 9 year old Peter, and 4 year old Pat. Other memories from 6th grade – parent trips to talk to my teacher, Sister Robert Cecile, multiple trips to the cloakroom for punishment of one thing or another, and being kept after school on the last day of class – suggest I was not an easy kid. Most important, years later I heard my mother, after one of her own mistakes, mutter to herself, “don’t be so stupid.”

Sharon was the daughter of my first boss who owned a Baskin Robbins franchise in Bettendorf, Iowa. We worked together and that is how we got to know each other. A few months after the first date, Sharon called me from work and asked if I could take her home as her parents were out and she could not reach them. It was late at night and she did not want to walk the mile to her house alone. I took her home and we sat and talked on the stairs of her split level house. No corsage, no fishnet green dress, no flat tire, just two young people finding out they had a few things in common. Sharon became my first girl friend and we would date for two years.

THE PRESENT

How can memories from our earlier selves help us today? For me, the three memories I have described stick with me. Frequently, one or more are triggered by present events. For example, yesterday I started the process of signing up for a Sirius XM radio streaming service. I have wanted to do this for months but kept putting it off. As I was tooling around Sirius’ site an image popped into my head of a forlorn 8 year-old me walking into my 3rd grade classroom on L-day. The kitchen event quickly followed as did the first words “The old house looks the same as I walk down the lane,” from Jones’ Green, Green Grass of Home.

Each memory reminds me of one of the default ways I have moved through the world, as someone not quite up to the challenges that he will face today. Part of me is that 8 year old faced with the cursive L, the 11 year old unable to complete his geography homework, and the 16 year old clueless on a first date. Reflecting on these memories, especially from a 3rd person perspective, as an observer of ones self, enables me to understand my reticence in the presence of new things. I am 71 by way of 8, 11, & 16. However, I am also 8, 11 & 16 by way of 71. My 71 year old self knows I learned to write lower and upper case L’s, passed 6th grade, and enticed Sharon to give me another chance.

Memories uncover our self-imposed limitations that follow us along our life paths while life experiences deflate the power of those limitations. Memories remind us of the impossibilities of life and the assurances that somehow, we do come through on the other side.

*I got the idea for this blog when I read about Only Yesterday, a 1991 Japanese film. The film is about a 27 year old Japanese woman who uses memories from her past to meet the challenges of the present. She is 27 by way of 5. I am 71 by way of 8, 11, & 16.

A reflection on the historical barriers to the American presidency.

President-Elect Biden will be 78 when he takes the Presidential oath of office on January, 20, 2021. He will be the oldest of America’s 46 presidents. Who was the second oldest?, you ask. President #45, Donald Trump, 220 days into his 70th year on Inauguration Day in 2017. Counting Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, 11 of America’s 46 presidents have been over 60.

Is 78 too old to be President of the United States?

America’s two youngest presidents were Teddy Roosevelt and John Kennedy. Roosevelt was 42 and Kennedy 43. A year ago 37 year old Pete Buttigieg was my choice to lead America’s Democratic Party.

Is 37 too young to be President of the United States?

Joe Biden will be America’s second Catholic President, sixty years after Kennedy broke that barrier, and 93 years after Al Smith became the first Catholic major party candidate for President.

Is Joe Biden too Catholic to be President of the United States?

Kamala Harris will be America’s first female, Black, and Asian Vice President.

Is Kamala Harris too female, too Black, or too Asian to be Vice President of the United States?

I suspect there are some Americans who would answer ‘yes’ to one or more of these questions. America’s Constitution weighs in on age and religion, stating 35 as the minimal age for President and that there be “no religious test for public office.” It says nothing about maximum age. America’s history weighs in on gender, race and ethnicity, which is why Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris combines those three ‘firsts’ 232 years after America’s founding. The same is true for religion and why it took 172 years for a Catholic to win the presidency, despite the “no religious test” clause.

