Industry is the Enemy of Melancholy

I was fortunate to retire from my traditional work career at the relatively young age of 56. Retiring early had become a goal of mine ever since I observed how much my father enjoyed his 30 year post-work life. My father was perfectly content to leave the working life behind and fill up his days with fishing, tending his vegetable garden, solving the daily crossword puzzle, taking naps and watching the home town Sports teams on his television.

When the time came for me to retire, I had an idyllic vision of spending my days in similar fashion. Finally, after 56 years, I was looking forward to being my own boss – thrilled to have the opportunity to wake up every day and do whatever it was that interested me. I believed that every day would feel like Christmas!

And those first few months of retirement really were magical. Gone was the stress of having to be available 24/7 to my company’s sales and management teams who were battling to close million dollar deals, gone was the daily 3 to 4 hour commute in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and gone was the chronic sleep deficit.

It was goodbye to all that. What replaced it was the pleasure of deciding which book to read from my list of “books I always wanted to read“, fly fishing in the beautiful rivers of New England, taking long rides on my electric bike, spending quality time with my grandkids, and attending stimulating concerts and plays with my wife.

Something begin to happen, however, that I was not expecting about six months into my retirement. As the novelty and thrill of being retired began to subside I began to notice that I was experiencing melancholy moods and moments of soul searching. I was spending time reflecting on topics like past loss, the certainty of my physical and mental decline, and the uncertainty of how future generations will deal with the big existential challenges the world is facing.

Without the rigors of work to occupy my attention, my mind was set free to wander where it wanted to go and to my surprise I discovered that it often wanted to contemplate dark and doleful topics. I was not that concerned about these sometime melancholy moods because I reasoned that it is one of life’s natural reactions to harbor feelings of both happiness and sadness; and I remembered the wise old grandmother who once said: “A good day is a laugh and a cry“. Still I wondered why my pensive thoughts were increasing in frequency at a time in my life when I expected to be most content.

Then I happened to read about a study conducted by Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert which could help to explain the phenomenon I was experiencing. These researchers developed a smartphone app that allowed them to collect the thoughts, feelings, and actions of a broad range of people at random moments as they went about their daily activities.

Using the app, Killingsworth and Gilbert asked people what they were doing and how happy they were while doing it. They sifted through 25,000 responses from more than 5000 people and reported that 46% of the people were thinking about things other than what they were actually doing at the time (in other words, they were daydreaming about something other than what they were doing). They discovered that those people who were daydreaming typically were not happy; while those who were fully engaged in their activity were the happiest. 

The researchers wrote that unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating instead events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. This “stimulus-independent thought” or “mind wandering” appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation.

Although this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows people to learn, reason, and plan, it apparently comes with an emotional cost. “We see evidence that a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” they said in their report. The bottom line is that we’re more likely to think negative thoughts when we let our minds wander.

Maybe that is why people who are waiting in line or stuck in traffic appear to be more irritable. And maybe my melancholy moods have increased in frequency since leaving work simply because my mind is no longer required to spend 10+ hours a day focused on the demands of my job.

This study confirms that many philosophical and religious traditions are on to something true when they teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and by training their practitioners to resist mind wandering and concentrate on the here and now. Yoga teachers and those teaching meditation practices usually stress the importance of “mindfulness” or “being present” for a good reason — because when we do, it usually puts us in a better mood.

When I look back at my work career, I can see now that those moments when I felt most fulfilled was when I was in the middle of product development activities, being part of a team inventing electronic test solutions to solve complex manufacturing challenges. During those moments all the powers of my mind were fully engaged in solving the problem at hand and there was a sense that the results of the team’s collective work would have a positive impact on the company, our customers, and to a certain extent, society in general.

William F. Buckley put his finger on the unique ability that meaningful work has in preventing the onset of depressive feelings when he wrote “Industry is the enemy of Melancholy“. Simply put, if we are busy doing work that requires a focused mind it becomes difficult for the mind to wander and contemplate spirit dampening topics that are likely to cause the blues.

