Category: Lifestyle

English is still number one

We hear a lot these days that we’re transitioning from the American Century to a Chinese one. In my own lifetime I never anticipated the current groundswell for Chinese language classes. I grew up with the emphasis in schools and colleges on Spanish, French, and German. I hadn’t thought about it until just now, but my high school didn’t even offer Spanish, let alone an Asian language, though it did offer four years of Latin. The times certainly are a-changing.

While I’m strongly for learning another language in a world of shrinking distances and expanding global interchange, I still think English will remain the closest we have to an international lingua franca for some time to come. Even in China, English is seen as “the ticket.”

Language domination does shift over the centuries with the wax and wane of primary empires and modern nations. Before the rise of Latin, the language which defined linguistic universalism in the Western world was Greek, so much so that the New Testament was rendered in Greek to promote the new faith. Its antecedent was the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek.

We all know about the spectacular spread of Latin with the rise of Rome and its shaping several of Europe’s primary languages, including English.

With the reign of France’s Louis IV in the 17th century and the nascence of the Enlightenment, French began its ascendency as the language of diplomacy until English began its challenge with the birth of the Industrial Revolution in England and the growth of its Empire. English received a further boost with America’s emergence as a superpower in the 20th century.

While Chinese may have far more speakers than English, its users are primarily geographically confined, unlike those speaking English, a truly international tongue based on geography alone–UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Guiana, former African colonies, and much of the West Indies. We tend to forget that more than 300 million Indians use English daily.

In all of this, that so many opt for English as their second language doesn’t mean they like us anglophones, but that they find it the most useful for world communication.

What principally inhibits Chinese is its notorious difficulty as a tonal medium, despite a relatively simple grammar, and the virtual impossibility of mastering its written language. The Chinese, along with the Japanese, would do themselves a huge favor by transitioning to the Latin alphabet, as did Turkey in the last century, but they aren’t going to do that.

English musters a terrific advantage in its being largely inflection free, unlike German or Russian with their formidable declensions. While English features some irregular verbs, a vestige of its Germanic origin, it doesn’t exhibit the complexity of verb conjugations found in the Romance languages. Nonetheless, I’ve always maintained that while English is easy to learn, it’s hard to speak well. Only a relative few native speakers know how to distinguish lie and lay, farther and further, amount and number, etc. Then there is the challenge of its non-phonetic spelling. Imagine the challenge this poses for non-native speakers. Still more, there are all those nasty homonyms: horse vs hoarse, and the infamous to, too, two, etc.

Nevertheless, English remains relatively easy to speak, with only the Scandinavian languages approaching it in leveled or near absent inflection. Their speakers, however, are too few for it to matter. In fact, English has become so dominant in Sweden that a new language law was recently enacted (2009) to protect Swedish. In Sweden, virtually everyone speaks English well and you’ll find it abundantly in public ads and English language television and movies, which are seldom dubbed. Many young Swedes prefer English as more expressive and practical. If this is Sweden, can you just imagine the consternation of the French?

So despite what you may be hearing, English is still number one and likely to remain so for a long time to come. But do the language a favor by learning it well. After all, it’s the language of Shakespeare.

Lately, I’ve taken a strong interest in….