Besides being bested by Joe Biden to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, what do Bernie Sanders, Michael Bennet, Marianne Williamson, Tom Steyer, and Michael Bloomberg have in common? A hint, they share this identity with former Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, running mate to Democratic Party presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000.

Are any of these Americans too Jewish to be President of the United States?

And what about Pete Buttigieg married to husband Chasten?

Is Pete Buttigieg too gay to be President of the United States?

Too old, too young, too Catholic, too female, too Black, too Asian, too Jewish, and too gay? I don’t know about you, but to me asking any of these questions seems sort of un-American. Not un-American in the sense that each was or is still a genuine barrier to becoming America’s president. In that sense, each was very American.

What’s un-American is how each question is really an affront to the greatest words from America’s greatest Founding Document, the Declaration of Independence, written and contradicted by the Slave-Owning-Thomas Jefferson.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That we keep asking these questions is not really a surprise. America’s contradictions are obvious to anyone who takes the time to look carefully at its history. The contradictions are brought to light by the very ideals we say we believe in. America is both, the ideals and the contradictions.

What’s heartening to me is that more of us answer ‘no’ to the questions listed above or even better, don’t even think to ask them.

Is Joe Biden too old to be President?

One of the first calls President-Elect Biden received was from 83 year Pope Francis. Biden has faced none of the public worry that a Catholic president would be too beholden to a pope that Kennedy confronted in 1960. Prejudices die hard and then fade away.

The Francis – Biden call was just a conversation between the octogenarian leader of 1.3 billion Catholics and the newly elected septuagenarian leader of 330 million Americans.

How can we use our shared anxiety to lessen our anger at the other side.

“A Frazzled world holds its breadth while the U.S. chooses its leader,” shouted the New York Times Saturday morning. Seventy two hours is a long time to hold your breadth, so I don’t suggest you and I DO that. Besides, we may not know Tuesday night or even Wednesday morning.

“Americans Surge to Polls: I’m going to vote like My life depended on it,” roared another NYT’s headline. Almost jumping out of my seat I hear myself cheering, “yes, the blue wave is coming.” You? Oh yeah, you, on the other side of the stadium, without your mask on, prodding your unstoppable red team down the field.

SHARED ANXIETY

What are you and I supposed to DO as we travel together toward Tuesday? We’re both on edge, anxious, looking for signs that our side will win or not win. Tucked cozily in northeast Iowa, this morning I awoke to a howling wind, coming out of the northwest, YIKES, “out of red state South Dakota.”

“A bad sign,” I thought, and then checked to see if my six blue signs in the front yard were still standing. Battered , beaten, and frazzled from months of Iowa weather, there they were, still upright, as if they had just read the latest FiveThirtyEight polls. And then I looked across the street at your sign, hoping to see that the wind, now blowing from blue state Minnesota, had latched onto your BIG sign, wrenched it from the ground, sending it to blue state Illinois or soon-to-be-blue Wisconsin. Alas, there it was standing tall, as if it had just read the latest Des Moines Register polls.

I want my side to win on Tuesday. I do consider the 2020 American presidential election the most important of my lifetime. I’m betting you feel the same way. Our political differences are real and deep and lead us to want a different America. If this was just about you liking strawberry and me liking chocolate ice cream, then maybe our anxiety levels in the days leading up to Tuesday would be lower. But America’s 2020 election is not about ice cream preferences but about what kind of country America is and should be. If you and I share nothing else, we do share anxiety. What can we do about that?

ACCEPT AND LEARN FROM YOUR ANXIETY

We should accept our anxiety as natural and a sign the stakes are high. Anxiety only attaches itself to things that matter. Thus, it can teach us something. Don’t run, ignore, argue or repress it. It is not your enemy.

Ask it to sit down and talk to you about what is on its mind. I have learned to respect and listen to my anxiety. By personifying it, I lessen its power over me. The more I have come to accept and learn from my anxiety, the easier it has become to understand that each human being I meet each day is probably anxious about something or very likely many things. Even you and your different vision about America and your support for THAT candidate.

