Beneficiaries of Chance

My friend died ten days ago.  Today would have been his birthday and my mind has been absorbed lately with thoughts and memories of him and his family.  As I reflect  on our relationship, I realized that I consider the deep friendship with him and his wife as the first adult couple relationship that Dan and I had.  All of our other friends we’d met in school or college, and we had friendships with colleagues of ours.  But this one was the first relationship we both made with another married couple and we’ve been lucky enough to sustain it over a couple of decades.

All this reminiscing called to mind a favorite excerpt from Ann Druyan’s book, Life with Carl: 

“I don’t ever expect to be reunited with Carl.  But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is… Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous - not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural.  We knew that we were beneficiaries of chance… That pure chance could be so generous and so kind… That we could find each other in the immensity of time… The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way that we took care of each other and our family, while he lived.  That is so much more important than the idea I will ever see him someday.  I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again.  But I saw him.  We saw each other.  We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.”  

Each of us, if we are lucky, finds someone else in the cosmos with whom there is an intense connection.  Ann Druyan’s relationship with Carl Sagan is one example.  Perhaps your thoughts are called to your relationship with your romantic partner, or the dearest of friends, or a sibling.  We are each beneficiaries of chance, as Druyan so beautifully puts it.

It is pretty much impossible for me to fathom the size of the cosmos in a literal way, as Sagan did.  In light of what remains an incomprehensible abstraction, though, I can still sense my own insignificance.  And I sense it in places like the coast, the desert, or the Grand Canyon, all of which are nearly as insignificant as a single human on a cosmic scale.  It cannot be physically possible for me to create a ripple in the fabric that is an immense universe of universes.

And yet, we are often fortunate enough to feel these ripples, and to be the recipients of them.  If we think of time as linear, as many cultures do, then A leads to B, which leads to C.  The series of choices, though, which caused us to arrive at A in the first place, are like branches of an enormous tree, forking and dividing again and again, leading to a multitude of decisions and other destinations.  What if is a question I rarely let myself ponder, as it serves little purpose except as fuel for regret.  But what if choices had been made differently?  Would they still have led me to you?  Or your grandparents to one another?  What if, what if, what if?

And these ripples work both ways in this roulette of life, making us beneficiaries of chance, and also encumbering us with great suffering and pain.  What if that car hadn’t crossed the double yellow?  What if those cells hadn’t divided exponentially far too quickly and yet simultaneously agonizingly slow?  How much of this life is chance?  How much is the magic we make of it?  My gram was fond of the adage Bloom where you are planted.  Her sentiments aren’t unusual for her generation who encountered far more global hardship during the Great Depression and World War II than I’ve encountered in mine.  I’ve attempted to follow her advice, but it doesn’t account for those electrifying relationships that shock us into a deeper consciousness of the other than we knew were possible.  We’ve all had relationships that we tried too hard to make work and that ended despite our efforts.

It seems unlikely that pure chance alone, or simply willing it so can create a bond with another that makes us grateful for the small ripples in the cosmos that enrich our lives so deeply or shake us to our very foundations.  Louise Erdrich, in her novel the Painted Drum, so beautifully states,

“Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.  You have to love.  You have to feel.  It is the reason you are here on earth.  You are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

We can believe that these connections are destiny.  Or chance.  Or the product of our efforts.  It’s all deeper than I can plumb, and so instead I will focus on my gratitude that I am the beneficiary of the apples that fall around me, whether I planted the orchard or not.  I will remain astonished.

Anchor

I spent Independence Day and most of the first week of July hosting a family from Czech Republic in our home.  Eight years ago, we volunteered to host the daughter of this family for a summer program.  This summer, she returned with her parents who speak minimal English (although more English than my Czech, which is pretty much limited to “cheers!”).  There is something incredibly powerful and also humbling about inviting a foreign stranger to stay in your home.  Following World War II, when it was abundantly clear that we were in great need of international goodwill, programs like the Fulbright were developed to foster the exchange of ideas between nations.  Unfortunately, the world at large remains in dire need of international goodwill, but I still want to believe that it is possible to bridge the gaps that divide us by building personal relationships with those we perceive as different from us.

