American History

There are no facts, only interpretations.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844--1900)

History is not objective.  There is no such thing as “what really happened.”  History is made of facts selected, facts ignored and omitted, facts interpreted and ultimately facts arranged into a narrative. Histories are written, rewritten, and perpetually revised often reflecting the tenor of the times in which they are written. Though built upon facts, History is a subjective story that mirrors the historian’s bias and agenda.

My high school American History textbooks were written in the 1950’s or early 60’s, pre-Viet Nam, in the congratulatory post-WW-II years. My textbooks were full of facts to be memorized. The narrative was patriotic.  The focus was largely on events involving presidents, politicians, generals, explorers, industrialists, inventors, and an occasional scoundrel.  With a few token exceptions, American History was largely about the achievements of our nation’s notable white males.

A few months ago, I read These Truths: a History of the United States by Jill Lepore (2018).  It is a history of America from colonial through modern times.  With the facts she selected, omitted, interpreted, and wove into a narrative, this female historian has authored a new, credible, yet very different American History.  Her narrative is filled with facts about the often over-looked; African-Americans, Native Americans and women. Her history is full of facts, but it is a very different history from what I was once taught.  It is a more nuanced and questioning narrative that includes both this country’s epic achievements and its epic short comings.

I can’t help but wonder how today’s news will one day be recorded in the history books.  In real time, based on the same daily ‘facts’, there is no agreed upon narrative. There is a FOX narrative and there is a CNN narrative.  There is a GOP narrative and a Democratic Party narrative.  There is a narrative from those who are rabidly pro-Trump and a narrative from those who are equally adamant that Trump must go.  Fifty years from now who will tell the story?  Who will be the interpreters of these times?  Who will decide what facts to include and what to omit in the high school textbooks?  What will be the agenda?

Fifty years from now, these turbulent and troubled times will be written about and remembered.  But not objectively, not “what really happened.” There is no such thing.

Memories

I visited an old friend today.  His kid sister and niece were there too.  I did a lot of talking, recounting many memories of our growing up.  We go way back together.  I met Marc through a common friend when I was in second grade and he was in third.  I remembered that we went to Ash Grove Elementary school.  I remembered that I lived on Monaco Street and he lived on Ginger Court.

I talked about memories of the many adventures we shared over the years.  I recounted tales of our prowess playing touch-football. I recalled our competitions on the tennis court, at the poker table and over the chess board.  I remembered, when we were a bit older, the many times we skied together at Loveland and Winter Park. 

I remembered the times we got together at my house to ‘jam’, Marc on the violin, me on the guitar, our friend Paul on the piano and another friend Steve on clarinet.  Marc’s sister reminded us of the times at his house where we brought our stamp collections together to barter and to trade.

Marc and I once drove together to California to visit a friend.  I remember on that trip camping at Yosemite among the bears and camping at Lake Tahoe among the casinos.  Coming home, we camped at the Maroon Bells among the aspens.

When I was in medical school and Marc was in law school, we shared a house.  If I remember correctly, our total monthly rent was $121.72.  I remember that Marc disliked my cooking, especially my turkey soup made from a leftover carcass.

I remember being there for each other as we weathered the ups and downs of girlfriends and dating.  Eventually, I introduced Marc to my cousin, and they got married.  The same cousin introduced me to my wife-to-be.

Today, I shared with Marc my memories of last night, when I attended his daughter’s wedding.  I shared with him how in love his daughter and son-in-law appeared to be.  I told him that his other children seemed well and that his grandson looks just like him.  I told him that he could be very proud of his family.  I assured him that even though he wasn’t at the wedding, he was not forgotten.

Today, I was flooded by memories.  I needed to tell the old stories.  Marc had no stories and no memories to share.  About eight years ago his family noticed some subtle changes in his personality.  Now, he is in a nursing home due to his advanced dementia.  Marc has tremors. He speaks but a few words and can barely stay awake.  Marc was a good man and a dear friend.  Why this?

Marc no longer recognizes me.  For a few moments he seemed to recognize his sister and she was able to get him to smile, a smile from the past that I remember very well. 

Ecclesiastes

One week ago, on the holy day of Yom Kippur, Jews prayed that they be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.  How odd that one week later, on the harvest festival of Sukkot, the biblical book of Ecclesiastes is read in which a disheartened author questions life’s significance.  “I thought the dead more fortunate than the living.  Better off than either is he who has not yet been.”  Last week we prayed for life.  This week we ask, “Why?”

Koheleth, the author of Ecclesiastes, raises fundamental existential questions. What is the point of our lives?  What is purpose of human events?  Like many of the modern existentialists, Koheleth finds no obvious answer.  To him the world appears stale and unalterable.  “There is nothing new under the sun.”  He comes to doubt the divine attributes of justice and mercy in a world where those who are evil prosper and those who are righteous suffer.  He finds nothing of substance in the pursuit of knowledge, power, wealth or pleasure.  All is for naught.  The wise and the foolish, man and animal, share the common fate of death.  Better never to have been born.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”  This familiar refrain, from the poetic English of the King James Bible, echoes throughout Ecclesiastes.  However, a more accurate translation of the Hebrew word hevel is not vanity, but breath or vapor.  “A breath of breaths.  All is but a breath.”  Ecclesiastes is not about vanity.  It’s about the elusive and illusory nature of our lives.  All is transient, like a breath exhaled, visible momentarily and then gone.