Befriending my anxiety not only creates distance from it and me, it creates a distance between OUR differences and my anger at you. It does not reduce our differences, they are real and heartfelt, otherwise we would not both be anxious about Tuesday. However, once I turn and face my anxiety and take it seriously and learn from it, I naturally come to see you as an equal person. How could I not? Anything that helps me understand me, helps me understand you. And if I understand you, it is impossible to hate you. If I don’t hate you, I am less likely to fear you.

If I don’t fear you, I come very close to welcoming your membership in this wondrous cacophony we call American democracy.

Perhaps you can do the same.

Yesterday I zoomed with 45 people. Our group’s age range was 50 to 94. We talked for 90 minutes about the upcoming American presidential election. Think about THAT.

Not the topic or the devices or the virtual platform. Instead, think about the people in any Zoom gathering you have attended. Think about yourself. And give yourself a pat on the back. A year ago most of us had never attended a Zoom meeting. Today, virtual get-togethers have become part of our routine.

Weddings, funerals, concerts, reunions, classes, happy hours, yoga sessions…virtually anything can be virtual.

Last March we were in Timișoara, Romania where I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of West teaching two courses to Romanian students in the American Studies Department. I had met my classes two times before the University made the decision to go ‘virtual.’ I remember thinking two things. This COVID shut down won’t last very long before the world returns to normal and while it does last I will send my students question prompts and we can use email and Google Drive, two technologies I was comfortable with, until the world returns to normal.

I had never taught an online course nor used a virtual platform. Zoom conjured images of Mighty Mouse flying through the air and not a technology I could use to connect with my students.

Of course, the world didn’t return to normal, and so after about a week of resistance I learned to use Google Meet for our class sessions. Today, Google Meet or Zoom is well within my zone of comfort.

The world throws COVID at us and everywhere I look I see individuals, families, businesses, local communities, states and countries responding in a resilient way. Every day is filled with moments different from what they would have been before COVID. None of this is meant to lessen the tragedies of COVID, the deaths, illnesses, and the never-to-be-gotten-back-chance to say good bye to a loved one.

Most of us don’t think very much of ourselves, at least some of the time. We put on a good show but we know ourselves too well to be very impressed. When I was an undergraduate student, taught by faculty with MA’s and Ph.D’s, I thought those academic credentials were outside my notion of what was possible, for me. Years later, after earning both, I have tended to downplay each, thinking if I could do it anyone could. It is easy to forget how hard we are on ourselves, how much we need to see clearly our beauty as well as our ugliness, our uniqueness as well as our mediocrity.

After yesterday’s Zoom session, I was filled with a sense of wonder, even re-directing some of it at back at myself. Look around you, and include in that looking yourself, and see, really see, all the ways you have adapted to this pandemic. Do the same for family and friends. Include that neighbor, you know, the one with the sign for the ‘other’ candidate!

We all deserve a pat on the back.

A modest rebuttal to these unpleasant days.

A CONVERSATION

On Saturday, Rebecca and I walked into a Decorah gift store to check out a throw blanket for a couch. As we wandered masked-up around the store, we noticed the only other customer talking with the salesperson behind the counter. Neither wore masks. Both were young women.

A few weeks ago the Decorah City Council passed a face-covering ordinance that applies to most local businesses. The measure passed 6 – 1. I thought about this mandate as we took a throw blanket we liked a few steps to the counter. The conversation went as follows, with each person speaking without defensiveness, in calm tones.

• Paul: If you don’t mind I’ll be standing back here because you’re not wearing a mask.
• Salesperson: That’s OK.
• Rebecca: Unless you can just put a mask on?
• Paul: I thought the city ordinance said you had to wear a mask.
• Salesperson: I have a medical condition.
• Rebecca: Yeah, that same thing is true at Fareway, with a couple of employees having a medical condition. Since you have a medical condition you might be at a higher risk.
• Salesperson: I just don’t don’t want to live in fear..
• Paul & Rebecca: We don’t either; that’s why we wear masks.

THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS

There it is. In a nutshell. The essence of politics. Politics is always about difference & conflict. In this case, it is opposition between two different but reasonable expressions of what one should fear. Rebecca and I fear getting COVID or getting it and spreading it to others. The salesperson fears a life constrained by one’s fears. In this post, I will not describe the merits of each perspective, one I share, the other I oppose, but only will suggest the value of acknowledging the reasonableness of each and the importance of not seeing one’s adversary as an enemy.

TWO STORIES

Last week Rebecca traveled back to Clarinda to go on a 30 mile bike ride with about 15 Clarinda friends. She felt safe as her friends all protect themselves from COVID through masks, social distancing and isolation. Their destination on Taco Tuesday was a bar in a small Iowa town. When the group arrived at the bar, they discovered one group member had made reservations inside, on this 97° day. No one inside the bar was masked, nor was the server.

Yesterday Rebecca and I decided to return to Decorah’s B-Fit kettle bell workout studio, for the first time since January. B-Fit follows a strict protocol regarding cleaning and distancing but we knew people did not wear masks during the workout. To our knowledge, there had been no COVID cases connected to B-fit since it reopened in April. We weighed the pros and cons and decided the health benefits of these workouts outweighed the COVID risks.

Rebecca drove 646 miles to join her bicycle-riding friends. Despite seat belts and other safety features of a 21st century car and bicycle helmets each trip was fraught with danger. The same is true for returning to B-Fit workouts.

“I JUST DON’T WANT TO LIVE IN FEAR”

To the store salesperson, wearing a mask is giving in to fear. To Rebecca, not getting in her car and driving on country roads, to truck-filled Interstates 35 & 80 would be giving in to fear. To Rebecca and I, not going back to B-Fit until a vaccine was available, and we are 100% sure we will not get COVID, is letting our fears limit our lives.

Are masked Rebecca and Paul really so different from the mask-free salesperson? Of course, we are differ on the mask issue. And perhaps our salesperson friend is supporting the ‘other’ candidate. If that is so, we may differ in other ways, really important ways. Our differences are real but not the only reality.

OUR DIFFERENCES ARE REAL, BUT NOT THE ONLY REALITY

And we ought not let our differences define each other as the enemy. Perhaps a first step down another path is to uncover inside ourselves a bit of what we find distasteful in that human being across the counter. It is possible, as James Baldwin puts it

To create ourselves without finding it necessary to create an enemy.

It is so easy to think of that salesperson behind the counter as an enemy. Baldwin knew this, about other counters, about lunch counters in Birmingham. He knew the very human temptation to define ourselves against the other.

Lincoln knew it as well. Which is why in his Second Inaugural he offered the words below, to the people and leaders of the Confederacy, once actual enemies who were now defeated friends, once again part of the United States of America.

With malice toward none, with charity for all.

Baldwin and Lincoln, complicated men who knew better than most the human cost of hatred, offer us words of wisdom, from their times, to ours. So that our time does not become like theirs.

THE AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020

Recently, several students have asked me questions about America’s November 3rd presidential election. I thought I would put together a list of ‘briefing points’ and suggested reading that might help us see not only what is before our eyes but also what lies beneath the surface.

My selection and description of points are influenced and limited by my identities; a partial list follows. I am an American citizen, a life-long member of the Democratic Party, a liberal committed to an incremental approach to solving social problems, a believer in Black Lives Matter protests but not in the defunding of the police, a friend of many Trump supporters, and a Political Scientist professor.

Personally, I hold this last identity marker loosely because while I may know things you don’t, I also, perhaps, have a better sense than you of how much I do not know. When it comes to politics or other matters of complex human systems, we all ‘see through the glass darkly.’