 
Lately I’ve taken a strong interest in meditation to escape stress and feel more relaxed.  From the medical sources I’ve read, I’m convinced it has a lot going for it. If you’re depressed or anxiety prone, meditation may be more helpful than Zoloft or Valium and the like. In his book, When Panic Strikes, noted psychiatrist David Burns, argues that the new research isn’t gung-ho anymore on the assumption of chemical imbalance in the brain, resulting in serotonin deficiency.  What success SSRI’s seem to have may really be the placebo effect in action.  Control groups in which placebos have been given have shown virtually the same results. Of course, this is bad news for the pharmaceuticals, who keep pumping out their propaganda across the media and offering perks to physicians.  Alas, there are even those in the FDA who have had strong links with the drug companies. One thing we do know:  while meds can be necessary for many, they all have potential side-effects that can do great harm.
Burns eschews the psych meds, favoring the cognitive approach with its advocacy of getting rid of emotional distress by adopting alternative, more positive thoughts in handling stress. It takes work to reprogram your responses, but it can be done. Cognitive therapy now dominates counseling, replacing traditional talk therapy. I agree that it can be helpful.
In the hard scenarios, something more is needed.  (Here I’m writing about anxiety, not depression.)  That something may well be meditation. In the last several months I’ve been trying out what’s called restorative yoga, which consists of simple breathing, visualization, and meditation exercises. I’m not a champ at this kind of endeavor. I can’t even say I’ve got the breath thing down right. Books and videos can help, but ultimately, at least initially, you need a good teacher.
Clumsy as I may be, I know that when I retreat to my sunroom hideaway, unroll my mat, and lie down, beginning with breathing from the stomach up through the nose, four seconds in, six seconds out, I sense my body unwinding from its tightness. I follow with body visualization, letting each limb “fall through” into the mat. Then I transport myself mentally into bliss, a scene that brings pleasure. For me, it’s usually my wife and I walking up the steep, narrow pathway of rugged Ben Nevis, the valley below a dense green, splattered by the white wooly sheep grazing contentedly in a rolling landscape fenced by stone walls. I am there again in Scotland, that dear country of green mountains, twisting by-ways, lakes and bubbling brooks, and friendly people. I am at peace.
I follow with actual meditation, or at least the attempt, with the aid of my mantra, the psalmist’s “lead me by the still waters,” emptying the mind, though it keeps insisting it’s the boss.  Whatever my failed attempts, I feel relaxed.
Recently I was virtually mesmerized in reading Tim Park’s Teach Us to Sit Still: A Skeptic’s Search for Health and Healing.  He could have been writing about me. Both of us have been profs, working with language and literature. Both of us are into the mind thing, analytical and suspicious, reserved in our allegiances.  Both of us were raised in a religious context, which we’ve now abandoned. Both of us have suffered the same physical ailment with its ubiquitous fall out, always there, seemingly beyond remedy.
 Parks, in his desperation, suspends his cerebral dissonance, to try meditation.  It comes hard.  It’s all about breathing.  Though the mind resists emptying, Parks knows there’s something to it. He attends a five day retreat.  On the fourth day, it happens. He feels the breath flow across his upper lip.  Heat radiates through his body. And the pain? There is no pain.
Of course the conscious world will bring back the pain with its culminating anxiety. You’re not there in a day. But Parks knows now, though he may not understand it fully, that mind isn’t separate from the body. The mind and body are one.
The seed has been sown and Parks persists, each attempt in overcoming the chattering mind becoming easier.  
Parks finds his way ultimately to permanent relief from his physical pain.
Nonetheless, as a rationalist, he still finds it paradoxical,  He’s a writer with twenty books published, and on one occasion, short-listed for the Booker Award, Britain’s highest award for literary achievement.  Words, after all, not only give him employ, they are the essence of what make us human.
And yet there is that world beyond words, vast and ineffable, removed from the mind’s ceaseless chatter, bringing us in to touch with our full selves.  Integrated, mind and body become amalgam, and reconciliation grants equanimity.  No longer two selves, in our found wholeness comes peace transcending time and space, circumstance and pain.
Teach us to be still.
rj

When it comes to stress….

When it comes to stress management, seeing things in perspective can help you get your ducks in a row. I still stumble, but it helps when I get a tip once in a while such as in reading Peter Bergman’s insightful article in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review.
Origins of stress
Bergman points out that a lot of our stress comes from frustration, or this disconnect between expectation and result.  I’ll make up some of my own examples here:


1.  You’re driving through a residential neighborhood.  There are stop signs at the end of each block.  You’re behind this guy who doesn’t stop at any of them.  The speed limit, well- posted, says 25.  He’s going at least 40.  It gets to you: why is it some people think the law’s for other people?
   