I happened to listen to an online homily about work that touched on a similar theme from a spiritual point of view that was given by Bishop Robert Barron. Bishop Barron made the point that our very being is deeply influenced by our actions and that the kind of work we do has a lot to do with the kind of people we become.

People who have no work usually struggle with depression because our sense of dignity often comes from work. Those who suffer from unemployment feel not just the financial burden of a lost paycheck, but also the loss of dignity brought about from the loss of their livelihood.

When you are feeling down one of the things psychologists recommend is to get to work on a project. It tends to make you feel better because work engages the powers of mind, will, creativity, and imagination and we become awakened when we give ourselves over to a project.

It doesn’t have to be a grand or complicated project. In fact, Bishop Barron mentioned that he found that one of the things that brings him the most satisfaction is doing the dishes. His day is usually filled with meetings and intellectual activities, so it is a relief for him to do some simple physical work at the end of the day. It brings him satisfaction to make order out of a dirty kitchen and to see everything clean and in its place when he is done.

The Bishop referenced this lyric from Bob Dylan’s song “Forever Young” to emphasize that work is a blessing and that souls can not fully prosper when their hands and feet are idle.

“May your hands always be busy, may your feet always be swift, may you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift”

Bob Dylan; Forever Young

Not all work is physical, though. Pope John Paul II categorized different kinds of work for the faithful. There is physical work (the work of the body), intellectual work (the work of the mind), spiritual work (the feeding of one’s soul), and moral work (charitable work on behalf of the poor and mistreated). When we are attentive to each of these categories of work in our daily life, it is then that we best fulfill our divine potential and become collaborators with the purpose of God.

I like that idea. May we all come to see our work, in all its different manifestations, as collaborating with the purpose of God and as bringing us into a more perfect union with a higher power.

“I do not understand; I pause; I examine”

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) has been recognized as one of the most significant philosophers of the 16th century. Born into a privileged family and raised during the period of the French Renaissance, he was educated in a private boarding school where all his lessons were taught in Latin. Because of his family’s great wealth, he was free to devote the first half of his life to jobs serving the public sector; including volunteering as a legal counselor, advisor to King Charles IX and mayor of the town of Bordeaux.

In 1571, at the age of 38, he retired from public life to his estate, where he isolated himself from all social and family affairs so that he could dedicate his time to reading, meditating, and writing. It was in his castle’s round library room – which contained more than 1,500 books – where Montaigne probed his mind and produced two highly influential books titled simply Essays; which he published in 1580. Montaigne wrote that “I am myself the matter of my book“, and his stated goal was to describe humans, and especially himself, with utter frankness.

Some of the key topics Montaigne explored in his various essays include:

• Mankind’s dangerously inflated claims to knowledge and certainty
• The assertion that there is no greater achievement than the ability to accept one’s limitations
• The problem of trying to locate truth in commonly accepted ideas that are false or unexamined – especially since many things we held yesterday as articles of faith today we know as fables.
• The importance of freeing ourselves from outside influences, customs and opinions
• His belief that the best path to understanding truth is by a careful exploration of one’s own body-and-mind.

Montaigne believed that the self, even with all its imperfections, was the best possible place to begin the search for truth, even though our identities can’t be defined as a stable thing because it is always changing. The most obvious example to him was the struggle of living with the infirmities of a human body. “Our bodies smell, ache, sag, pulse, throb and age regardless of the best desires of our mind“. It is only in acceptance of these traits that we can remain faithful to the truth of one’s being.

Montaigne isolated himself while writing his Essays but maintained the importance of maintaining contact with the outside world of other people and events because one can learn much that is useful from others. He described human beings as having a front room, facing the exterior street, where they meet and interact with others, but also with a back room where they are able to retreat back into their interior private self to reflect upon the vagaries of human experience and consider how it impacts their intimate identity.

Montaigne was refreshingly different from other philosophers and academics of his day who believed that their advanced powers of reason were a divine gift that gave them mastery over the world and a happiness that was denied to lesser educated creatures. He mocked those philosophers who were proud of their big brains and his writings come across as wise and intelligent – but also as modest and eager to debunk the pretensions of learning.