1. President Trump, as a candidate in 2016, and as president has been one of the least popular politicians in American history. His approval rating as president has never tipped above 50%, unprecedented in the era of polling. In 2016 he ran against Hillary Clinton who matched him in unpopularity. A good argument can be made that the 2016 election was more about Clinton’s unpopularity than Trump’s appeal. (Morris Fiorina Unstable Majorities )
2. Candidate Trump won the presidency in 2016 through the slimmest of vote margins, 77,000 votes in four states. The election could have easily gone the other way. Trump dominates the American political scene so much it is good to step back and see how slim his victory was. America is much more than Donald Trump. However, Mr. Trump’s victory also suggests that America is also much more than Barack Obama. America is both Obama and Trump, and always has been!
3. From the moment President Trump took the oath of office, America’s civil society provided an outlet for protest movements against President Trump and the Republican Party. A similar phenomenon occurred during the Obama presidency, particularly after the Affordable Health Care Act was passed in 2009. The Black Lives Matter protests after the killing of George Floyd continue this tradition. In my judgment, America’s key democratic strength is the strength of its civil society. (Theda Skocpol Upending American Politics; Eric Liu You’re More Powerful than you think)
4. Today, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight gives Joe Biden a 78% chance of winning the presidency. I believe Silver’s site is the gold standard for polling predictions. I think this for three reasons. One, he averages a large number state and national polls instead of depending upon one or two. Two, and most important, he builds state polls into the prediction formula, essential given how America’s electoral college works. Three, on Election Day in 2016, Silver’s formula gave Donald Trump a 30% chance to win and Silver throughout fall 2016 emphasized how volatile the polls were and how many undecided voters there were. He urged caution. If you want to know more, dig into FiveThirtyEight. There is a lot more to the site than polling.
5. There is less volatility in the polling for 2020 meaning Biden has held a solid national polling lead for many months. There are likely fewer undecideds in 2020 than in 2016, perhaps as few as 5% of the voting population. The election will be a referendum on the Trump Presidency and most American voters have already formed an opinion.
6. President Trump’s handling of the COVID crisis has hurt him politically, perhaps dooming his chances for re-election. The fact he has contracted the disease and that it is spreading through the White House makes it impossible for him to divert attention to other stories.
7. The following is a personal comment, by Paul Gardner, the American citizen. President Trump’s performance in last week’s Presidential debate was the low point of my life observing and living American democracy. I have never felt so down, so utterly depleted.
8. Having said that, I know many of my Trump-supporting friends feel similarly. Or at least close. However, some will support him because they prefer Republican policies to Democratic policies. It is good to remember this. Almost 63 million Americans supported Donald Trump in 2016, most, I suspect, are offended by his character, racism, and cruelty.
9. One of the consequences of America’s polarized politics is that millions of Americans hate the other party so much they are willing to support a candidate and now a President Trump. (Ezra Klein Why we’re polarized )
10. President Trump is a product and not a cause of America’s polarization. It is also true that he has worsened America’s divisions. He feeds on America’s conflicts and that is why Candidate Trump has never really tried to be President Trump, has never really tried to expand his base. Not only is he imprisoned by his own personality but by the make-up of today’s Republican Party and the limitations of America’s two party system. (Lee Drutman Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop)
11. America’s polarized politics is rooted in sociocultural and demographic changes in America now more than half a century old. This story is well told by Ezra Klein and Lee Drutman. America’s political fights today are mostly about what kind of country we want America to be. Racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual diversities are central to America’s divisions. (Heather Cox Richardson How the South Won the Civil War )
12. There are similarities between America’s political struggles and what is happening in many Eastern and Southern European countries, including Romania. Populism is rising across the world, including in America. This populism is connected to immigration or fear about immigration, stagnant wages, distrust of elites, and de-alignment of traditional parties. (Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin National Populism, Ivan Kristen & Stephen Holmes The Light that Failed.
13. Both America’s mainstream parties, Republican and Democratic, have serious internal divisions. On a personal note, I am a moderate Democrat, and there are significant differences between my political vision and the vision of the progressives in my party. ( on the Republican Party Jacob Hacker & Paul Pierson Let them eat tweets & Democratic Party Steven Stoft Ripped Apart )
14. In Breaking the two-party doom loop, Lee Drutman makes a compelling case for moving America to a multi-party system, the norm for Democracies across the world. Not impossible, as his case study of New Zealand suggests.
15. Finally, race is central to understanding so much about America, including its current divisions. When someone asks me who I read to understand race in America, my go to is anything by or about James Baldwin. Top of my author Baldwin list is The Fire Next Time, followed by No Name in the Street. Fire was written in the early 60s and No Name after the assassination of Martin Luther King jr. Eddie Glaude jr. Begin Again: Jame’s Baldwin’s America and its urges lessons for our own times brings Baldwin up to the moment.