2.  You thought you had a connection with someone, only to learn they’ve been putting you through a shedder when talking to others.
3.   You haven’t heard from your kids in ages. Not the first time.  Do they give a hoot at all?
4.   It’s the damned cell phone again. Expensive gadget at high monthly costs and you can’t get it to work just when you need it most.
5.   You’ve paid all this money for a good meal, only to find you’ve been short-changed on both the food and the service.  
As I write, I find I’m surprised how easily the examples come to my mind of daily frustration. Doubtless, you can add your own.  
Consequences of stress
Frustration mounts up and spills over, souring relationships and potentially impacting your health, both physical and mental:  think ulcers, gastritis, hypertension, depression, etc.  According to the American Psychological Association (2010), stress can have multiple effects on your body, mood, and behavior:
Body:  headache, muscle tension, upset stomach, insomnia
Mood:  anxiety, restlessness, loss of motivation, sadness
Behavior:  overeating/under eating, anger outbursts, drug or alcohol abuse, withdrawal
Oddly, the APA misses out on the worst behavioral response of all:  suicide
Coping
In getting a handle on things, it’s helpful to gain a sense of perspective.  Say something happens to you. When you can’t get out of your head, then all hell can break loose. Maybe you’ve got something like acid reflux, diabetes, or irritable bowel syndrome. None of them is fun, but resorting to what I call comparison helps put things in perspective.
Better the reflux than the way some people languish. Try on Lou Gehrig’s disease, MS, or cancer. Trade places with a paraplegic needing total care. In the news recently comes the story of the pretty Georgia girl recovering from flesh eating bacteria, resulting in multiple amputations. Haven’t seen such courage in a very long time.
All over the world are those who suffer grievously and unfairly from natural disasters, famine, disease, poverty. Think Africa.  Think Bangladesh. In our own blessed nation, there are many who’ve lost their jobs, homes, and health coverage.  
All too often we learn of Man’s cruelty to his fellows. Think of today’s Syria, of whole families executed, civilians shelled daily, deliberately.
When you lie in bed at night, thinking things are awful for you, try this tactic to get out from under: What’s the worst thing that could ever happen to me? Believe me, it will make your present anxieties seem small.
Here’s another way you might develop a sense of perspective:  what I call the camera technique.
Ok, the moment you sense stress coming on, imagine you’re outside your body, filming yourself. (In yoga, we call this kind of thing the Witness.) Fill the frame with yourself.
Now pull your camera back to fill the frame with people.
Now pull back again to include the landscape.
Then pull the camera back yet again to include the clouds.
Take the shot.
How do you find yourself in the picture now? Seeing yourself in the larger spectrum helps you downsize the seeming magnitude of your stress.  Here, you might look back at the photo that prefaces this entry to catch my meaning.
Set your lens on infinity, whether spatial or temporal. What am I in the backdrop of the stars?
Prognosis
Learning to cope, you’ll discover your stress tumors shrink.  
It’s then you ‘ll find freedom in an unfree world.
rj

One of my favorite things to do online is ….