He wrote of his fellow academics and philosophers: “On our highest thrones in the world we are seated, still, on our arses” and, “…in practice, thousands of little women in their villages have lived more gentle, more equable and more constant lives than us.

He mocked books that were difficult to read. He found Plato boring and just wanted to have fun with books. “I’m not prepared to bash my brains out for anything, not even for learning’s sake – however precious it may be. If one book tires me, I just take up another“.

[note: I must admit that this sentiment makes me feel somewhat better about my decision to hold off reading the notorious difficult novel Ulysses by Irish writer James Joyce].

Montaigne was honest about the limitations and usefulness of his own intellect and attacked his prestigious academic friends for studying difficult things that were not useful to our lives.

“Difficulty is a coin which the learned conjure with so as not to reveal the vanity of their studies. Intellectuals would prefer you to study other people’s books way before we study our own minds. If man were wise, he would gauge the true worth of anything by its usefulness and appropriateness to his life”

I can’t help but wonder if Montaigne’s admiration for the working class – and life’s simple things – stemmed from the decision his humanist father made to leave him for three years when he was a small boy in the sole care of a peasant family in their town, in order to “draw the boy close to the people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help“.

Whatever the reason for his modest and humble personality, Montaigne comes across as one of the world’s first examples of a tolerant mind; a breath of fresh air in the cloistered and snobbish corridors of 16th century academia. He became an inspiration and encouragement to all those who felt put-upon and patronized by the arrogance of self-proclaimed clever people.

Montaigne tells us that each one of us is richer than we think. We may all arrive at wise ideas if we cease to think of ourselves as unsuited to the task just because we haven’t been classically trained or happen to lead an ordinary life.

The inscription Montagne had placed on the crown of the book shelf in his library was “I do not understand; I pause; I examine“. He had the inscription placed there to remind him of the limitations of his own knowledge and to caution him about the dangers that can result when one hastily forms opinions without careful consideration of all the facts.

Too many people today, especially since the advent of social media – which allows anybody to pass themselves off as experts – form their beliefs by adopting commonly accepted ideas or by making broad generalizations. Outside influences and political talking points trigger knee-jerk reactions from those who fail to take the time to study all sides of a topic – or to consider what is the truth and what is morally just.

It would be refreshing if more of us today, before forming our opinions, would like Montaigne, acknowledge the limitations of our knowledge, admit that we don’t fully understand a topic and then take time to examine all aspects of the issues in question using qualified experts in the field as our guides.

The danger of operating a society with uninformed or half-informed subjects was identified as early as the 2nd century by the Roman writer Publilius Syrus who said that it is “Better to be ignorant of a matter than to half know it“.

Today there are so many competing sources of information, where anyone with a computer can offer their uninformed opinions. Few people check the credentials of writers or the authenticity of the facts, and foreign actors can easily spread misinformation along via unregulated social networks.

The next time we are asked to form an opinion or make a decision about subjects we do not fully understand, we would do well to follow the sage advice of Montaigne: Do not let somebody else speak for you and do not fall prey to the pressures of biased outside influences. Instead take a moment to pause, study all sides of the issue, consult qualified experts and sources, and endeavor to reach true understanding.

If you can summon the conviction and discipline to do this, then you will be able to take solace knowing that even though you can not govern external events, you at least govern yourself.

There is a Season for Everything Under the Sun

One of the things I enjoy about my blogging hobby is that it leads me to discover authors who are writing thoughtful blogs on interesting subjects. I recently came across one such blog entry written by Maria Popova who was reviewing a book by Katherine May titled Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.

In her book, May writes about her experience living through a deep and disquieting period that she describes as one of the “winters of her life”. The thing about the blog that caught my attention was the author’s perspective that life is like the seasons, constantly changing throughout our lifetimes.

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

Excerpts from Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May

Our culture leads us to believe that life progresses along a linear scale from helplessness towards ever-increasing flourishing, but in reality life is like the seasons, operating in a cyclical fashion, with many periods of ups and downs. Imagining life to operate only in a linear fashion can be harmful when people start to falsely believe that something is wrong with their life if it does not get progressively better as they get older or when they need to take detours along the way.

