We all want to live well, being true to the life that makes the most sense to our hearts. It is the how to live well that is a challenge.
Working from her experience with those near death, a former palliative care nurse wrote a bestselling book that is illuminating and instructive. The top five regrets of the dyingcame from Bronnie Ware’s observations during that time, and it led her to focus on how the rest of us spend our waking hours. Like Natalie Goldberg discovered in fighting cancer, Ware arrived at a simple yet challenging answer to the question of how to spend our time to avoid finding ourselves on our deathbeds with regrets for the life we’ve lived.
We all live with a “terminal diagnosis.” The more awareness we can bring to this, the more it will support us to live well, instead of living a life dictated by others.
First regret of the dying: I wish I’d lived a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
My parents modeled this way of living, telling their five children that they would teach us their values but, as we grew into adulthood, each one of us needed to make choices to become the person we were supposed to be. Their willingness to let go without expectations led us all down different career and life paths: musicians, arts administrator, preservationist, planner, public servants, navy veteran, artistic blacksmith, missionary, authors, parents. It was a good start to living a life true to oneself. Both of our children are now following their passions, providing us with lessons from another generation.
Too many of us fear the risk of such an approach to living. Instead, we have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. Ware notes that as our individual callings become more prominent, we come to realize that our “own beliefs and preferences may not actually be aligned to those you have been raised with.” There is a healing in this realization.
Second regret: I wish I hadn’t worked so hard
My father loved being an engineer. But it didn’t define him. He wrote about this after he took early retirement and faced his third stage of life without the traditional comfort of being known for his job. Fortunately, his way of living already included what today we call work-life balance, and he moved confidently out of a full-time career into a very productive and satisfying three decades of retirement.
Ware notes that dying people who have this regret learn too late that there needed to be more in their lives than work. When work was taken away from them, “there was nothing left: no identity to support them, no stimulus to inspire them, no joy.”
Third regret: I wish I had the courage to express my feelings
When I was a child, I had no problems expressing my feelings. I laughed when I felt joy, cried at pain, and delighted in new discoveries. Most young children experience a similar life of wonder. But along the way, we are taught how to suppress our feelings as part of learning life skills to navigate challenges and see different perspectives.
Many of those skills are useful, Ware writes, but “some of them hinder your natural expressions, until over time, you think it is normal to never be vulnerable or express yourself honestly.” Too often we never summon the immense courage to express ourselves, “whether that is by being vulnerable and sharing your love, or being strong and sticking up for yourself. But it is absolutely vital to do so if you are going to live your fullest life.”
Fourth regret: I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
This past Thanksgiving, we did what we have done for years: got in our car and drove 2 1/2 hours to spend the weekend with friends we’ve known for more than three decades. Yes, we have Facebook, LinkedIn, or text connections. But staying in touch is so much more than a “like” on a social media post. Our daughter Claire, who regularly makes time to get together physically and emotionally with friends she has known since grade school, has taught us how to live to avoid this regret.
“Real life connection is the essence of wellbeing. It is natural that some friends may fall away as your lifestyles and tastes change,” writes Ware. Yet dying people “regretted not staying in touch with their old friends, though, because during their last weeks they wanted to reminisce, laugh about the old days, feel understood, and remember they once belonged in an easier world.”
Fifth regret: I wish I had allowed myself to be happier
“Every time you take ownership of your focus and steer it towards something that leaves you feeling a little better, you are opening your heart and life up to more happiness. Life is not a penance. It is a precious gift of time.“
The late Italian-American philosopher Jim Valvano summed up his approach to living a happier and fulfilling life by saying that every day we should “laugh, think, and cry.” Think about it, he said. “If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day, that’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”
Many of the musicians featured in these Saturday Soundtrack posts are like old friends who have been in my life for a long time. I have also committed to discovering music that wasn’t a part of my youth, highlighting musicians brought to my attention recently via recommendations by friends, readers, and other sources. Those new discoveries are gifts, if you will. Since we are in the gift-giving season, I want to revisit a few of those “new favorites” that may be well known to some of you, but that I just discovered in 2021.
The Avalon Jazz Band (see March 6th review) is fronted by Tatiana Eva-Marie, a Swiss-born and Brooklyn-based singer who grew up in an eclectic musical family. She used the variety of musical styles heard during her childhood to move toward swing jazz. As a long-time fan of the gypsy jazz made popular by theHot Club de France, I am always pleased to find new (and not-so-new) groups such as the Avalon Jazz Band playing in the swing jazz style of 1930s and 1940s Paris.
Avalon Jazz Band
Eva-Marie has a wonderful voice and captures the spirit of the Zazous, the “swing kids” of Paris, albeit with an American twist. She is “what many people would call a ‘triple threat.’ She’s brilliant, beautiful, and talented. She’s basically a Swiss fairy princess, with soul.” And the band is pretty hot as well! To prove both points, take a listen to Runnin’ Wild — and make sure to check out the break by the guy on the washboard rhythm section at the 1:35 mark.
Yasmin Williams (see January 30th review) has a sound and style that stands as “her challenge to widespread preconceptions about the music made by young Black people or acoustic guitarists. It’s Williams’s achievement that she makes that challenge sound so calming and beautiful.”
Yasmin Williams (credit: YasminWilliamsMusic.com)
Williams released her second album, Urban Driftwood, in January, and although it was partially recorded in Takoma Park, Maryland — home to self-styled “American primitive” fingerstyle pioneer John Fahey — her music doesn’t sound like Fahey’s and it certainly isn’t primitive. Her piece Juvenescence is a lyrical, technically challenging tune, played with simple beauty and impressive virtuosity. Since first discovering her music, I’ve heard Williams playing in multiple settings over the past few months. She is clearly an artist on the rise.
A gay and Black performer working in Appalachian music, Jake Blount (see February 6th review) features “historically informed, beautifully played old-time music.” As noted on his website, “Blount specializes in the music of Black communities in the southeastern United States, and in the regional style of the Finger Lakes. A versatile performer, Blount interpolates blues, bluegrass and spirituals into the old-time string band tradition he belongs to. He foregrounds the experiences of queer people and people of color in his work.”
