Waiting for November 4

My wife has a distinctive way to read books, especially mystery books.  About a third of the way through, her curiosity and anxiety about the outcome begins to dominate, and she can’t continue without knowing what’s going to happen.  So she skips to the end.  If it’s a mediocre book, that will suffice.  If it’s a good book, she’ll go back and read through to the end again, taking pleasure in the journey and the quality of the writing. 

Generally I have more patience with outcomes.  Not now.  Not with the political drama that’s playing out this week.  Not with the powerful—I think it’s fair to say desperate—need to defeat Trump and his Senatorial enablers.  Not with the entire democratic process potentially falling prey to the president’s need to stay in front of the cameras.  Not until Trump is gone.  Then I will relax.

These days, I can hardly breathe, and I can’t think straight.

Like most of my friends, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading and thinking about politics.  I read the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, The Daily Beast, Vox.  And I listen to Ezra Klein podcasts to get a deeper knowledge of the issues, to get behind the headlines. To fortify my opinions.  Admittedly, I am mainly in search of reassurance. 

I read and I think as though my efforts will make a difference.  I know, I know.  This is childlike magical thinking, but I can’t help it.  Even when my mind seems fully and intelligently engaged, the magical thinking dominates my spirit.  If I miss something, the Biden camp might miss it too.  Somehow, I need to send them the signals, warn them if they aren’t taking care of business.

I do think and accumulate knowledge—I know more about politics now than  I ever have in my life.  Far more than during the Nixon run to the presidency or the awful George W. Bush regime.  And, embarrassingly, far more than during the Great Society, when my values were better represented.  I could write a book on all that I’ve learned.

But, at base, I’m not really learning and thinking.  I’m feeling.  I’m angry and I’m frightening and I’m embarrassed for my country.   

I am angry at the Republican lies and venality.  I am angry at the racism, come finally and fully to the surface.  I am angry that  our country features minority rule because of the distorted distribution of power that is built into the Electoral College and the Senate.  Yeats once wrote that “the best lack all conviction” while “the worst are full of passionate intensity.”  As a result “The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”  When I imagine a Trump victory—that “rough best, its hour come round at last”—I feel like I’m drowning. 

And I’m scared.  I’m scared that the ideals—what Jill Lepore calls “These Truths”—that have animated the best of our nation’s aspirations, the ideals that have provided me with an ethical baseline during my entire life—may tumble.  That oligarchy and authoritarian government, filled with corruption and narcissistic pillage, could take my country from me.  I’m scared about the ascendance of right wing conspiracy theories and their soldiers, the militias who threaten to bloody American streets. 

I am heartbroken when I think that we might fall short of the multi-cultural democracy so eloquently represented during the Black Lives Matter protests.

When I step back and ask: would a right wing, racist oligarchy effect my personal life?   Probably not.  That’s a little embarrassing.  My family and I would likely continue in our secure middle class life.  We would eat well.  Someday my wife and I may even travel again.  We wouldn’t live pay check to pay check.  Our savings are good enough. 

But the vast majority of people will suffer and suffer more.  Especially people of color.  Along with everyone else, my children and grandchildren will suffer when the earth heats up and the air turns poisonous.  And the water isn’t drinkable.  And it becomes harder and harder to dissent because an authoritarian government has been installed,  the run by people who are as evil but more competent than Donald Trump.

On the other hand, the current historical moment might be a true turning point.  The other side of a White, minority rule oligarchy is a far truer multi-cultural democracy.  This possibility is new and breathtaking.  Literally, the potential amazes me.  And because I hope so intensely for this outcome, I also find it hard to breathe as I wait for the outcome.

For the first time in decades, this transformation is more than a thought.  It feels real.  It feels imminent.  I feel like I will be at home at last.  If it is realized, I will breathe freely.

OK, there’s still the pandemic.  I could get sick.  I’m 78 and I have pre-existing conditions.  People I love could get sick.  But oddly enough, the pandemic seems different.  There are ways we can effect the outcome: wearing masks, keeping our distance, washing our hands, testing for Covid-19, tracing the outbreaks before they explode, and the like.  I can talk with others who suffer with the stress of it all, and work with a few healthcare leaders.  I feel a small sense of agency about Covid-19, even it if means that Franny and I have to shut ourselves in our home. 

I wish I could feel that same sense of agency in politics.  The sense that I can effect the outcome.  I remember playing basketball, being totally involved.  I was never as nervous as when I was rooting for my son or my team, when I was outside looking in.  We do a little.  We give money to presidential and senatorial campaigns.  We vote.  But it feels like a spit in the ocean.  The giving itself sometimes even adds to the helpless feeling. 

I can’t wait until the election season is over and we’ve won.  Then I’ll breathe. 

And Then Again… Rethinking Retirement

During the slow days of pandemic and retirement, I’ve been working my way through the Hebrew Bible, searching for some useful perspective.  It is a strange mixture of texts, combining the ‘origin narratives’ of Genesis and Exodus with the behavioral instructions of Deuteronomy, the romantic and erotic love poems of The Song of Songs and the brilliant, almost nihilistic philosophy of Ecclesiastes. 