If we accept that our lives are more cyclical, with periods containing many Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter seasons of the spirit, then we can become better equipped to understand that there will periods of happiness and sadness throughout our life – as well as periods of strength and fragility.

When you start thinking about periods of your life as seasons, you come to realize that people live through many winters in their lifetime – some mild, some severe – and that it is possible, like the trees, to emerge from those winters not only undiminished but ready for new growth.

It is reassuring to think that our winter seasons do not need to be fallow and unproductive and that they can be a productive period when we are given the time and space we need to go on growing. Albert Camus wrote “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer”. If we garden the winters of the soul with care, we can set in place seeds that will bloom into future summers of strength.

Katherine May makes the observation that trees enter a waiting phase during winter where the tree has everything it needs to make it through severe weather:

“Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again.“

We all need to take an example from the trees and approach the winter seasons of our life in a similar way. Retreat, face our our sadness, let go of the things in our life that are no longer bearing fruit, be nourished by the strong roots of our personal friends and communities and get ready to face the world again.

The winter seasons of our life are usually characterized by sadness that is triggered when we experience loss of one kind or another. Those of us who have lived through winters know that there are self-punishing ways to be sad, and self-healing ways to be sad. The key to skillful wintering is to learn the difference between the two so that we are stronger when the season begins to turn – just like the branches of a tree during the depths of winter are covered in tiny dormant buds that will spring to life when the weather turns.

Since we are all certain to encounter winter seasons during our life, May concludes with a warning against judging people when they are down on their luck and experiencing misfortune. It is better she writes to encourage empathy, compassion and understanding for those that we find suffering:

Here is another truth about wintering: you’ll find wisdom in your winter, and once it’s over, it’s your responsibility to pass it on. And in return, it’s our responsibility to listen to those who have wintered before us. It’s an exchange of gifts in which nobody loses out.

This may involve the breaking of a lifelong habit, one passed down carefully through generations: that of looking at other people’s misfortunes and feeling certain that they brought them upon themselves in a way that you never would. This isn’t just an unkind attitude. It does us harm, because it keeps us from learning that disasters do indeed happen and how we can adapt when they do. It stops us from reaching out to those who are suffering. And when our own disaster comes, it forces us into a humiliated retreat, as we try to hunt down mistakes that we never made in the first place or wrongheaded attitudes that we never held. Either that, or we become certain that there must be someone out there we can blame.

Watching winter and really listening to its messages, we learn that effect is often disproportionate to cause; that tiny mistakes can lead to huge disasters; that life is often bloody unfair, but it carries on happening with or without our consent. We learn to look more kindly on other people’s crises, because they are so often portents of our own future.

This is good advice for the next time you find the seasons changing in your life. Do not despair – remember that every season can be profitable for our growth and survival. I have lived long enough to know that we can experience winter seasons during the blush of our youth and that it is possible for spring and summer seasons to joyfully populate the twilight of our years.

There is no telling when good things or terrible things will happen to us and we cannot know the entire meaning of it all, but we can know that life can be beautiful even in the darkest of seasons. So rejoice during all your seasons under the sun and remember that all our emotions and actions, both negative and positive, have important meaning and we become more majestic when we learn from them all.

It’s Not Dark Yet, But it’s Getting There

I recently celebrated my 60th birthday – a moment of reckoning in one’s life when it seems appropriate to reflect on the bygone days of youth while also wondering what form life will take during the inevitable transition to old age.

The 60th birthday is considered a major milestone in many cultures. In China, someone who has reached the age of 60 is considered to have completed a full life cycle. The 60th birthday is commemorated with great extravagance because it is considered by them to be the beginning of a second life. 

When I think about it, it does seem to me as if I have lived a full life cycle. After all, what more can a man ask out of 60 years of life than to be born into a loving family; be bestowed with good health and a good education; be fulfilled with a satisfying job and rewarding career; be fortunate to find and share in the love of two beautiful women – who made me a proud father, step-father and grandfather to children who are now on their way to living out their own successful life cycles.