Jake Blount (credit: by Michelle Lotker via JakeBlount.com)
“I felt the need to go back to the songs my ancestors had sung, initially in the form of spirituals, and then eventually in the form of banjo and fiddle music to sort of understand how they had seen the world because songs are the only direct record they left us,” notes Blount. It is his way of responding to the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. Goodbye, Honey, You Call That Gone opens the 2020 album Spider Tales. “The tune comes from Lucius Smith, a Black banjo player from Sardis, Mississippi, who often performed in a band with Sid Hemphill.” In this video, Blount is playing the banjo while Nic Gareiss performs with his feet.
Low Lily (see March 27th review) is a Vermont-based band exploring the roots and branches of American folk music. This exploration takes place “with traditional influences and modern inspiration that weaves together a unique brand of acoustic music. Liz Simmons (vocals and guitar), Flynn Cohen (vocals, guitar and mandolin), and Lissa Schneckenburger (vocals and fiddle) are masterful players with deep relationships to traditional music styles ranging from bluegrass to Irish, Scottish, New England and Old Time Appalachian sounds. When you combine this with stellar composition skills and inventive arrangements you get music that is rooted yet contemporary.”
While the band members handle their various instruments with great skill, I was very much drawn to their vocal harmonizing. Hope Lingers On is a personal favorite, with an optimism that comes through even in “our darkest hour.”
Guitarist CharlieRauh(see June 5th review) is an Alabama-born, New York City-based musician who was influenced by Duke Ellington and his “wonderfully lyrical melodic sense intertwined with dense, idiosyncratic harmony.” Rauh notes that “Playing guitar really opened up a lot of creative momentum for me, as I could play chords as well as melodies and form more developed ideas.
Rauh’s music is soft, slow, and beautiful. Here he plays a gorgeous composition, Arolen, from his 2017 release Viriditas.
Kyshona (see September 25th review) — a “music therapist gone rogue” — has a message for a broken world. I absolutely love her music and approach to healing. Kyshona (pronounced Kuh-Shauna) Armstrong began her career as a musical therapist, writing her first songs with the students and inmates under her care. As she began to write independently, she lent “her voice and music to those that feel they have been silenced or forgotten,” making her a unique figure in Nashville’s creative community and songwriting culture.
Kyshona (credit: Kyshona.com)
In the liner notes to Fallen People, she writes:
“In a time when we are all so divided, this song was written as a reminder that each and every one of us has an obstacle we’re trying to overcome, an emotional wound we are living with and a struggle that we’re walking with everyday. THAT is where we can all be united… in the hurting.“
Over the last few years, Kyshona has shared the stage with a host of top-flight performers. I especially enjoy her collaboration — alongside Adia Victoria, Allison Russell, and Kam Franklin — with the talented alt-country singer Margo Price in this spell-binding version of Hey Child from Price’s That’s How Rumors Get Started. When you go past the mass market in Nashville, you will discover some unexpected performances.
Speaking of Adia Victoria(see October 9th review), the South Carolina-born and Nashville-based blues singer-songwriter “wants to make the blues dangerous again” and has important stories to tell.
Adia Victoria (credit Red Light Management)
South Gotta Change is a powerful 2020 single produced by T. Bone Burnett (who also produced her album A Southern Gothic) that Victoria described in a release as “a prayer, an affirmation, and a battle cry all at once. It is a promise to engage in the kind of ‘good trouble’ John Lewis understood necessary to form a more perfect union.”
Trout Steak Revival(see October 23rd review) is “the quintessential Colorado string band. Defined more by expressive songwriting and heartfelt harmonies rather than any one genre, Trout Steak Revival crosses over and blends the bounds of folk, indie, bluegrass, and roots evoking its own style of Americana.”
Trout Steak Revival (credit troutsteak.com)
This band can really swing. While everyone in the band jumps in on vocals, I am especially drawn to those by Bevin Foley, as heard here on this live version of Go On.
Tre Burt(see November 13th review) comes from a working-class background, just like his songwriting hero John Prine. Sacramento songwriter Burt is one of a talented group of musicians today who uses his personal experiences and perspective to reconnect folk music with its African American and protests roots.
Tré Burt (credit TréBurt.com)
In this mini concert from Paste Studios recorded in September of this year, Burt plays three songs live off his most recent You, Yeah You album.
Maggie Rose(see December 4th review) is a new favorite who a consulting client/new reader brought to my attention. Her vocal talents are stellar, and she both writes and interprets songs in a variety of styles. Rose was raised in the DC area and now lives in Nashville, where she is among the growing number of artists broadening the city’s musical palette.
Another friend, in commenting on the post, mentioned that she was listening to Rose cover Carole King’s hit I Feel the Earth Move. Rose puts a different twist on the song in her arrangement, which is worth a listen.
MonaLisa Twins(see November 27th “Sharing the covers” review), with real-life twins Mona and Lisa Wagner fronting the band, are from Austria and seem to be strange ambassadors for the music of the Swinging Sixties. They were 16 when they released their first album (well after the 60s were in the rear-view mirror), yet the connections to groups like The Beatles is clear. In fact, as you look on their online shop, they have released a number of albums of Beatles covers. They are not technically roots or Americana artists, but they often perform these covers using instruments one finds in those genres.
MonaLisa Twins live at the Cavern Club (credit monalisa-twins.com)
Take, for instance, I’m Looking Through You from Rubber Soul, which they posted earlier this month. It may be the only version of this song where the banjo (actually a banjo-guitar) takes George Harrison’s iconic lick (played along with an organ on the original) and makes it work.
But be careful. These young ladies can drive you down the You Tube rabbit hole if you aren’t careful (says the voice of experience). And you may even come up with something — especially if you’ve had twins — that will make you cry.
I hope you can find a gift or two you enjoy in this collection. Let me know your thoughts.
“Yesterday, I was lying. Today, I’m telling the truth.”
Everybody lies. To point out that obvious fact is not designed to promote the belief that everyone is equally culpable in the use of disinformation. Today, a group of people who want to control our country take lying to an extreme.
Being charitable, one could say today’s far-right authoritarian politicians are immune to the truth. But lies are lies.
Democracy is the form of government based on the rule of law, requiring “truth and a shared factuality, or what social scientists call the ‘public sphere.'” It also requires a shared commitment to the public good.
