“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.

An Appreciation of my Wife on her 60th Birthday

Kathleen was born in 1960, the first-born of a third generation English/Irish couple scratching out a living in the gritty suburbs of Boston. Her mother and father were young parents who never possessed adequate parental skills to properly nurture their children.

In public her parents tried to present the picture of a perfect family; but behind closed doors it was a different story. They were routinely cruel to their children, inflicting harsh punishments for minor infractions. They were driven by their own selfish desires, letting the needs of their children take a backseat.

Despite the dysfunctional home and parental episodes of verbal and physical abuse, Kate was fortunately also exposed to glimmers of light: grandparents who lived nearby to look after her when things got out of hand at home; a favorite aunt who would spoil her; treasured books that helped her to imagine a life different than the one she was living; younger siblings to protect and bond with; and a catholic elementary school education that gave her the moral foundation to understand the difference between right and wrong.

Her parent’s disowned Kate after she graduated from High School because she refused to continue letting them bully her or acquiesce to their unreasonable demands on her life.

With no family support, she managed to get by with jobs as a checkout girl at the Supermarket and as a snack distributor. She shared a tiny apartment and went to school at night when she could afford it – eventually graduating from Bentley University with her business degree.

When she got married her parents expressed their disapproval by refusing to attend the wedding and by strong-arming most of her relatives to boycott the wedding as well.

Nevertheless she persisted, integrating well into her husband’s family – who gladly embraced her, loving and treating her like a daughter. She learned important lessons about how to be a loving parent from her father and mother in law that she never acquired from her own parents.

Someone had once told Kate that in this life you can either choose to be a victim or a survivor; and she was determined to be a survivor – refusing to let her past misfortunes define her or rob her of present and future joy.

It is said that when a child is born, the mother is born again also. Kate got a chance to be born again – being blessed with two daughters and a son over a period of 4 years. She vowed not to let history repeat itself, insisting that she would be a different kind of mother to her children than her mother was to her.

She succeeded in this vow by focusing on her family, working long hours to create a beautiful home and doing everything in her power to make sure her children had everything they needed. She sacrificed personal and professional goals to ensure the well-being of her children and to support her husband’s rising career.

When the marriage broke apart after almost 20 years, Kate was devastated. Overnight she became a single mother of two teenage daughters and a teenage son, struggling to pay, on a greatly reduced income, all the bills that came with maintaining the lifestyle to which her children were accustomed.

She did what she could to cut expenses and protect the children’s lives as much as possible from the turmoil and disruption that typically comes when parents divorce. Though the husband and wife relationship ended up in failure, Kate did her best for the sake of her children to ensure that the mother and father roles would be a success.

It was during this time that Kate and I began dating. We found each other via an online dating app, but were surprised to learn how much we actually had in common. We were both the same age, we lived in adjacent towns, our kids attended the same Catholic school and we were both grieving from the sudden death of our imagined lifetime dreams.

We met for a bicycle ride on our first date and I was intrigued by her honesty and seeming lack of effort to impress me with her clothes or appearance. She told me right up front that I should run away from her because she had three teenage children and an ex-husband that was a cop.

Her honesty came as a refreshing change compared to my other limited dating experiences and even after one brief date I could tell there was something substantial about her under the surface that called for a second date.

I enjoyed discovering over subsequent dates the beautiful qualities about her that were just waiting to come out – her intelligence; her sense of humor; her compassion for others; and her selflessness in trying to protect and provide for her children.

I saw in Kate a unique blend of toughness and tenderness that was very appealing. She shows her personal toughness by her refusal to be defeated by the obstacles and adversities that life throws at her; but at the same time she is very tender and compassionate with the people she encounters who need love, understanding and a helping hand.

I often wonder how it is that some people can grow up in dysfunctional families and live through life changing hurts but still bounce back from those adverse conditions to live happy and fulfilling lives. I so admire my wife for being one of those people who are blessed with that kind of supernatural resilience.

It seems to be a divine gift or maybe the answer to a prayer like the one Emily Dickinson made when she was struggling with the vagaries of her life:

“Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind – Thy windy will to bear!”

Emily Dickinson from the poem “Besides the Autumn Poets Sing”

The Lord granted Kate with a sunny disposition for sure. It is not in her nature to dwell on her troubles and disappointments or to wallow in self pity. Her tendency is to see the good in other people and to take actions that will lead to a hopeful future.

Somehow she has turned the lost battles of her life into fuel that has helped her to grow more understanding, more spiritual, more forgiving and more generous. She has managed with divine help I suppose to transform all her afflictions into a blessing. What others in her life intended for evil, she has turned into good.

She is a living testament to the adage that we are not the product of what we were, but the possibility of what we can be.

If power is defined as the ability to do good for others, then Kate has been a powerful force in the world by enriching countless lives. Her heart is happiest when she is performing acts of kindness that make life better for other people, especially her children, step-children, grandchildren, husband, siblings, nieces, nephews and community friends.