Despite doubt and disillusionment, Koheleth teaches a pragmatic philosophy of happiness.  Know that the cycle of life and death is inescapable, “a time to be born and a time to die.”  Therefore, understand and accept that which is inevitable.  Don’t pursue what is futile, because that leads to despair.  Instead, savor if you can the good fortune that comes during the brief span of life.  Live life in moderation.  “Do not be over-scrupulous.  Do not be wicked either.”  There is solace in the words of Koheleth, reassuring us that we don’t have to be perfect.  “There is no man so righteous that he always does what is best and never makes a mistake.”  Enjoy youth, appreciate good health, and rejoice in life’s bounty.  Seek companionship and “enjoy life with the woman you love all the fleeting days of your life.”

Why is Ecclesiastes read during the joyous harvest holiday of Sukkoth?  Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the Days of Awe, have just passed.  Perhaps Ecclesiastes marks the beginning of a new spiritual cycle.  Yom Kippur and Sukkoth. . . “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”  A time to repent and a time to question.  A time for faith and a time for doubt.

Middlemarch

“I can’t bear fishing.  I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour – or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.”  (from Middlemarch, by George Eliot)


A few weeks ago, at my wife’s prompting, I began reading Middlemarch a British novel, written in 1871 by Mary Anne Evans, better known by her pen name George Eliot.  I read her short novel Silas Marner in High School and hated it, but what the heck.  Middlemarch is a highly regarded classic, considered by some to be one of the great British novels of all time.  With that in mind, I set out to fill a significant hole in my reading resume.   

Having found an edition with sufficiently large font, I began the journey, page one.  Usually, by page 50 I can tell if I like a book.  Page 50 is my point of no return.  If I don’t like a book, I stop at page 50 and go on to something else.  Otherwise, I feel committed to finish what I’ve started.  With its flowery and difficult to understand Victorian English, I wasn’t loving Middlemarch, but neither was it so bad that I stopped at page 50.  I kept on reading.

As I read, I was aware of George Eliot’s craftsmanship with language, her ability to generate memorable and quotable phrases (like the disparaging comment about fishing cited above).  But as I read further into the novel, I realized that I couldn’t have cared less about the well-intentioned but highly dysfunctional protagonists Dorothea Brooke and Dr. Tertius Lydgate.  Meanwhile, I was struggling to keep track of a rapidly expanding list of bland and mostly unlikeable characters.  And to make it all-the-more challenging, Middlemarch is filled with obscure references to 1830’s British politics, which can only be understood with the addition of frequent annotations.  And I hate reading footnotes.

Middlemarch is a dauntingly long novel, running over 900 printed pages.  I made my way to about page 400, and then started making excuses for putting the book aside, reading less and less each day.  I was not enjoying Middlemarch and there were so many other books I would have rather been reading. 

There is a great psychological truth:  the larger the investment, the harder the defeat.  A good deal of my time was invested in this book, 400 pages read.  However, more than 500 pages to go.  It wasn’t going to happen.  I could go no further.  Admitting defeat, I surrendered.  I felt horrible that so much of my time and effort had been squandered. And for what?  But I decided that it was time to cut my losses and move on to something different.

Fortunately, I didn’t feel horrible for too long.  I had an idea.  With an investment of only thirty-minutes more of my time, I finished Middlemarch chapters 43 through 86 and the finale, learned what happened to each of the characters, found out how the story ended, and was able to put the book up on my shelf with no guilt or regret.

Thanks to SparkNotes online.

Fasting

"Who is strong?  One who governs his urges."  (attributed to Simon ben Zoma, circa 100 AD)

“. . . that which is decisive is not the performance of rituals at distinguished occasions but how they affect the climate of the entire life.”  (Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1907—1972)


Throw most hungry animals a morsel of food and they will fight to get it first.  They don’t pause to say thank-you.  They don’t offer to share the morsel with the others, and the morsel is quickly wolfed down.  Flavor matters little and one morsel doesn’t satisfy.

Endowed with a capacity for choice, humans are unique among animals.  We can decide to share bread together and to pause for a moment to say thanks.  We can refrain from eating, until we are sure that everyone has been served.  We can choose to eat unhurried, aware of our food, tasting and enjoying each bite.  We can eat with restraint and moderation, rejecting gluttony.

Many religions have rules to eat by.  One purpose of the rules is to foster self-control, and it is through self-control that we distinguish ourselves from the animals.  Beginning as instinct-driven we learn to become self-disciplined.  From reflexive we become reflective.  When no longer captive to our impulses and appetites we acquire the power to freely choose.

Yom Kippur is approaching, and as I have done every year of my adult life, I will again choose to observe a 24-hour fast.  In contrast to daily need-gratifying behavior, during the fast I choose to live with my hunger.  I am reminded, when fasting, that I am not enslaved by appetite.  I am reminded to feel compassion for those who have no choice but to go hungry, and to feel grateful that I may choose.  During the fast of Yom Kippur, on the day of atonement, I am asked to look deep within myself, to acknowledge the hurts I have caused, and to seek forgiveness.  No animals, only humans, can abstain from physical nourishment in pursuit of spiritual nourishment. 

Weakened by fasting, I become stronger.