The extremist element that has taken control of the Republican Party has been on a decades-long quest to destroy the federal government as we know it, a government built out of FDR’s New Deal that recognizes our interdependence. These authoritarian extremists do not show much interest in the public good.
“The GOP only has a few actual policy ideas beyond owning the libs and causing blue America as much pain as possible … And it is willing to overthrow democracy to hold on to power. Extreme gerrymandering in statehouses and the U.S. House of Representatives, plus disproportional representation favoring conservative rural whites in the Senate and Electoral College, is stacking the deck in favor of a radical minority — and Republicans have grown brazen about simply stealing elections for themselves even if those advantages prove insufficient.“
Today, too many top Republicans spread lies.
Some actually believe the crazy Q-Anon conspiracy theory that Donald Trump won the 2020 election when he — in fact — lost by sizeable margins.
Others tolerate the lies because of their support of one key element of what’s left of the party’s platform, such as lower taxes on the wealthy.
And then Republicans like Mitch McConnell know the claims by Trump and his supporters are lies, but they support them because they are useful in their quest to dismantle the federal government. McConnell has used his own set of lies around the confirmation process for the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court deserves special mention. Mainstream media pundits like Paul Waldman are waking up to the fact that every single one of the conservatives on the Supreme Court lied — under oath. It has become clear that they all lied about how they would handle challenges to women’s reproductive rights. Knowing that their female accusers had nothing to gain and everything to lose, I believe that Kavanaugh and Thomas almost certainly lied about their history of sexual harassment and assault. We now have six justices who — under oath — lied about their actions, intentions and agenda in order to get a lifetime seat on the most powerful court in the land.
Why did they do it? Because the last time a conservative nominee to the court said what he truly believed, his nomination was shot down by people like Barbara Jordan who spoke truth to power.
As Atkins points out, authoritarian Republicans are working from a place of weakness.
“Democracy’s defenders have an advantage: They do, in fact, represent the majority of America and are also the main drivers of the country’s culture and economy. Blue counties produce more than 70 percent of America’s GDP. U.S. cities — overwhelmingly blue — are responsible for the vast majority of the country’s cultural and economic output. Blue states are overwhelmingly donors to the states that despise them and seek to disenfranchise them. The nation’s most successful companies are typically located in ultra-liberal areas. And the country is becoming more diverse and more urban every day. Americans under 40 are overwhelmingly progressive. This is the present and future of America.
Successful fascist movements and authoritarian coups generally require “not only a fervent base of cruel, fundamentalist backers. They also need the support, cooperation, and acquiescence of social elites.” Most of all, they need a compliant public to roll over and go along with it.
“Real, normative America is urban and liberal; 83 percent of Americans now live in cities, and that number is growing. The oldest Millennials are now 40 years old and not getting any more conservative; Gen Zers are just as progressive, if not more so; and those two generations are about to dominate the electorate. Big Business clearly knows where the majority of its customers are, to the point where the conservative movement — until recently long allied with Big Business — now portrays itself as the victim of ‘woke’ corporate elites.“
This is the second of a two-part post on the effects of disinformation on our democracy. (Read Part 1.) Next Wednesday I will post one final Weekly Reader for 2021, when I will announce a shift in focus for this segment. Stay tuned.
The book originally came to my attention after chatting with a seat mate on a plane ride. He gave it a strong recommendation and I’m glad he did. It was a fascinating read. Author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a social scientist who uses big data sources to uncover hidden behaviors and attitudes. He notes that Google searches are a type of “truth serum” because we undertake those searches anonymously. Tools such as Google Trends can tell us what people — in huge data sets — are really thinking.
“In other words, people’s search for information is, in itself, information,” Stephens-Davidowitz explains. “The power of Google data is that people tell the giant search engine things they might not tell anyone else.”
That’s true about race, politics, and especially sex. People lie about all three things when taking surveys, but they don’t lie when searching for data in the anonymity of their living rooms. The acknowledgement in recent years of the rise of white nationalism in the mainstream media was something that Google searches predicted in 2008…on the night Barack Obama was elected president. There were more searches using the “n-word president” than “first black president” in some states.
A generally positive reviewer did note one challenge with the book’s focus on the value of big data.
I expected a reference to Cathy O’Neil, who shows in her book Weapons of Math Destruction (2016) how programs based on big data introduce a frightening new efficiency into predatory advertising, “distort higher education, drive up debt, spur mass incarceration, pummel the poor at nearly every juncture, and undermine democracy”. Programs designed with the very best intentions fall into deadly self-confirming feedback loops that confirm their efficacy even as they spiral away from the truth and increase injustice.
That’s a fair assessment as Stephens-Davidowitz could have helped us better understand the challenges with using big data in the way he suggests. Yet outside of that concern, the click-bait title, and a few other minor quibbles, this book has much to recommend it. There is great analysis, excellent storytelling, and witty writing throughout. Suffice it to say that this book may change the way you view the world…and truth and lies.
Americans today hear the name Ben Franklin and picture a kindly old grandfatherly type who established the nation’s post office, flew a kite in a thunderstorm to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning, and helped draft the Declaration of Independence.
Disinformation — deliberately misleading information — is not a new phenomenon. History tells us that incorrect and misleading information has long been used in politics until it confuses the issue or even becomes a part of the accepted narrative.
Sometimes the use of disinformation is just the rough and tumble of political dirty tricks. However, as Matthew Ingram wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, the issue we face today is often one of scale. When users weaponize falsehoods and harness new technology to spread it widely and quickly, the disinformation can damage our democracy. The scale of that disinformation can swamp the positive.
Overwhelming the good news
When we do hear good news, such as the recent report about vaccination rates and rates of death in my home county, it can get lost in the cacophony of lies and willful obfuscation.
The good news bears repeating:
“Perhaps the most highly vaccinated large county in America, according to New York Times data, is Montgomery County, Md., just outside the District of Columbia. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 93 percent of those 12 and older there are fully vaccinated, compared to around 70 percent nationally. The number dying over the past week is eight times as high nationally — 3.4 per 1 million — as it is in Montgomery County — 0.4 per 1 million — even as Montgomery County is near some virus hotspots.“
Washington Post, December 4, 2021
A key issue is that disinformation — deliberately misleading information — distorts or covers up real problems that people are trying to address in their personal lives. Disinformation is designed to obstruct and restrict constructive conversations between citizens with different points of view, conversations which should be the basis for democracy. The challenge in sorting through all we hear in our dangerously divided times to winnow out the bad and misleading information is more difficult — and more important — than ever.