I was the lucky recipient of another family’s commitment to international goodwill in 1989, when I participated in a program in Paris.  1989 was the bicentennial of the beginning of the French Revolution, which was a divisive and violent period of paranoia and misguided patriotism, but which ultimately gave the world one of the fundamental documents for human rights, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which was of course modeled after the American Declaration of Independence and US Constitution.  I studied the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1989 as I visited sites impacted by the Revolution.  It was easy to get caught up in the spectacle of the celebrations, especially while singing La Marseillaise in the streets around Place de la Bastille while swigging from passing bottles of wine and dodging errant firecrackers.  But the best part was developing relationships and interacting with the French, which isn’t easy, as any tourist will tell you.  But I insist that it is worth the effort.

It is worth the effort to go outside of your comfort zone.  It is worth the effort to learn another language, even if only the most basic tourist essentials (please, thank you, hello, goodbye, thank you, thank you, thank you).  It is worth the effort to study the history and culture of another place, even if at first it is only on a superficial tourist level.  But you must reach for this reward, you must work for it, and you must listen to strangers.

1989 is a year that not only markedly altered my life, it was also the year that ended with the Berlin Wall coming down and the Velvet Revolution in what was then Czechoslovakia.  The end of Communism in Europe and the end of the Cold War were defining historic moments of the beginnings of my adulthood, including my first teaching job, when I taught English to children who had fled the breakup of the Soviet Union.  Of course, in 1989 as I watched these events unfold with my jaw on the floor of my Tucson apartment, I had no idea that many years in the future my family would be having dinner with a family who had lived on the other side of the Iron Curtain.  I had no idea that we would be discussing Ronald Reagan, freedom, and the hoops one must jump through to get a new washing machine in a Communist state.

Here’s what I learned:  families are the same regardless.  People have the same hopes and dreams and love for their children.  Parents in a socialist republic, and an Eastern bloc state, or here in the USA, love their children and their neighbor’s children.  They want the next generation to have opportunities they lacked and to exercise their rights and to leave the planet better.  And it’s the same for black families.  And Muslim families.  And gay families.  And any combination of the above.  But it can be difficult to recognize unless we have an anchor to which we can attach our acknowledgement of what unites us.  That anchor is a relationship with someone.  One person at a time.  I am amazed and deeply touched by the attachment I’ve formed with our Czech family, in spite of our inability to converse directly without the translation skills of their daughter, who is very precious to us.  We feel blessed to have had the opportunity to share with them our town and our nation’s independence and freedom, and to have a renewed interest and appreciation for such after seeing them through their eyes.

The day after our Czech family departed, my daughters and I had the opportunity to visit a nearby ranch.  We’d been invited by a dear friend but had not previously met the host.  Regardless, we were welcomed warmly, and treated to unique and fun opportunities, like his private zip line, low ropes course, and feeding hummingbirds by hand.  I had never met this man, but he treated us like old friends and made us feel so welcome – like, I hope, our Czech family felt with us.

This past week, the Dalai Lama said, “I consider we are all the same as human beings, mentally, emotionally, and physically.  In order to ensure a more peaceful world and a healthier environment we sometimes point the finger at others, saying they should do this or that.  If one individual becomes more compassionate, it will influence others and so we will change the world.”

We have had a tough go of events these past many weeks here in the US specifically, and in the world at large.  There has been too much violence.  Too many senseless deaths.  Too little compassion.  Too many valleys dividing us and too few anchors in our common ground.  We are better than our political divide.  Better than our racial divide and better than our religious divide.  And it might take generations to come closer together.  But we have traveled a long road since the year of my birth, 1968, which was also a year of terrible violence and division.  But 1968 was also the year that gave us the Civil Rights Act, Special Olympics, the first Medal of Honor awarded to a black Marine, the admission of women to Yale University, the Beatle’s White Album, the computer mouse, and René Cassin receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) which, you’ll recall, found inspiration in the document that was instrumental in the French Revolution.