It’s funny to think back now of memories I have of playing the old Milton Bradley Board Game of Life in my College apartment with my future fiance and our friends. The game simulates a person’s travels through his or her life, from college to retirement, with jobs, marriage and possible children along the way. The overall goal is to retire as the wealthiest player at the end of the game.

Milton Bradley’s Game of Life

The decisions players make along the way – which include purchasing insurance policies, bank mortgages and stock investments – determine who wins the game of life and who spends their retirement days in Millionaire Estates, Countryside Acres, or the Poorhouse Farm.

Seems like only yesterday I was playing that game, but it was 40 years ago, and I realize I am now at a point where I have completed most of my personal life decisions and ought to be thankful for getting to the end with a winning hand.

I may not have retired the wealthiest man, or live in a Millionaire Estate, but I do live in a comfortable home in a bucolic setting which could easily pass for Countryside Acres. No matter what happens now, I can’t really lose at the game of life because I’ve already won – I’m playing with house money!

One glaring omission in the Life board game that I didn’t notice at the time (because no one who is young ever thinks about getting old) was that it stops at retirement – the end of our 1st life cycle.

The game does not ask the players to consider Medicare or Social Security benefits, Long Term Care insurance, Health Care Proxies, Wills and Trusts, Durable Power of Attorneys, Assisted Living and Nursing Homes, Disability, Hospice, Death, Funerals and burial decisions. All of those elements make up the domain of the second life cycle.

The unrecognizable face of the old man staring back at me from the mirror reminds me that I’m running out of time; as do these song lyrics that I find shuffling more often now in the soundtrack in my mind:

“I don’t look like I used to, I don’t walk like I used to, I don’t love like I used to. Oh… I can’t do the things I used to because I feel old”

“I feel Old” by the Heartless Bastards

“Ain’t gonna need this body much longer, ain’t gonna need this body much more. I put in 10 million hours. Washed up and worn out for sure”

“Don’t Need this Body” by John Mellencamp

“I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will. I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standin’ still… Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer, It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there”

“Not Dark Yet” by Bob Dylan

I am beginning my journey into the realm of the second life. From what I have observed, people who first enter this realm can become bewildered and embarrassed by the onset of old age and all of the infirmities that begin to come with it.

I was struck by this paragraph from the Grace Paley short story “Friends“, because it captures the awkward unsaid sentiments aging friends can experience when they haven’t seen each other in a while:

People do want to be remembered as young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they’re getting older they look at each other’s face a little ashamed. It’s clear they want to say, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn’t want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life’. To which, most of the time, the friend’s eyes will courteously reply, ‘My dear, it’s nothing at all. I hardly noticed’.

“Friends” by Grace Paley

My wife’s work at a hospice agency reminds me every week that the end comes before we know it and when it does it is usually painful and undignified. To focus only on this inevitability, however, is a distraction that diminishes all the possibilities for living a rewarding second life.

Instead it is better, I think, to focus on encouraging past research that shows people tend to grow steadily happier as they age. As the moodiness and demands of youth subsides, maturity seems to bring more contentment.

In a Pew Research Center survey, seven-in-ten respondents ages 65 and older said they were enjoying more time with their family, more financial security and more time for volunteer work, travel and hobbies. Sixty percent said they feel more respected and have less stress than when they were younger.

But there is some conflicting research on the subject of aging and happiness and some experts say contentment, no matter what the age, boils down to one thing: Attitude. They say attitude is everything and that the qualities that most contribute to feelings of contentment as we age include:

• Optimism – Older people seem to display a more positive outlook on life than their younger, stressed-out counterparts. As a person’s life expectancy decreases, they tend to focus on what makes them feel good today; rather than mulling over past regrets or future worries. They live in the moment focusing on what is good in their life rather than what has not been achieved.
• Less Want – Jackie Coller wrote: “There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.” The Buddhists believe that it is the human mind’s craving for things that is the source of suffering. As we age, we tend to become more comfortable and accepting of our lot in life and our role in society – thus reducing the conflicts and anxieties that come with constantly wanting to change our situation.
• Humor – Mark Twain said that “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” Being funny is possibly one of the best things you can do for your health. You can almost think of a sense of humor as your mind’s immune system.