To begin with, it is important to know that disinformation in America is often designed to bolster the oligarchy.
The paradox is that from the very beginning of the nation, the phrase “all men” in the oft repeated refrain that “all men are created equal” never meant everyone, or even all men in the founders’ worldview. They excluded many groups — people of color, women, indigenous people, paupers. In other words, “freedom depended on racial, gender, and class inequality.” … The corollary to the American paradox states that “If equality depends on inequality for women and minorities, the opposite should also be true. That is, inclusion of women and minorities as equals in American society would, by definition, destroy equality.” This corollary has been behind the weaponizing of rhetoric used by those attempting to maintain oligarchic rule and eliminate democracy in the US by appealing to white men’s fears of becoming subservient to women and people of color.
When you read or hear something, consider the source.
An important first step in the journey towards truth is to, as my grandmother used to say, “consider the source.” In those pre-Internet days, she would also tell us, “Don’t believe what you hear and only half of what you read.”
Grandmother had a very sensitive “BS” radar (although she would never use those words.)
These recent articles, with their focus on “news” sites that take political talking points, mix in some falsehoods, and frame the resulting bogus stories as news, provide similar counsel.
Right up front, Dan Froomkin suggests at Press Watch, that we remember that Fox News is not news. Period. Full stop.
Fox isn’t alone. Writing in Popular Information, Judd Legum outlines how Right-wing operatives deploy a massive network of fake local news sites to spread disinformation. West Nova News — which appears to be a standard local news site — was one of the places carrying a great deal of disinformation about the teaching of Critical Race Theory in Virginia schools. West Nova News is part of a massive network of 1300 websites (there’s the scale) linked to conservative businessman Brian Timpone, including at least 28 that operate in Virginia. Between January and November 2021, the 28 “local news” sites in Virginia published 4,657 articles about Critical Race Theory in schools. CRT is not taught in Virginia schools.
Disinformation will often deliberately miss the point.
Another way that information is weaponized is by deliberately hiding the key point in a story.
In Press Watch, Dan Froomkin has another of his rewrite pieces with Failing to call out ‘critical race theory’ as a racist dog whistle? Let me rewrite that for you! Reporters know “critical race theory” isn’t a real issue, asserts Froomkin. “They know it’s euphemistic shorthand for all sorts of right-wing, often racist concerns about modest attempts to address diversity, equity and inclusion. They know it’s a backlash against Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 Project and its powerful recognition of slavery as a central element of the American narrative.” While news organizations should refute this disinformation campaign, they don’t. Scare stories — such as “death panels” in 2009, “migrant caravans” in 2018, “voter fraud” for decades, and now “critical race theory” in public schools — are too appealing, even though none of those things have ever been a real problem. Foomkin considers it crazy “that reporters are writing so much more about how winning a strategy it is than about what a lie it is.” His rewritten headline reads, “Republicans riling up voters with a lie designed to appeal to racism”
In A Tale of Two Thefts, Judd Legum at Popular Information takes up a similar refrain of deliberately missing the point. Legum notes that “In the United States, only certain types of theft are newsworthy.” A shoplifting crime in a Walgreens in San Francisco — according to an analysis by FAIR, a media watchdog — “generated 309 stories between June 14 and July 12” including in a slew of major publications. In most coverage, the video is presented as proof that there are no consequences for shoplifting in San Francisco. But the man in the video, Jean Lugo-Romero, was arrested about a week later and faces 15 charges. In the meantime, Walgreens settled a $4.5 million class action lawsuit a few months earlier after stealing millions of dollars from its own employees. “How much news coverage did it generate? There was a single 221-word story in Bloomberg Law, an industry publication. And that’s it.” $4.5 million vs. maybe $950. As FAIR wrote, “While basic arithmetic would indicate that $4.5 million is greater than $950, media have demonstrated that the question isn’t how much is being stolen, but who it is being stolen from.“
Technology often makes it worse.
Old-fashioned disinformation such as that practiced by Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson was “artisanal” in the words of Matthew Ingram. That’s no longer the case.
Joan Donovan and Brandi Collins-Dexter wrote a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review “about some of the tactics that right-wing groups used to spread disinformation about the 1619 Project and critical race theory. “Our research reveals that the popularity of ‘1776’ owes in part to keyword squatting — a tactic by which right-wing media have dominated the keywords ‘1619’ and ‘critical race theory’ and enabled a racialized disinformation campaign, waged by Trump and his acolytes, against Black civil rights gains.”
Remember that disinformation often includes flat-out lying.
Scaring people about inflation is another way of weaponizing information.
Paul Waldman covers the campaign as he writes in the Washington Post that Inflation is manageable. Inflation panic is out of control. “Inflation is a genuine problem, but it’s hardly spinning out of control,” notes Waldman. “Inflation panic, on the other hand, is getting ridiculous. Right now a highly motivated political opposition and a hysterical media are cooperating to characterize a real but manageable issue as a historic economic catastrophe.” Recent economic news has put Republicans in the position of appearing to root against the economy. But don’t expect a change, as the instinct to weaponize disinformation runs deep.
Tell the truth and make them think it’s hell.
There is historical precedent for how to respond to blatant disinformation. As John Stoehr writes in The Editorial Board, it is blatant because divide and conquer is what the Republican Party does so well. Stoehr suggests that President Biden “make the Republicans deny more things in your favor. Create the kind of heat the press corps loves to cover. This would destabilize the contours of public information. It’s what the Republicans do all the time. Only instead of lying, as the Republicans do, Biden can tell the truth.”
During a 1948 campaign stop in Bremerton, Washington, President Harry Truman delivered a rousing speech attacking the Republicans. One of Truman’s supporters called out, “give ’em hell, Harry!” Truman replied, “I don’t give them hell.I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s hell.”
Truman pulled off a massive upset and won that election. Give ’em hell, Joe!
More to come…
DJB
P.S. Since I started with good news, I’ll end with good news as well.