One of my favorite things to do online is to read blogs by everyday Joes and Jill’s.  I’m even more keen on this, having joined the blogger tribe more than a year ago.  It’s fun to be part of a conversation and read what people say and how they say it, and view their web designs.  Blogs have frequently given me good advice and sparked new creativity.  Best, they’ve linked me to others with similar needs and wants, dreams and fears, as questing, yet fallible, beings in life’s journey. 
This morning, my daughter sent me a link to a blog I found just fascinating.  www.theminimalists.com  More than 100,000 subscribers apparently agree.  It’s the work of two young men with writing finesse.  You get the feeling they’re sitting across the table, talking to you.  I started reading their posts this morning and became this greedy kid with his fingers in the cookie jar, devouring one post after another,
Minimalists, they share a passion for getting down to life’s marrow.  They’ve done this in their own lives, downsizing their living quarters, forfeiting television, that great time mugger. Courageous, they quit their six figure salary positions in the corporate world to live independently, sustaining themselves through their own resourcefulness.  Not many of us enjoy their liberating lifestyle; instead, we often endure life with anxiety riding our backs.
It’s like Walden all over again–you know, the hut in the wilderness experience Thoreau undertook to redefine the good life.  (That guy has to be one of my all time favorites.)  I like the way he put the matter of simplicity:  “Our life is fritted away with detail.  Simplify, simplify.”
Yet simplifying doesn’t come easily to me.  I don’t know about you, but I cling to memories and am obsessed with routine.  I collect junk.  I hate throwing things out.  I don’t like change.  Yeah, the jig is up:  I confess to being a sentimentalist junkie.
I know some people don’t seem to have difficulty tossing out past memories or replacing old friends, or moving to new climes.  But I’ve always been different that way.  When I was a child, I’d frequently make myself scarce to avoid saying good-bye to those I loved.  Silly, I even hated giving up my worn out shoes, friends who’d been with me everywhere.  I remain that way about a lot of things, cluttering my life with the inconsequential.
Still, I’m beginning to do better in lightening the load.  Take the mail for instance. For too long I’ve been in the habit of creating disheveled piles on any available surface in the house.  Now I sort the mail immediately, sometimes on my way walking up the drive, separating the wheat from the chaff.
I know it doesn’t amount to real simplification, but it does indicate my awareness I need to learn how to let go.
In a way, the life Karen and I live is already simple.  Finances make that the only real option. I’m retired and my wife soon will be.  We live in an older house of modest square footage.  We don’t purchase frills, or things we don’t need.  We seldom get out of town.
Right now, I’m thinking about shedding my many books I’ve gathered over the years as a prof.  This isn’t as easy as it may seem.  I’m a lover of books.  But I’m also more aware I need to give to others what I no longer require.  I haven’t looked at most of these books in a very long time anyway. 
Elise Boulding, the renowned sociologist, put the whole thing succinctly:  “The consumer society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.”
Like my worn out shoes, it’s time to let go.  Time to simplify.

Worrying as personal nemesis

I don’t know about you, but I worry a lot, even about little things, and I’ve been this way my whole life.  Maybe it’s in the genes.  Now and then, I get these vivid flashbacks of my dad, a chronic worrier, ensconced in his armchair, peering out the window for long stretches, chin resting on his hand, like Rodin’s Thinker.
Believe me!  I’m trying like the dickens to get free from its weight and adopt a more casual, perhaps fatalistic view of the way life works in a world often mediated by chance, not will, human or divine.  
Worrying displays my need to control, a rather arrogant pose if you think about it–as if any of us possess the key unlocking our hoard chest of desires.
It’s a hard thing to quit once you’re into it, which is odd, since worry has so little to recommend it, except to delude us into thinking we can keep destiny’s jackals at bay.
This isn’t to say we shouldn’t prepare for tomorrow, say like getting an insurance policy or making a will.  In life’s lottery, diligence has often proved our evolutionary savior.  Take the Dutch building their dykes, for example.
Oddly, it’s the intelligent person who often gets himself caught on barbwire speculation.
In fact, worry may very well characterize intelligence.  In the February 1, 2012  Frontiers in Evolutionary Science, we learn of a research study involving 26 people with generalized  anxiety disorder and 18 healthy people without this disorder. Intelligence tests and brain activity scans showed anxiety and high intelligence were linked.
As I hinted earlier, worrying may have conferred survivability.
Then, should I continue to indulge my vice?
Think of it like salt and pepper: a little bit won’t hurt, but no more than a pinch or you’ll spoil the broth!

Lately I’ve been reading….

Lately I’ve been reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lesser known novel, This Side of Paradise. It’s one of those freebies you can now download, given its removal from copyright after fifty years.