What if our politicians extended a hand across the aisle?  What if we took the time to know not only our neighbor’s children, but also the children of someone different from us?  What if we embody compassion (sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it)?  As the Dalai Lama said, it begins with individuals.  It begins with us – not them – us.  It begins with an open heart, a willingness to listen without judgment, without politics, and without fear.

The Mystery of Grace

deserve:  to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital.

grace:  unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification; disposition to or an act or instance of kindess, courtesy, or clemency; a temporary exemption; the quality or state of being considerate or thoughtful

It’s cliché to state that there are no guarantees in life.  Everyone’s met some form of disappointment on the path and yet, it’s hard to shake off the belief that we merit what we want just because we want what we want, or simply by virtue of our good character we deserve it.  If I could abolish something from this world, it would be the notion of deserving something.

The definition implies a deep sense of judgment that someone merits reward or punishment based upon his or her actions.  A student deserves a better grade.  The accused deserves harsh punishment.  We deserve better.  All of the above may be true, but it’s also true that humanity falls pretty far from fairness on any given day.  I suppose our desire for just deserts stems from our desire for justice, for fairness.  But life isn’t fair.

The day before yesterday was my aunt’s birthday.  Her personality could light up a room.  She loved a good joke and to get a party started, even if the party was shucking corn on my grandparents’ porch.  I can hear her laugh still, although she doesn't laugh much anymore.  She’s lost in a valley of dementia, never to return to any of us.  It does little good to wallow in the fact that my uncle and cousins deserve her true presence in their lives, and certainly aren’t deserving of witnessing the cruel fate that now is her agonizingly slow decline.  And so I ask for grace. 

This week, a dear friend undergoes his second surgery to remove tumors in his brain, just over a year after the first.  In the interim, he’s endured radiation and chemotherapy.  His family has suffered their own trials in caring for and supporting him.  I am working on not being angry at how he and his family deserve a life filled with less pain and uncertainty.  And so I ask for grace.

We are often asked to endure much more than we feel we deserve.  And it’s often a challenge to do so without becoming bitter and brittle, especially when these monumental challenges are fraught with enough obstacles to rend our hearts shattered beyond repair.

Anne Lamott said, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”  As I faced my own challenges with cancer three years ago, I definitely had dark days and sleepless nights.  There were times when I struggled to breathe and felt as if I were drowning in a sea of fear.  When I didn't feel as if I were drowning, I felt as if I were submerged, pulled and pushed by currents stronger than me.  But there were moments, too, when I was buoyed up by something I can now recognize as grace.  When grace finds us, it is indeed magical, filled with tingles and sparkles, and we are less afraid and less alone.  Grace is a quiet presence, requiring us to surrender ourselves to its magic, which is tough to do when mere breathing is a challenge.  Consider Aaron Sorkin’s words, as everyone you meet could likely use some grace:

            Don’t ever forget that you are a citizen of the world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day.

My Desert Solitaire

I recall feeling perplexed as a child in elementary school, or perhaps even younger, whenever we’d learn about the seasons and silly rhymes like “April showers bring May flowers.”  The four traditional seasons and the nursery rhymes with origins in England (or perhaps New England) didn’t match my experience growing up in the Sonoran Desert.  And when a desert was depicted in popular culture, i.e., Snoopy’s desert-dwelling cousin, Spike, from Needles, California, that didn’t feel authentic to me, either.  For a long time, I wanted to flee the desert.  It was too hot, too dry, too boring.  I had a different image in my mind of a beautiful location and a more tolerable climate.  Eventually I made my way to a mountain town and live in a semi-arid climate, a combination of chaparral and juniper-piñon forest, which I love and truly feels like home.