Changes in key indicators from November 2020 to November 2021
This is part 1 of a two-part Weekly Readeron the effects of disinformation on our democracy. Part 2 on Friday will look at what happens when leaders lie.
Today, December 7th, is the 80th anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. An attack that led to the U.S. entrance into World War II. A date that President Franklin D. Roosevelt memorably described as one “which will live in infamy.”
(An earlier version of this post originated on More to Come on December 6, 2020. I am reposting an updated version today to honor the 80th anniversary.)
Fewer and fewer people are alive who have personal memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor. My father and his sister — my Aunt Mary Dixie — were at Peabody College in Nashville listening to a performance of Messiah. When they came out, they learned about the attack at Pearl Harbor and their lives were changed forever. Both were WWII veterans. Both — like most in their generation — have passed. The Veteran’s Administration calculates that 240,329 of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive in 2021. That number was more than 325,000 just last year.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that those 16 million men and women looked like America.
America fought World War II to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were African American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Native Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied men between the ages of 18 and 50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that codebreakers never cracked.
The memory of Pearl Harbor remains. On December 7, 2014, Tom Coffey, a staff editor in the New York Times sports department, suggested that fans skip that day’s football games and use the time to remember the importance of Pearl Harbor. I loved his last line:
“Sunday afternoon seems like a good time to think about the sacrifices made by the men and women who died that day, and to reflect upon the wisdom of a statement that originated with Marv Levy, the longtime Buffalo Bills coach, that is still uttered in the sports world, albeit far too infrequently: No game is a must-win. World War II was a must-win.“
Pearl Harbor remains both a place and a response that is fused in our collective national memories. As my friend and former colleague Tom Mayes writes in Why Old Places Matter, “The sense of identity provided by memory is largely what defines us as individuals and as a society.” Memories are often tied to place. And memories and identities are often contested, Tom notes, but “the fact that these arguments occur highlights the importance of the place. Regardless of conflicting points of view, the place itself transcends a specific interpretation. …The continued existence of the place permits the revision, reevaluation, and reinterpretation of memories over time.” As former New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp has said, the essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a community’s memory.
Memory is also essential to hope, which is grounded in our knowledge of what has gone before. Hope as a sense of uncertainty and coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know what will happen, but we have memories that show us that good things — powerful things — can happen. Pearl Harbor is not just a place, but it is a reminder of a national response, when the nation and all its people became much more important than the tribe, political party, religious affiliation, or individual. When country, a caring for humanity, and a desire to defeat fascism and bigotry took precedence over personal achievement, power, and greed.
Many things changed because of our involvement in World War II. For one, the members of the armed forces — of all races — returned to a country that still oppressed people of color. The pushback against the hypocrisy of fighting fascism abroad while maintaining a homegrown system of apartheid in much of the U.S. was such that over the next two decades, significant strides were made to grant full civil rights to all people. But as we know, that work is far from over.
Last year at this time I noted that 88% of the Republican members of Congress were either cowed by or purposely aligned with a weak and defeated bully. I spoke to the need for those memories of a strong and effective national response to not only hope for a better future, but to give us the strength to work every day to make that future a reality. And the right’s turn to authoritarianism has only gotten worse over the past 12 months.
We should never forget what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. And the memory of that date, that place, and our response should support us in the difficult times ahead, through the shared work of the imagination. to remake our democracy.
Bill Staines, one of the most beloved folksingers of his generation, passed away on December 5th after a battle with cancer. While it has been a number of years, I was fortunate to see Staines perform live several times, most recently at the Oak Grove Folk Music Festival outside Staunton, Virginia. The small, compact setting in the midst of a group of trees, was perfect for the man described as “the master of intimate concerts.”
Nanci Griffith, who also passed earlier this year, described Staines as the “Woody Guthrie of my generation” and the man who inspired her to begin writing and performing her own work. She recorded Bill’s beautiful tune RosevilleFair on her live album in 1988.
Staines was left-handed and played a right-handed guitar upside-down, with the bass strings on the bottom. Consequently, he developed his own unique fingerings and picking style.
I have three personal favorites from his catalog, and I’ll include them all here. The first is Roseville Fair, heard in a 2010 house concert. As you can see, his audiences always knew the words and sang along.
A Place in the Choir — heard here from the album version — was another crowd favorite.
Finally, the shows I saw by Staines generally ended with the beautiful tune River. I can’t think of a better version than this one with the Mystic Chorale.
The whistling ways of my younger days Too quickly have faded on by But all of their memories linger on Like the light in a fading sky
River, take me along in your sunshine, sing me a song Ever moving and winding and free You rolling old river, you changing old river Let’s you and me, river, run down to the sea
Roll on, river, down to the sea. Rest in peace, Bill Staines.
Following a sabbatical in 2016 I made it a priority to regularly read books from a wide variety of authors, a practice which has continued into my third stage of life. With 2021 drawing to a close, it is time to share my annual reading list here on More to Come. * As is true each year, I’ve been challenged and enlightened by the writing of some very smart people.
Few readers will be fascinated by every one of my areas of interest, so I’ve grouped these 26 books into broad categories. Scroll down to discover:
The top five (I’ll return to these works again and again)
History and biography (learning from the past)
The times we live in(politics, civic life, and more)
Memoir and story (tell me about yourself)
The third stage (thinking about purpose and mindfulness)
Sports (really just baseball)
Outbursts of radical common sense (and whatever else tickled my fancy…otherwise known as the miscellaneous section)
I hope you enjoy learning about the treasures I pulled from my shelf in 2021. Clicking on the link under the book title will take you to my original review on More to Come.
THE TOP FIVE (I’ll return to these works again and again)
Let’s begin with a look at five works, three of which were published this year and two others that are often quoted and have developed devoted followings among their readers in the years since they were first released. Each touched and taught me in special ways.