Ecclesiastes fits my mood.  It begins by telling us that we are born, we live, and we die.  Life is mere breath.  There is no gain for those of us who “toil under the sun…A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.”  Everything — birth and family and death — has a season, which we can observe and appreciate.  But the seasons, like lives, pass.  Holding on is futile and ultimately frustrating. 

And yet.  And yet. Though life is “mere breath,” we are enjoined to live it as seriously and ethically as we can.  Not for the reward it will bring in either this or a next life.  But for its own sake.  Stranger still, it is important to continue our search for wisdom, even though its lessons may be ephemeral.

I’ve lived my entire life within this paradox.  I can find no preaching, no word from on high, that guaranties that my efforts to perform good deeds, to support good causes, will lead to happiness or fulfillment.  But not doing so seems wrong, seems worse, and leaves me feeling empty and enervated. 

Over the years, I have found great comfort in the companionship provided by Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.  Like Sisyphus, I keep rolling boulders up mountains.  When they fall back as they inevitably do, I begin the long journey upward again.  And again.  Because that is the only action I can take that seems true to my values, thus one of the only things that lends dignity to my life. 

And I’ve done it a lot, for about 65 years. In 1956 I tried to organize a busload of 14 year olds from my school to march for Civil Rights.  It was too close to the repressive age of McCarthyism, and not a single student would stick out their neck to join me.  I failed.  But I joined a busload from the neighboring town that was largely Black, and we marched.  I learned a great deal. 

When I objected to the choices of the 1964 Presidential election, I organized a “mock political convention” for high school students.  We drew in hundreds but, of course, we had no impact on the election.  Still, I loved the action.  I loved feeling purposeful.

In 1968, when Harvard students struck against participation in the Vietnam War, I protested by creating The New College, which proposed more experiential and hands-on teaching, with far more input from students, than the University offered.  We billed it as democracy in the classroom.  It was an immediate success, attracting hundreds of students and a number of younger faculty members.  I sought Harvard’s support but, of course, they were opposed.  The New College petered out when the strike ended.  I can’t tell you how much fun I had anyway.   

In 1975,together with my friends David Kantor and Carter Umbarger, I started the Family Institute of Cambridge (FIC) to challenge the individualistic and interior focus of psychoanalytical psychotherapy, and to insist that families and communities—real people, not internal projection screens—mattered too.  The FIC was a big hit throughout New England and endured for 39 years.  Then, as “family systems therapy” grew successful, it was absorbed into the mainstream of the therapy work as one “modality” among others, no longer a challenge to the whole self-centered individualistic and sometimes narcissistic therapy enterprise.  We were insulted and disappointed, but I’d have to say that introducing family therapy American society was a great adventure.

In 2006, I founded the Institute for Nonprofit Practice (INP), to train leaders, particularly leaders of color, thus furthering the cause of social justice.  In the beginning, as in almost every serious enterprise I have been involved in, people challenged me.  In this case, some sneered: “Why is an old White guy stepping into territory where he doesn’t belong?”  But the INP has prospered, especially since I had the wisdom to hand off leadership to a brilliant young woman of color.  With each year, the INP is more and more of a national success story.  I’m sure its rise will someday slow or even stall, but it feels like just the right thing to do.  I am so proud to be a part of it.

Looking back, the patterns of my life seem so predictable.  I organize to challenge to a prevailing system—political, cultural, medical, educational—and to fight injustice.  My efforts sometimes fail quickly, sometimes succeed, at least for a while, but always fade away, as I, myself, am gradually fading.  As it is said, we are “mere breath.”

As a young man, I expected something different in old age.  I was intrigued by Erik Erikson’s idea of ego integrity as the guidepost for my final act.  Ego integrity speaks to a life well lived.  Not without errors of judgment.  Not without sadness, even tragedy.  But an acceptance of life’s complexity and a belief that you have tried hard to live according to your values.  A post-narcissistic state of mind, in which you have let go the need for personal achievement and the need to control others.  A world best handed off, as graciously as possible, to the next generation.   

The reward that Erikson portrayed and that I imagined — for both the life well lived and honestly released — would be inner calm.  Peace.  Over the years, I’ve gathered many images that invoke that peace, chief of which comes from the Yeats poem, Lapis Lazuli.  It paints a picture of ancient wise men, seated on a mountain top, far removed from worldly concerns, beyond the reach of the slings and arrows of an engaged life, and whose “ancient eyes are gay.” 

The alternative to ego integrity, according to Erikson, is despair.  A life dominated by a sense of regret about opportunities missed, unrequited love and untendered respect, an unfulfilled life.  In this age of Covid-19 and the looming threat of authoritarian government, it would be easy enough to yield to such despair and its attendant lethargy— living out one’s life, off to the side, not so much calm as in a state of anxious waiting for frail old age and death. 

But Erikson’s dichotomous view of the options confronting me, at my age, now feels constraining.  Four years after more-or-less retiring, I have started to wade back into the fray, to resume the coaching of non-profit, political, and health care leaders.  I’ve bought a new appointment book – one with ample space for hourly appointments – and I love how it sits there on my desk, filling up with the names of young women and men who work for organizations that bend the arc toward justice, and who believe I still have something to offer.  I think that I do.  I prefer breathing the air of engagement better than the stale air of fading away.