Even though humor improves people’s overall quality of life, it is a hard habit for some people to adopt and practice. They take life too seriously and find it difficult to laugh at themselves or the frequent absurdities that make up our daily life.

In the novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes about an encounter an overly serious young girl has with her wise old Chinese friend:

“Do you think it’s funny to be so serious when I’m not even out of high school?” she asked. “I don’t see how it could be any other way, ” said Lee. “Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.”

“East of Eden” by John Steinbeck

With all this in mind, my simple goals for pursuing a second life filled with contentment are:

• to stay optimistic (60 may be old, but it is the youth of old age!)
• to want less (have few desires, be satisfied with what you have!)
• to cultivate my sense of humor (like George Carlin who joked when he turned 60 years of age that he was only 16 Celsius!)

If I am able to a accomplish those goals then maybe I will be lucky enough to feel like Ben Franklin who, at the goodly age of 84, wrote these words as he was preparing for the end of his remarkable second life…

“Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. I look upon death to be as necessary to to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.”

Taken from “The First American – The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” by H.W. Brands

“They are so happy, they don’t know how miserable they are”

On a snowy January day this past winter, while minding the fireplace in my living room, I found myself watching the movie/musical The Fiddler on the Roof.

1971 Movie Poster of Fiddler on the Roof

For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it is set in 1905 Imperial Russia, during a time when the Jews were being persecuted and evicted from their homes and villages by pogroms enacted by the reigning Tsars.

In the story, Tevye, a poor milkman and patriarch of a family with five daughters struggles to maintain his Jewish religious traditions in the face of outside cultural influences that threaten to disrupt and break apart his family.

The first time I watched the movie I was in my 20’s, too young and inexperienced in the ways of life to appreciate the wisdom and insights that were subtly portrayed – especially by the character Tevye.

Tevye is poor and uneducated, but he dreams every day of becoming rich and respected. While doing chores in his barn, he breaks into a song fantasizing about how good his life would be if only he was a wealthy man.

He imagines he would have the best house in town, his wife and children would strut like peacocks around town in the finest of clothes and servants would prepare rich foods for them to feast on every night.

But what Tevye craves most is not money – it is knowledge, wisdom and the respect of his close knit Jewish faith community:

“The most important men in town will come to fawn on me. They will ask me to advise them like Solomon The Wise – posing problems that would cross a rabbi’s eyes. And it won’t make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong – when you’re rich, they think you really know. If I were rich I’d have that time that I lack to sit in the synagogue and pray and maybe have a seat by the eastern wall, and I’d discuss the Holy Books with the learned men seven hours every day… and that would be the sweetest thing of all.”

Song lyrics from “If I were a Rich Man”

Tevye concludes the song with an appeal to God – one that is universally recognizable to many people who wonder about their lot in life: “Lord, who made the lion and the lamb. You decreed I should be what I am. Would it spoil some vast eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?”.

Despite Tevye’s frustration with his lowly station in life, the townspeople and movie viewers eventually come to respect him because of the authentic and intimate relationship he has with his God and because of the love, mercy and compassion he shows to his daughters.

Those qualities come into sharp focus as Tevye struggles with the fallout from a marriage agreement he has arranged for his oldest daughter Tzeitel. In Jewish tradition of the time it was customary for a father to choose a husband for their daughters. Tevye is pleased with himself because he has made a profitable agreement for his daughter to marry the rich, widowed village butcher.

When he goes to share this good news with his daughter, he is dismayed to learn that she is horrified at the thought of marrying the butcher and she begs her father not to force her into the marriage. He further discovers, that she has secretly pledged herself to marry Motel, the poor town tailor, who comes rushing in at the last moment to ask Tevye for his blessing to marry Tzeitel.

Tevye immediately refuses to give his permission. It is absurd for a couple to arrange a match for themselves. It goes against all tradition! Marriages must be arranged by the Papa! This should never be changed! Motel cannot support his daughter! He is only a poor tailor!