This novel focuses on the character Amory Blaine. There’s not much to like about Amory, particularly his conceit. He interests me because he resembles many of us. He likes control. He has a zeal to be noticed. He’s self conscious in everything he does. He must be perfect. He must be liked. In his self-absorption, he’s quick to take offense.

In the course of things, he meets his third cousin, Clara Page, with whom he falls in love. Widowed and impoverished, she nonetheless has a compelling resilience about her and an insightful way of getting to the core of things. As her first name suggests, she functions as a clarifier in her intuitive keenness. She sees, for example, the source of Amory’s vanity and sensitivity to criticism.

Clara is direct in her dissection of Amory’s egotism as a mask for deeply seated feelings of personal inadequacy:

“You sink to the third hell of depression when you think you’ve been slighted. In fact, you haven’t much self-respect.”

Here, as elsewhere in this novel, Fitzgerald proves a keen observer of the psychological motives behind outward behavior.

When we wound easily or strive overly it often stems from a sense we don’t measure up. Perfectionists, we yearn for approval as evidence of our self-worth. Over achievers, we require validation.

Clara again hits the nail on the head, exclaiming, “The reason you have so little self-confidence, even though you gravely announce to the occasional philistine that you’re a genius, is that you’ve attributed all sorts of faults to yourself and are trying to live up to them.”

Amory suffers from a common anxiety malaise that can shackle our potential for finding happiness. It becomes difficult to elude its hydra tentacles, as it requires an honest and painful, acknowledgment of our weaknesses. But it’s the only way out. Until we can live with ourselves, warts and all, we can’t really find contentment.

This doesn’t mean getting into self-flagellation. It isn’t wallowing we’re after. It’s self-acceptance. Only then can true healing begin. We become lovable when we learn to love ourselves. Forgiving ourselves, we can forgive others.

Mitch Albom got it right in his The Five People You Meet in Heaven: “‘You have peace, the old woman said, ‘when you make peace with yourself.'”

rj

Stress can take its toll on your health

Stress can take its toll on your health.  Unabated, it can shorten your life.  I keep telling myself this, since it’s been a long time bug-a- boo for me. You see, I’m a chronic worrier.
Stress comes in many wrappings.  More commonly, it comes from our dodgem affair with everyday life: work, relationships, unemployment, health issues, a loved one’s death.  I bet you could add to the list. There’s enough to go around, that’s for sure.
A lot of times, we can’t avoid stress.  It’s the entrance fee for pursuing a full life.  We may sometimes wish for lotus land, but it’s in the striving, not escape, we achieve and find fulfillment.  Mark Twain, a guy increasingly compelling for me in his common sense observations, said he would find heaven a boring place. I agree.  
But as I hinted, sometimes stress is of our own making.  Like an ulcer, it can erode life’s joy. I consider myself relatively intelligent and rational, yet I worry a lot, even about little things, like Did I say the right thing? What will people think?  Did I sign the check I just stashed in the envelope?  
Lately, as an older person, I’ve been worried about my health. My body doesn’t work as well. Increasingly, I’ve had to turn sentry to preserve what health remains. Like a car gathering miles, things start to go wrong, sometimes suddenly.
I think my recent nemesis, or anxiety, has its more immediate source in a common human malady: the angst of mortality.  When we’re young, we don’t think about it much, at least most of us. As I write, I think of Auden’s exquisite poem, “Musee des Beaux Arts,” with its allusion to children for whom grief and death, the epitomies of life’s drama, absent themselves in the intensity of their play.
When we get older, we become more aware.  We take insurance and what we pay is determined by scientifically based actuary tables.  
We all worry, but some of us worry far too much, gashing the tree of life in getting too close with our weed-eater approach, trimming away life’s unevenness.
Buddhism has it right in its simple maxim that all suffering comes of desire.  We want too much what we often lack power to control. With acceptance comes peace. This is the great moral of Sophocles’ ancient, yet still riveting play, Oedipus the King, its protagonist determined to outwit Fate.
Worrying comes from a need to control, when what we really need is to let go. Things get a whole lot lighter when we hurl our sack of anxieties over the mountain side.
You see, the best of living comes with living in the moment.  The past is what it is, and we’re not guaranteed a future.
I’m not there yet. The trail up the mountain is arduous in its steep, but I’m making the trek, one step at a time. I have found wise counsel, helpful books, and to my delight, yoga with its progressive relaxation postures, deep breathing, and meditation aspects. I’m curious about Tai Chi.
I’ve been learning to replace negative thoughts, the source of emotional pain, with positive alternatives. I have returned to daily physical exercise, a great stress-buster, too.
I am worrying less. I enjoy life more.
rj