We Need New Stories: The Myths that Subvert Freedom (2021), the powerful first book of award-winning journalist Nesrine Malik, addresses the fact that while we are living in confusing times, there are ways to sort through the fog. She suggests that clarity will come if we look deeply at the stories and myths we tell ourselves. As Malik writes in the prologue to the U.S. edition, a malignant thread — made of myths that divide us — has been running through Anglo-American history. These are stories where “history, race, gender, and classical liberal values are being leveraged to halt any disruption of a centuries-old hierarchy that is paying dividends for fewer and fewer people.” The strength of the myths is not in facts, but in the narratives, so it is impossible to fight fake facts with other facts. What is needed, Malik asserts, are new stories that are not just the correction of old stories but are visions that assert that “for societies to evolve, an old order must change.” For me, We Need New Stories was challenging, thought-provoking, expansive, and, ultimately, affirming and instructive.
Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (2021) was a reminder that we all have myths in our personal pastthat should be faced. Ty Seidule, Emeritus Professor of History at West Point, has written a fearless and direct book that is part memoir, part history, and part call-to-action. Seidule walks the reader through each step of his youthful indoctrination of the myth of the greatness and perfection of Robert E. Lee. He hears this while growing up and attending school in Virginia and Georgia and as an army officer stationed at bases named for Confederate traitors. It is at West Point, however, where Seidule had his “a-ha” moment and recognized that what he learned his entire life was a lie. Southerners and all Americans can benefit from the lessons taken from Seidule’s journey
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (2021) is a vital and hopeful book by Heather McGhee. She begins by addressing the argument that whites today have not benefited from historical inequalities. “The advantages white people had accumulated were free and usually invisible and so conferred an elevated status that seemed natural and almost innate.” Programs from the Homestead Act to insured mortgages to the G.I. Bill had worked — spectacularly well in many cases — to build a strong white middle class. But when faced with sharing those benefits and the same treatment from the government with people of color, white Americans — to use an old adage — decided to cut off their nose to spite their face. By advancing a zero-sum economic model — where if you win, then I lose — those with power and wealth have hollowed out public goods and denigrated government programs that were once supported by wide majorities of Americans.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017) begins with the thought, “History does not repeat, but it does instruct.” Timothy Snyder— a historian of the Holocaust who teaches at Yale — has written a slim yet indispensable guide to resisting tyranny that provides present-day advice. For guidance, he turns to the work of the Founding Fathers when they sought to build a governmental system of checks and balances that would be resistant to the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Snyder’s lessons and writings are very accessible, but that doesn’t make them less compelling. He notes that history, “Gives us the company of those who have done and suffered more than we have. …To make history, young Americans will have to know some.” This book is a good place to start.
Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home (2018) is Natalie Goldberg‘s short but gripping memoir of her battle with cancer. The Stoics suggest that we meditate on our mortality every day, and Goldberg’s Zen training helped, in a similar fashion, because it “harped on death.” Goldberg shows us how she and her partner — who along the way is diagnosed with breast cancer — grapple with their battles (with the cancers, with their bodies, with the cancer-industrial complex, with their emotions) separately and together. The cancer twins, she calls them. They both have to face the unknown, the void. Cancer forces that type of focus. This is a beautiful meditation on finding a path, finding a place, “to set one foot after another. To come inside out; to show your guts, everything that you are made of.”
Why the New Deal Matters (2021) is an engaging new work by historianEric Rauchway in the Yale University Press Why X Matters series. Rauchway has not sugar-coated the failings of Franklin Roosevelt’s effort to pull the country out of the Great Depression. But he understands why it meant so much to America at the time and why it still has resonance today. “The New Deal mattered then, at the cusp of spring in 1933, because it gave Americans permission to believe in a common purpose that was not war.”
Break It Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America’s Imperfect Union (2020), Richard Kreitner’s fascinating book, begins by reminding us that the passengers on the Mayflower were not the Pilgrims of myth, but Separatists who wanted to break off from the Church of England. Once they landed in the New World they began doing what they did best, separating into multiple sects and small, isolated communities. Americans have been fighting the urge to break apart ever since. Kreitner’s thesis — supported with in-depth accounts of the backstory to this history — is that the compromise we have accepted to keep the country unified in name if not in spirit, predicated on marginalization of and often violence against people of color, is a compromise too far.
The Outlier (2021) argues that Jimmy Carter attempted to take on our vexing national issues in a highly consequential — and unfinished — presidency.Kai Bird, in this important new presidential biography, states upfront that Carter’s “distinctive southern sensibilities and his Southern Baptist religiosity” made possible the “revelation that America was hobbled by its myths.” He saw an America that was in need of serious healing. But Americans like to portray themselves as “drenched” with a sense of destiny and exceptionalism. We hang on to the myths to avoid the truth. Carter’s presidency, writes Bird, was ahead of its time with its hopes for reconciliation and healing.
THE TIMES WE LIVE IN(politics, civic life, and more)
Definition of covidiot. Credit: Philadelphia Inquirer.
Trust (2020), by former South Bend mayor and current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, suggests that this value is foundational to the success of American democracy. It is important to remember in this time of political discord and paranoid thinking how much we lose when we give up on trust. “Trust is indispensable for a healthy, functioning society,” Buttigieg writes, and in its absence, nothing that works can work well.
Long Time Coming (2020), written after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, is a series of letters from author Michael Eric Dyson to other black martyrs murdered at the hands of white Americans: Elijah McClain, Emmett Till, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, Hadiya Pendleton, Sandra Bland, and the Rev. Clementa Pinckney. In each chapter, Dyson looks at the genealogy of anti-Blackness and its impact on America today. He ends — in his letter to the Rev. Clementa Pinckney — with hope joined by their shared heritage as ministers.
White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America (2021), by historian, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and commentator Anthea Butler, is a valuable and timely book full of powerful truths we need to hear today. This is part history, part personal reflection, part call to action all wrapped together in a vital sermon that pulls no punches. Butler provides a concise history of the evangelical movement, but more importantly she focuses on “the racist and racial elements that imbue its beliefs, practices, and social and political activism.” Butler writes to trouble us and sear our souls, but finally she asks us to be hopeful, understanding that there is time. That time is now.
Uncharted: How to Navigate the Future(2020) could have easily been limited to issues of business management and leadership, given the background and widely popular You Tube videos of author Margaret Heffernan. But as I read Heffernan, I was struck by how much her thoughts on what we need to do — and what we needto be — to navigate the future were focused on the personal. She calls for us to recognize that we all inhabit complex systems, only parts of which we can see or influence, so we need to think like an artist, with a mind that is “febrile, alert, receptive.” She points to “cathedral projects” as those containing experimentation to navigate uncertainty, but also a clear vision of what one wants to achieve. If we are to navigate the future, we must be able to live with paradox and “reconcile opposites — efficiency and robustness, adaptability and long-term focus, just-in-time and just-in-case.”