But Tevye begins to reconsider and soften after Motel shouts out “Even a poor Tailor is entitled to some happiness“. He stares into the eyes of his hopeful daughter and the poor tailor and sees the unmistakable love they have for each other, he tells himself that Adam and Eve had no matchmaker except God and he reasons that even though the tailor has absolutely nothing; things could never get worse for him, only better.

Tevye finally relents and gives the couple his blessing, accepting that his daughter is not ordained to have all the comforts in life. His willingness to forsake the rigid strictures of his community traditions and instead see the young couple through eyes of mercy and compassion becomes a grace-filled moment in the movie and a lesson for all of us that stubbornly cling to beliefs that are not based on love.

Two yeas later, we see Tevye delivering milk to his community while talking to God and updating him on the status of his daughter’s marriage.

“Motel and Tzeitel have been married for some time now. They work very hard and they’re as poor as squirrels in winter. But they’re so happy, they don’t know how miserable they are.”

This moment exposes the close personal relationship Tevye has with his God and the comfortable way in which they converse – as though God were just a friendly companion walking with him. Tevye never walks alone because God always walks beside him. It also reveals Tevye’s joy at the success of his daughter’s marriage and his belief that he made the right decision in giving them his blessing.

Tevye’s observation that the couple is so happy, they don’t know how miserable they are struck a chord of recognition with me. When I married my wife Elaine in the Summer of 1982, I was no more than a boy of 22 years old and still in College. We had no idea what was ahead of us. We had only part time jobs, a beat-up car, no savings and I had never been on a plane or traveled anywhere outside of New England.

We were poor as Church mice but we thought life was grand because we had each other and the bright prospect of our whole life in front of us. We saw everything in our life with new eyes and each milestone we shared was a thrill that made the bond between us stronger.

We started with nothing, but we didn’t mind because we loved each other and we had the support of our families who had shown us the blueprint for a successful life and given us the strong foundation we needed to succeed. The good things we had blinded us to the material deficiencies in our life.

Life changed fast for us – within a couple short years we had good jobs, a brand new home, a new car and a beautiful baby daughter. We gradually began to acquire all the trappings of material wealth that are associated with middle class families in America.

There is a challenge for couples as they grow older and more established to still remain grateful for the simple things. Once you begin to take for granted all the little things that first made you happy – and start thinking instead about all the things you don’t have – there exists a danger of developing a miserable attitude because you don’t recognize how good you have it.

The lessons I learned from watching the Fiddler on the Roof is to always look at each day with new eyes, to break away from past traditions that are preventing me from growing in grace and to seek out a more intimate relationship with my higher power – one that will support and comfort me as I navigate through the trials and tribulations of my life.

Whatever stage in life you find yourself in, may you too learn to find happiness in the simple things and always maintain that youthful wonder at the magic of being alive.

Suffering is wanting what you don’t have and having what you don’t want

Buddhism is a 2500 year old religion referred to as the philosophy of awakening. Up until a hundred years ago, Buddhism was mainly an Asian philosophy but it has increasingly gained adherents in Europe and America and today it has approximately 300 million followers world-wide.

A trio of events have recently occurred by happenstance to bring the practice of Buddhism to my attention and it has led me to dig deeper into the merits of this ancient teaching and philosophy.

The first event was my participation in an online course on Mindfulness Meditation that focused on Buddhist techniques for training the mind to detach from unhelpful thoughts that can control us.

The second event was my reading of the classic Jack Kerouac novels “On the Road” and “Dharma Bums” which demonstrated how Kerouac blended the Roman Catholic faith of his youth with the free spirited Buddhist teachings being practiced by his friends to create an interesting spiritual amalgam that greatly influenced the peace loving Beat Generation.

The final event was my reading of the book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind“; in which the author, Professor Yuval Harari, argued that the move away from polytheistic religions towards monotheistic religions (like Christianity and Islam) had an overall negative impact on the course of human history.