If you had but one wish

If you had but one wish that could change your life, what would it be? Would it come down to the traditional game-players as primary motivators: wealth, power, fame? There are some, however few, the angels among us, who’d choose helping others. Still others, and they number in the millions actually, who’d opt for living a life pleasing to God.

Frankly, this is a hard question for me to answer, for I can think of still other pleasing options like enjoying good health, freedom from anxiety, the respect of others, etc. What other options could you add to this list? Perhaps a happy marriage and family life, or to be loved, or to have a best friend, or even just to be appreciated? Now remember, you only get one wish. In a showdown, which is it for you? And why? See, it isn’t all that easy. Like so much in life, making one decision often means forfeiting another. For me, it’s a whole lot easier to choose between good and bad than between two kinds of good.

Of course you might conjecture that these choices are always personal, since their consequences may make some happy, others less so. I use “happy” deliberately, for isn’t this implied for ourselves in any wish we’d like to come true?

Me, I’ve long been suspicious of the underlying premise of E. A. Robinson’s “Richard Cory” many of us have read in high school English. You know–the guy everybody envied for his wealth, only to kill himself. Sorry to any of you preferring orthodoxy, but I think I like the money wish best, not for its own sake, or from greed, but because it actually multiplies my choices: I can find the best doctors; provide better for those I love, animals as well as people; help preserve Nature’s diminishing footprint; endow cancer charities and provide food for the hungry; choose where I want to live; come upon better, more quality goods.

Not to be left out, I’d gain access to people I’d like to be with–accomplished, refined, intelligent, connoisseurs of excellence. In my social station, I don’t see much of this. It hangs out in certain zip codes replete with people who choose where to live for its amenities like good schools, safe neighborhoods where you don’t have to watch your back, tranquil parks, tree-lined streets, a neighborhood club house, tennis courts and pool, maybe even an equine barn for stabling your horse or say an adjacent golf course; but best of all, neighbors who share a respect for education, intelligence, liberal thought, and professional accomplishment. I see them at symphonies, I read of their charity, note their activism for making life fairer for the marginalized, their absence of malice or rancor toward those of different color or ethnicity or sexual persuasion, their freedom from extremism, whether political or religious. They assume leadership roles in their community. They fund the arts. They work for quality schools. They are not isotopes couched before TV screens. In the politics of opportunism they are often the scapegoats for what ails, when the reality is they pay most of the taxes, despite what you hear, and frequently do more to provide enterprise, meaning jobs for you and me.

No E. A. Robinson for me. I prefer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who envied the rich in their gated life as an obsessed outsider desiring entrance. And I know why.

Where are you, Aladdin with your magical lamp? I’ve a wish to make.

rj

Finding a hobby: shaking yourself awake

Do you have a hobby? I suppose a hobby is anything you spend time doing with a passion, not because it’s practical, but for its own sake- a kind of follow your bliss thing. Everybody should have a hobby, if nothing else, to break the 9 to 5 syndrome that, along with sleep, consumes two thirds of our lives, a precious commodity slipping like sand through our fingers daily till one day we find we’re no longer that age when all our body parts did their thing and desire never slackened and courage came in abundance.