MEMOIR AND STORY (tell me about yourself)
Pauli Murray House before restoration (2015) and after exterior work (2016) (Photo credit: Pauli Murray Project)
Song in a Weary Throat (1987) by Pauli Murray — one of the most consequential and hopeful of 20th century Americans — is a powerful memoir, told with wit and energy. Murray’s memories of her parents are thin because her beloved mother died when she was four, and she went to segregated Durham, North Carolina, to live with her Aunt Pauline. It moves through her life as a self-described “rebel, instigator, and survivor, at times a nettle in the body politic, an opener-of-doors, and always a devout child of God and friend of mankind.” Murray notes that moments of despair were offset with the sustaining knowledge “that the quest for human dignity is part of a continuous movement through time and history linked to a higher force.” As The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed it, in the struggle for justice one has “cosmic companionship.”
Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku (2020) is the second of three Natalie Goldberg books on this list. Part poetry, part history lesson, part travelogue, Three Simple Lines is mostly memoir of a writer’s pilgrimage to explore this shortest of all creative writing forms. Goldberg is a masterful storyteller, and she has produced a thoughtful and illuminating book.
THE THIRD STAGE (thinking about purpose and mindfulness)
Purposeful Retirement: How to Bring Happiness and Meaning to Your Retirement (2017) by Hyrum W. Smith is the first book selected when a small group of friends gathered during the pandemic to discuss various paths into the next stage of life. I’m afraid to report that it will not be mistaken for one of the great works of literature. There are, however, bits and pieces that are insightful, and Smith’s stories are usually humorous and illustrative in their own way.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (2019) by Cal Newport was recommended by a friend and former colleague, and it immediately resonated with work I’d been doing during 2020 to address the love/hate relationship with my smartphone. It was time to make permanent the digital declutter I’d struggled to adopt throughout the year. Today’s technology mixes harm with benefits in a way that sucks one into overuse and manipulated addiction unless you step back and consider “what tools you should use and how you should use them.” Equally important, says Newport, such an approach “enables you to confidently ignore everything else.”
Listening: How to Increase Awareness of Your Inner Guide (1989) is a small book that was gifted to me this year at a time when I was having trouble because I was “thinking while male.” The book’s author,Lee Coit, presents ways to train yourself to listen to what he describes as the divine voice that is inside us all.
The Four Agreements (1997), published more than twenty years ago but still relevant today, is author Don Miguel Ruiz‘s treatise that everything we do is based on thousands of agreements we have made — agreements “with other people, with God, with life” and, most importantly, with ourselves. But to live into who we really are, we have to stop living our lives trying to satisfy the dictates of other people.
Broken Signposts (2020) by Anglican theologian N.T. Wright, looks at seven signposts integral to every worldview, including justice, beauty, freedom, and truth. When we do not live up to our ideals in those areas, Wright suggests, our societies and our individual lives become unbalanced. The contrast between destructive and uplifting uses of power came to mind while reading this work. Many of Wright’s observations from the Gospel of John bring to mind parallels of life today, especially Wright’s telling of the well-known New Testament story of Jesus before Pilate, in a different political arena in a different time.
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living (2016) is a year’s worth of wisdom centered on the Stoic virtues of justice, prudence, self-control, and courage; virtues which have been described as the “perennial desires of the wise.” Through the regular practice of reading and reflection, The Daily Stoic and author Ryan Holidayasks us to think more deeply about how we live, how we navigate the challenges of life, and how we change our actions in response to those challenges. “Acceptance isn’t passive,” Holiday asserts. “It’s the first step in an active process toward self-improvement.”
SPORTS (really just baseball)
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (1994) is Nicholas Dawidoff‘s page turner, where I learned that only one man has his professional baseball cards in the CIA museum in Langley, Virginia. Following his 15-year career with five different major league teams, the Princeton-educated Berg served as a highly successful Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative during World War II. Moe Berg was seen as different from any other baseball player even during his playing career. Legendary manager Casey Stengel described Berg as “the strangest man ever to play baseball”. Following his baseball years, Berg — like many bright young men of the day — entered the war to fight the Nazis. Dawidoff’s delightful book was a great introduction to someone who was among the few who found a way to live an original life.
Oscar Charleston: The Life and Legend of Baseball’s Greatest Forgotten Player (2019) is a recent and fascinating biography by Jeremy Beer. According to the stats that Bill James (the father of baseball analytics) uses to rank player value from different eras, only Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, and Willie Mays were greater than Charleston, who was slotted just above Ty Cobb. Oscar Charleston — to put it bluntly — is the best baseball player you’ve never heard of. He was an outstanding athlete and fascinating individual. Charleston put together an other-worldly career in the Negro and Cuban leagues decades before white major league baseball decided to integrate. A centerfielder with the range and smarts of Willie Mays, a hitter with as fearsome a stroke as Babe Ruth, and a baserunner built like a linebacker with the fast fearlessness of Ty Cobb, Charleston was the whole package. Beer has brought forward the forgotten history of a man who, although he was the best-known player of the Negro Leagues, was identified by the occupation “baggage handler” on his death certificate.
OUTBURSTS OF RADICAL COMMON SENSE (and whatever else tickled my fancy)
The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design (2020) includes the motto to “always read the plaque” — a mantra for Roman Mars and the folks who produce the podcast 99% Invisible, and one that infuses this 2020 book by Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt. According to this informative and entertaining book, we should be “constantly on the lookout for stories embedded in our built environments,” as they do here, with a focus on problem-solving, historical constraints, and human drama.
How to Apologize (2021), by David LaRochelle and illustrated by Mike Wohnoutka, is a simple children’s book that I read after reading an interview with Wohnoutka by a blogger from my hometown. “Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone knew how to apologize? Luckily, this humorous guidebook is full of practical tips about when, why, and how to say you’re sorry. From a porcupine who accidentally popped his friend’s balloon to a snail who was running so fast he stepped on a sloth’s toes, hilarious examples and sweet illustrations abound.”