Even her job as a hospice liaison is spent comforting and assisting patients and families who are overwhelmed by the emotions of planning end-of life care for their loved ones. She was an angel to my extended family as she guided my father through his last days with dignity; and now helps my mother gracefully age-in-place in the home that she loves.

If it’s true that a life is made by what we give, then Kate has truly lived a wonderful life – and the lives of the people she has touched are so much richer for her being a part of it. Every time I hear the lovely lilt of her laughter I am reminded how much I love her and how fortunate I am to call her my wife.

So I toast my wife as she celebrates her 60^th birthday and begins what the Chinese like to call “the beginning of your second life“. I pray that the youth of her old age will be filled with love and happiness and that this blessing of her Irish ancestors will come true for her.

May joy and peace surround you,
Contentment latch your door,
And happiness be with you now,
And bless you evermore.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!”

In the book “Winesburg, Ohio”, a collection of short stories published in 1919, author Sherwood Anderson reveals the individual struggles of  the inhabitants of a small Ohio town as they try to reconcile their day to day lives with their roles in the community and their ambitions for the future.

The reader gradually discovers how the lives of each of the inhabitants intersect with one another and by the end of the book Anderson has painted a masterful portrait of the life of an alternating complex, lonely, joyful and strange American town.

While exposing the innermost thoughts of the character George Willard, a young man working as the town’s newspaper reporter, Anderson writes a very insightful commentary about the inner workings of a young mind as it begins to transition into manhood.

“George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing into manhood and new thoughts were coming into his mind… The mood that had taken possession of him was a thing known to men and unknown to boys.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens, he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name.

Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure.

If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy.

With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.

He shivers and looks eagerly about. The years he has lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With all his heart he wants to come close to some other human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the hand of another… He wants most of all understanding.“

Anderson’s striking observation struck a chord of recognition with me because I can remember when this transition happened in my life. It was after I ventured off to college, leaving behind the comfort of my own small town and the loving protection of my parents. It was then that I began to study and think about all the great thinkers, theologians and scholars that came before me and how their lives had contributed to human progress.

Like the character George Willard, I began to think backward for the first time in my life. I realized that all of those great men and women who inspired us with their accomplishments were now gone – countless figures who came out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The limitations of life began to become startlingly clear.

My professor of Medieval Literature studies was especially influential and enthusiastic about exposing me to the different philosophies and spiritual themes behind the great works of the middle ages – and describing how those writers grappled with trying to understand the meaning of life and their place in it.

He shared the despair felt by the pious man Geoffrey Chaucer as he considered his great work The Canterbury Tales; recognizing his book was a masterpiece, but also acknowledging that the work fell short and was ultimately meaningless; saying “What does it matter in the face of eternity“.

Shakespeare also brought readers face to face with the deepest questions about the pain and emptiness of life in Macbeth describing our existence as meaningless; “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing”.

The idea of the meaningless of life was a theme Solomon used in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He wrote “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity“. The word vanity as used by Solomon does not represent pride or vainglory. The Hebrew meaning for the word “Vanity” translates to vapor or breath, so Solomon was really trying to convey that all things are like a breath – short, impermanent and passing.

Unlike most other books in the Bible which teach about the meaning of life, Solomon in Ecclesiastes instead points a finger at the whole world and declares it meaningless. The world has no satisfaction in the end and all our accomplishments will be forgotten. He shares the same sentiment that his father before him, King David, expressed in Psalm 103:

“The life of mortals is like grass,
  they flourish like a flower of the field;
  the wind blows over it and it is gone,
  and its place remembers it no more.”

Solomon presents us with the problem of what it means to be human. We search high and low for answers to a gnawing fear inside us that we’re alone, that all of life is useless and we’ll just end up six feet under ground with no one to remember us. Solomon stares this fear in the face, offering up the most despairing of answers—there is no answer:

“I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity, and vexation of spirit.“ – Ecclesiastes 1:14

The effect all this deep questioning had on that young college kid coming of age was bracing. It did not cause me to despair because my faith and my upbringing provided me with an innate certainty that life does have meaning and purpose. But it did change my outlook on life in a profound way.

It made me realize that life was short and that no one is indispensable. It motivated me to put away childish things, focus on things of substance and appreciate each day. It reminded me to avoid selfishness knowing that whatever I accomplished or how much wealth I accumulated, it would die with me.

The biggest effect this change of thinking had on me, however, was the same one it had on George Willard. It made me want with all my heart to come close to some other human, to touch someone with my hands, to be touched by the hand of another. To find understanding with another soul. I reasoned that if you mean something to someone, and someone means something to you, then life can never be meaningless.

I was blessed to find that someone in College, that understanding with another human that brought life wonderful purpose and meaning; and even though that relationship was finite, as all relationships must be, the good news is that there are an unlimited number of  humans out there looking for understanding and love.

My advice is to venture out and mean something to someone – and in the end, your life will have meaning.