Now there are all kinds of hobbies. As a child in Philly, I once picked-up a boy scout handbook. It fascinated me to read of so many skill areas, from mastering rope knots to bee-keeping. Master 20 of them and you got to be an eagle scout, top- of-the line. Just one would have been plenty for me. Do you have a hobby? I’d be grateful if you’d share it with me in the commentary section that comes after a post.

My hobbies? I have many interests such as reading, gardening, and even blogging. But I’m all about specializing, or developing expertise to the point you become an authority like a connoisseur of fine wine. Sometimes a hobby can bloom into a career. How cool is that?

If we have to sit under the toad, work, as poet Philip Larkin once put it, then there’s nothing surpassing that rarity when vocation and avocation prove bed fellows. Hobbies give joy, release us from a volatile world, help us get in touch with ourselves. God knows, in these uncertain times we need a hobby more than ever to wade through life’s daily muck and capricious surprises.

I was just thinking: how intriguing it would be to find out what hobbies, if any, many of our icons–movie stars, athletes, political figures, etc, pursue. I know that Churchill and Eisenhower were into painting. Celebrity Dennis Weaver got into photography as a youngster and got quite good at it. Keanu Reeves indulges in his band, Dogstar.

Hobbies can do good for others. Besides collecting orphans, Brad Pitt has founded and is active in a project that builds affordable housing for the displaced in post-Katrina New Orleans. Geena Davis is one hell of an archer, finishing 24th among 300 would-be Olympic archers. Go, Geena! They’re all busy people, but they all have hobbies.

Me, I’ve always had this hankering for travel. As a child, I studied flags, read about countries, pursued ships docked at the Philly pier, spent oodles of time working-up imaginary itineraries, a wanna-be Frank Buck bent on safari. Out of this came my love for languages. I guess I’ve studied about thirteen of them now, not all of them for long spells, but some, a great deal like German and French. These last years, I’ve chosen to specialize, more specifically, to learn Spanish well, and so, todos los dias (everyday), with rare exception, I spend time working at it. The trick is to gauge your interests, choose one, and master it well.

I think Dale Carnegie may have said it best: “Today is life–the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake, Develop a hobby, Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”

The lost art of letter writing

I don’t know about you, but I miss the old-fashioned letter, the seeming casualty of email in our time of computer dominance. I miss both the sending and receiving. My father was a faithful letter writer and if we kids didn’t answer, we got hell.

Though I appreciate their virtually instant delivery devoid of stamps and mailboxes, there is just something too impersonal about emails, To me, they seem modern substitutes for the telegram. Abounding in brevity, they tend to forfeit depth and perhaps sincerity. The idea is to get things said hurriedly.

Letter writing has a long history, and some of the best letters exhibit art in their beauty and substance. I remember how struck I was with this when I first came upon the letters exchanged between Vincent van Gogh and his brother, Theo. Voltaire was one of the most prolific letter writers, writing thousands of them in several languages on virtually every subject. In America, Jefferson stands in the forefront, writing some 26,000 letters.

Letters can be illuminating. I think of those letter writers I’m familiar with: Keats, Dickinson. Woolf, and Joyce. We’d be at a substantial loss in understanding their motivation and the context of their art without those letters. Do today’s great thinkers and artists still write letters? I wouldn’t bet on it. The loss is incalculable. Emails, in any event, usually get deleted or, worse-case scenario, get lost in computer crashes.

Letter-writing gave us opportunity to be pianists with words and sentences, playing out their chords rhythmically and infinitely.

Letter writing brought us into deeper knowledge of ourselves as well as each other. In so many ways, writing has always been a means to self-discovery, the finding in reflection of who we are and what we really want to say.

In one of life’s telling ironies, technology now threatens the email with even greater minimization of written discourse in the increasing popularity of texting to get the job done. Messaging may even be making in-roads on telephone calls. Again, the idea is brevity.

In my teaching years, I would always counsel that when you really care about someone, you write a letter. I hold to that counsel still.