But I do long for the desert and will always be a desert rat.  I’m pretty sure this longing was born mostly when I became a desert backpacker.  I’ve logged many miles in the Grand Canyon, both on corridor and backcountry routes.  I’ve done some backpacking elsewhere in other desert areas, including Aravaipa, the Superstition Mountains, and Paria Canyon.  And while I’ve day-hiked in most of the western states of the US, I don’t think I’ve actually backpacked in a non-desert location.  I’m not sure I’d know how to deal with a soaked tent or gear, or such an abundance of water that I wouldn’t have to depart camp in the morning having calculated precisely how much water I’ll need for the remainder of the day’s miles.

Of the deserts in the American Southwest, the Sonoran is, without question, the lushest, with massive cacti like the saguaro and true trees like mesquite and palo verde.  I used to think the Mojave and Chihuahua were ugly in comparison.  Now, though, I can find a beauty in the starkness of those deserts as well.  We’ve just returned home from a spring break camping trip to Joshua Tree National Park in the higher elevations of the Mojave, which is beautiful in unique ways.  It is striking, though not in the same manners as Death Valley – but its granite boulders, mining ruins, palm oases, and iconic trees are worth contemplating.

One of my favorite books, The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is set in the middle of the Sahara Desert.  That desert has always seemed mythical and magical to me, in terms of its history, culture, beauty, and immensity, even before I read this book, with stunning sand dunes, shimmering oases, camel caravans, and exotic people.  A favorite line:  Ce qui embellit le désert, c’est qu’il cache un puits quelque part.  (What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere, it hides a well.)  When I read this book with my French students, I remind them that the entire book is an allegory, and so a well or source of water in the desert signifies something quite precious, something life-affirming and valuable.  This quote, to me, signifies the true beauty of the desert.  Of course, Saint-Ex was speaking of more than just the desert; the water source in the desert is one of many motifs throughout the book of something barely visible, which only a unique few can perceive.  The well perhaps represents the rarity of true friendship, of true connection with another individual, which is often ephemeral and rare, and nourishes, just like a spring in the desert. 

The desert requires focus, attention, and an investment of time and respect.  If you glide through or over it in the comfort of your air-conditioned car or airplane, it seems harsh, monotonous, and never-ending.  But if you travel through it on foot, prepared for the obstacles you may encounter, you’ll notice much that otherwise might escape your perception.  It is a quiet place, especially at the height of the day’s heat.  You’ll hear birdsong early or late in the day, coyotes after dusk.  Flowers of every color are on display, some showy and others miniscule.  You’ll see life:  insects, birds, and reptiles, mostly, but also mammals like coyotes or big horn sheep if you linger long enough in the right locations.  You’ll note how the sun, especially at the low angle of dawn or dusk, amplifies the hues of everything, especially exposed rocks, canyon walls, or mountain ranges.  Because of the lack of vegetation, compared to a pine forest, for example, the desert feels immense.  It is easy to feel insignificant there, and that may cause unease at first.  But there is also a comfort in the desert’s immensity and human insignificance.  When hiking in the desert, you reduce your load to the essentials.  The same is true of the burdens carried within:  what holds meaning?  what matters most?  how can I lay down the rest, the nonessentials?  The desert leaves you alone and is indifferent to your plight, allowing the chatter and noise of the world to drop away.  I am grateful for this, as one of its most significant offerings is solitude, which I hold close to my heart, quietly.

Joshua Trees

Wall Street Stamp Mill ruins (gold mining operation)

Chimney near Lost Horse Stamp Mill

Granite and sky near Indian Cove

Yucca with 49 Palms Oasis in distance

49 Palms Oasis with sun flares

Desert Globemallow, Spaeralcea ambigua

The aptly named Yellow Bee Plant, Cleome lutea, with a honeybee, Apis mellifera