Rites of Our Passage: Reflections Through a Christian Year (2002) is a collection of the sermons of The Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade. In all the sermons I’ve heard through the years from a number of exceptional priests, pastors, and mentors, I never heard a more consistent preacher week-in-and-week-out than Frank Wade. Other priests have been known to say, “All his sermons are, at least, very good, and many of them are astonishingly good.” In returning to re-read the entire collection, I learned anew that Frank’s timeless and clear-headed observations — about the dangers that occur when isolated minds create dead hearts, about the need to give forgiveness a chance in a world riven by violence, and how hope and joy require the action of belief if we want to live as if something good were true — are building blocks for personal growth.
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within(1986), the classic writing manual by Natalie Goldberg, suggests that writing is 90% listening. “If you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things,” she advises. “Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot.” And, she adds, don’t think too much. Goldberg speaks of how to uneducate yourself from what you’ve been taught and immerse yourself in writing what’s in front of your nose.
I hope you find one or more books here to pique your interest. In pulling this year’s list together, I realized that I slipped and did not read any fiction in 2021. That will be corrected in the coming year, as I have already identified a couple of novels on my “to be read” shelves that have moved up in priority. Let me know what you’ve discovered and enjoyed in your books this year and happy — and productive — reading in 2022!
More to come…
DJB
*To check out previous lists, click here for the posts from 2020, 2019, and 2018.
Born in Potomac, Maryland, and a graduate of Georgetown Visitation in the District, the Nashville based singer-songwriter Maggie Rose has been making a name for herself in rock-and-roll, soul, folk, funk, and R&B for several years. A gifted vocalist, Rose has worked with a wide variety of some of the top names in the field. With the release of her third solo album, Have a Seat, she has stepped out further into the spotlight.
A friend and regular More to Come reader is a big fan, and he suggested I consider taking a look at Rose’s music through the Saturday Soundtrack.
We’ll begin with What Are We Fighting For which opens her newest album. Heard here in a live performance, there’s a classic sound that spans eras in this song. It speaks to the need for loving solidarity that infuses her recent work.
Saint, as described by Rose’s website bio, “unfolds as a delicate refusal to succumb to the expectations of others.” Rose says, “That song’s about admitting to not being perfect and being okay with that. It’s something we should stop expecting of women—because women are many things, and saintly is not a requirement.”
“I’ve got a cloud over my head when I wake up / I bet I seem perfect on paper / Couldn’t be further away / Feels like there’s a crowd of people that I’ve disappointed / The places that I’ve been avoiding / Full of hearts I left on the way
I’m only human, I’ve made my mistakes / It’s hard to feel high when you’re falling from grace, but I’ll keep falling, I’ll keep falling”
In this live version of Are We There Yet, Rose ventures into pop to speak about the tortures of ambition, while What Makes You Tick is an exploration of funk. Rose pulls it all off with style.
“For Rose, the charmed experience of recording in Muscle Shoals has catalyzed the start of a thrilling new era in her musical evolution. ‘Working with musicians of that caliber and knowing they were giving my music so much attention definitely made me thrive,’ she says. ‘I felt so safe going deep into the emotional places within the songs, and I think you can feel that love and camaraderie when you listen to the record.’ At the same time, Have a Seat is undeniably the sound of an artist fully coming into her own, without concession or compromise. ‘I’ve worked in this industry for over a decade, and I feel like I’ve finally carved out a lane that’s genre-bending and all my own,’ she says. ‘I had to really fight to find that space for myself, and this record is my way of staking my claim.’”
We’ll end with a recent live concert from Paste Studio in Nashville, recorded in September during the Americana festival. Rose kicks it into high gear with Do It and takes off from there. It is followed (after a bit of a conversation) with one of her recent singles, For Your Consideration.
Maggie Rose returns home to play the Birchmere on December 10th.
Enjoy!
More to come…
DJB
Image of Maggie Rose (credit: maggierosemusic.com)
“Stoic” is shorthand for emotionless. Add the fact that “the mere mention of philosophy makes most nervous or bored,” writes author Ryan Holiday, and “‘Stoic philosophy’ on the surface sounds like the last thing anyone would want to learn about, let alone urgently need in the course of daily life.”
Holiday is on a mission to change that.
The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living has been sitting on the bed stand most of this year. Each day I read a short reflection by Holiday and co-author Stephen Hanselman that drives home their belief in stoicism as a “tool in the pursuit of self-mastery, perseverance, and wisdom.”
The ancients who built the foundations of Stoic philosophy counted Roman emperors, former slaves, playwrights, political advisors, and prosperous merchants among their number. Along the road of history, figures as different as George Washington, Walt Whitman, Frederick the Great, Immanuel Kant, William Alexander Percy, and Ralph Waldo Emerson all read, studied, quoted, or admired the Stoics.
To provide readers with a daily meditation, the authors organize the year around the disciplines of perception, action, and will. The months are grouped by themes. A short quote from an ancient philosopher is followed by a few paragraphs with accessible examples. The discipline of perception begins with the theme of clarity and the January 1st topic of control and choice. The quote is from the slave turned philosopher Epictetus.
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own …”
Stoicism encourages us to focus on what we can control and how we control ourselves. “Acceptance isn’t passive,” Holiday asserts. “It’s the first step in an active process toward self-improvement.”
Many of us blame outside events for our circumstances. But we truly grow when we move beyond the event and focus on the response. Bad, unexpected, and unwanted things will happen to each of us. In our response we have to act to change. If one carries on as before, “eventually you won’t even notice your mistake and will begin to rationalize your behavior.”
Responsibility simply means we have the ability to respond. We can choose to get angry, unfocused, and negative when something happens — be it a political race that doesn’t go our way, an unexpected illness, the latest U.N. report on the coming climate catastrophe, or the death of a close family member. We can also accept that it has happened and then take the action — setting the standard through our works — that hope demands.
The Stoic virtues articulated by emperor Marcus Aurelius — justice, prudence, self-control, and courage — have been described as the “perennial desires of the wise.” Through the regular practice of reading and reflection, The Daily Stoic prompts us to think more deeply about how we live, how we navigate the challenges of life, and how we change our actions in response to those challenges.
MORE TO COME... 