Looking back ...

All kinds of colored lights are coming on in people’s windows now, and baubles are dangling in windows and doorways, and red and white Santa gear seems to be everywhere. The city is dressing itself up for the holiday season. I am seeing more smiles on people’s faces, and hearing more gratitude expressed. Goodwill is in the air… So, you could say, why can we not feel this sense of appreciation and good intentions the rest of the days of the year? Good question. For myself, I feel calmer and more patient these days. I am moving more slowly, trying to stay in the present moment and keep the faith. Though I’m not a Christian, I do believe in the story of Jesus Christ and I appreciate this welcome feeling of camaraderie and generosity that seems to show up at this time of year. I also believe that as it gets darker and colder in the wintertime, it is logical for the human animal to dig down and tap into some warmth and kindness within. A form of self compassion, you might say. There are choices we can make that create that state of wellbeing… While my head is not filled with visions of sugar plum fairies and Santa’s reindeer, it is leaning in toward the comfort of being a reader of books.

I’ve noticed that more and more books are stacked on my dining room table lately — I don’t seem to be able to control my hunger for holding real books with paper pages, turning those crisp pages that often smell of ink, losing myself in another reality altogether. It all began when I was a little girl, an only child … Our home was not dominated by t.v. in the late fifties, so I read books, everything from Nancy Drew to Ann of Green Gables, Agatha Christie, and Jane Eyre. It was a refuge for me to be surrounded by books and to sit for hours lost in stories… The world that surrounded me then was not exactly kid friendly. Books were my true friends, and I remember I harbored dreams of someday writing one…

Today in my early seventies I find myself reading American history for some reason. On one level it makes sense: I always did like to look back. There was comfort and some wisdom to be gained, I think. Doesn't it make sense to place ourselves in a historical context to fully understand the nature of our current condition? Like it or not, we are anchored to our past and to a future we know little about… I am reading both Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, from which Lin Miranda crafted his astonishing play, and an inspiring and dense treatment of American history entitled These Truths, whose narrative begins before we were ever a country. Jill Lepore published this book this year to great acclaim, and I must say it is a treat to hold this 700 page tome in my hands and follow along as she unspools our early days as a country, bringing two profound issues to the forefront: slavery and the oppression of women. She offered in an interview that she saw these two issues as constants in our nation’s history, enduring into our present day.

We are still a racist country — snuffing out the lives of inner city black men and rejecting the immigrants from the southern border looking for some chance of a good life, and we continue to subjugate women in our cities and towns, businesses, and families. The Me-Too movement has reminded us of just how broad this canvas of entitlement is. Lepore’s writing is eloquent without being complicated, and the research prodigious. I am bowled over by the amount of brain work and time it must have taken her to write this vast and complicated story, and I’m so grateful for her work. I want to understand our country’s history with a determination I’ve never had before. Why? Because I sense the knowledge and understanding will allow me to step back from the swirling chaos of our toxic political climate and say, “ah yes … everything changes … patterns come and they go …” It will afford me some balance in my thinking, a perspective that is necessary if one is to endure horrible offenses. There has been persistent cruelty in our young country in the last decades, sometimes just a bit blurry under the surface, and sometimes roaring up and reminding us in the cities of Chicago and Oakland that we haven’t learned how to treat those of different races with basic fairness and compassion. It turns out that no matter how many civil rights laws or gender equality regulations are enacted, we are still a culture informed by our dichotomies: rich vs. poor, black vs. white, male vs. female, powerful vs. weak… This is a painful revelation, for sure.

Context is an interesting concept. If we can see this clearly, we will understand where we have been and where we might go. Of course, our future is uncertain, but if we are able to grasp, to accept the ebb and flow of our story, then we can make informed guesses about what might unfold down the road. What are the chances we can take care of our poor, uneducated? How can we advance women and people of color? How can we make decisions to keep this country safe and out of war? How can we be leaders on the world stage in the name of peace? Just some basic questions, mind you. If we study the choices and mistakes of the past, take a look at the egotism and greed and heedlessness, then perhaps we can we make more enlightened choices going forward. I’d like to think so.

I guess I’m arguing for the educated mind, the mind that absorbs information and then takes that understanding out into the world. My own childhood was driven by a desire to educate myself, to discover what was unknown to me, and happily I still pursue this path. Tara Westover in her amazing book Educated offers a testament to this very same imperative: the hunger for knowledge and insight that seems to be innate and necessary for survival. Under the most horrific of circumstances with a survivalist father and mother, she struggled to find a way to get herself educated. She seemed to me an example of the desperation of women who have been subjugated and silenced in our culture. Which brings me back to a theme in Lepore’s book of women’s alienation as a inexorable thread in our history…

While I often read books for pure pleasure — Elsa Ferrante for example … or Colm Toibin … or Michael Dibdin or Annie Lamott … it appears that during this winter of 2018, in the midst of what feels like a dire time for this country, I’m trying to learn about the trajectory we’ve been on, to grasp the humanity and the cruelty that have come before. I will meet characters that I love like Alexander Hamilton or Thomas Jefferson, and ones that i respect like good old George Washington, and I will also see their failings. As I meet others along the way, I will come to understand that the whole story is one of imperfect human beings with high ideals trying to form the “perfect union” that was fraught and tenuous, weighed down by our all too human failings…

I like this journey because it reminds me that I am part of the lineage of this grand (and flawed) experiment, and that there’s great mystery here in this story. As the Thai master, Ahjan Cha said, “life is uncertain, isn’t it?”