A LESSON IN HOW TO AGE WELL

“Paul John, you need to be told things three times before they really sink in.” My mother always called me ‘Paul John’ when she was mad at me. And me not listening really irritated her. Otherwise, I was Paul. That name, Paul John, and the tone of her voice when using that name, is still inside me. Ready to pounce. Like it did, yesterday.

NO GIFT NO GIFT NO GIFT

A couple of weeks ago two friends gave us a gift. It is a gift that can be given over and over and this was the second time we had received this present. Years ago they had made clear to me they wanted no thank you gift in return. Our enjoyment of their generosity was “gift enough.” I never told Rebecca about their request and so for the second time we purchased modest thank you gifts. Our friends graciously accepted these but repeated, for the third time, that our enjoyment of their gift was gift-enough.

No gift, no gift, no gift! “OK, I got it.” Just behind our friends’ warm but firm third-time-no-gift note was my mother’s ‘Paul John-voice.’ Two voices, my mother’s and my friends’, past and present. One speaking to the child inside me and one to the adult. The child is ageless. The adult is 71.

AGING WELL

I have been reading a terrific book on aging, Ageless Soul, by Thomas Moore. Aging, writes Moore, is

“An activity. It is something you do, not something that happens. When you age – active verb – you are proactive. If you really age, you become a better person. If you simply grow old, passively, you get worse. Chances are, you will be unhappy as you continue the fruitless fight against time.”

I’ll bet more than a few of you have your own ‘gift stories,’ stories about repeating mistakes. What do these stories have to do with aging well? Moore says aging is an activity. And conscious action is better than unconscious action. In words that are directed at all of us, regardless of age, Moore says

There is an unconsciousness in people that is itself unconscious. We don’t realize that we are unconscious about things that really matter.

‘Paul John’ didn’t care much that people had to say things three times to him, occasionally having to use the Churchill approach. Unconscious of the effect of this on others is a nice way of putting it. But 71 year old ‘Paul’ does care. More important, he wants to know how to age well, to become a better person.

REFLECTION AND TRANSFORMATION

Deep reflection on what life throws at us, suggests Moore, is the key element in aging well. Reflection means to “bend back,” to see and to probe what has happened. Reflection, ironically, is the primary ingredient in an active approach to aging. Ironic because it is more about being than doing.

My friends gentle but firm ‘no gift’ reminder is something life threw at me yesterday. This blog entry, together with the memories, thinking, and feeling that accompanied it, is the container that holds this bending back process in a form that helps set me on a path of transformation.

Aging well does not need to start at 71. Any age will do, ought to do. Moore says to think of the process as made up of leaps forward and plateaus, instead of a continuous upward movement. The leaps forward come from life experiences that are then reflected upon and made apart of oneself.

Openness to life, awareness of what is happening, and a willingness to go deep, are the answers to how to age well.