Harari  writes that real religious troubles began for humans with the rise of monotheism:

“Monotheists have tended to be far more fanatical and missionary than polytheists. A religion that recognizes the legitimacy of other faiths implies either that its god is not the supreme power of the universe, or that it received from God just part of the universal truth. Since monotheists have usually believed that they are in possession of the entire message of the one and only God, they have been compelled to discredit all other religions. Over the last two millennia, monotheists repeatedly tried to strengthen their hand by violently exterminating all competition.”

Harari believes that Buddhism and other enlightened eastern religions have been more beneficial to the human species because their teachings are characterized by their disregard for gods and because they do not require the acceptance of a Supreme Being to explain the origins and workings of the universe.

Buddhism is human-centered, rather than god-centered, and teaches that we must look within – not without – to find perfection and understanding. No one saves us but ourselves. Each human being has the capacity to purify the mind, develop infinite love and compassion and perfect understanding. Buddhism shifts attention from the heavens to the heart and encourages practitioners to find solutions to their problems through self-understanding.

Buddhists do not think that other religions are wrong. In fact, all religions share many common beliefs: among them that mankind’s present state is unsatisfactory, that a change of attitude and behavior is needed if the human situation is to improve and that the path to fulfillment  includes love, kindness, patience, generosity and social responsibility. It is only when believers narrowly cling to their one way of seeing things that religious intolerance, pride and self-righteousness can arise.

The first pillar of Buddhist teaching, referred to as the First Noble Truth, is that life is suffering. To live, you must suffer. It is impossible to live without experiencing some kind of suffering. We have to endure physical suffering like sickness, injury, tiredness, old age and eventually death and we have to endure psychological suffering like loneliness, frustration, fear, embarrassment, disappointment and anger.

Acknowledging that to live is to experience physical and psychological suffering is so true and obvious a statement that it cannot be denied. Unlike most religions whose central concept is a myth, or a belief that is difficult or impossible to verify, Buddhism starts with an irrefutable fact, a thing that everybody knows, that all have experienced and that all are striving to overcome. Buddhism gets right to the core of every individual human being’s concern – suffering and how to avoid it.

The Second Noble Truth of Buddhism is that all suffering is caused by craving. When we crave something but are unable to get it, we feel frustrated. When we expect someone to live up to our expectations and they do not, we feel let down and disappointed. When we want others to like us and they don’t, we feel hurt.

Even when we want something and are able to get it, it does not often lead to happiness because either we lose interest in it or we begin to fear that something will happen that causes us to lose it. Stated simply, the Second Noble Truth teaches that suffering results from wanting what you don’t have and having what you don’t want. This wanting and worrying deprives us of contentment and happiness.

It is remarkable that Socrates, even though he held polytheistic views, and lived before Buddhism was established, came to the same conclusions regarding the root cause of suffering in his writings:

“If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”

The Third Noble Truth explains how suffering can be overcome and how true happiness and contentment can be achieved. It involves developing a reflective mind in order to let go of delusions and to ponder things objectively without forming an opinion on whether they are good, bad, useful or useless. By training the mind to reject, relinquish and renounce the bottomless pit of our cravings, suffering can be gradually lessened and eliminated.

When we give up useless craving and learn to enjoy each day, without restless wanting, the experiences that life offers us, patiently enduring the problems that life involves without fear, hatred and anger, then we become happy and free. It is only then that we begin to live fully. When we are no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish wants, we are free from suffering and we have time to enjoy the present as it is. We  achieve what the Buddhists call Nirvana.

My limited look into the Buddhist faith and practices have been beneficial and thought provoking. I would recommend others to look into it as well because from my point of view its practices have been good for the world, it is praised by the wise and many have observed that when it is practiced it leads to happiness.

One factor in my consideration of Buddhism that was important to me is that I could not identify any practices of the Buddhists that would be incompatible with my Catholic faith. In fact, the two religions seem to reinforce one another and I can see how Jack Kerouac was able to harmonize Catholicism with Buddhism without becoming conflicted. He considered Jesus and Buddha spiritual brothers.

I believe in a higher power because I have personally felt a God presence guiding my steps throughout life, but I also believe in the capacity of the human mind to positively control our thoughts and actions.  We all could benefit from the ancient wisdom found in both traditions.