This is What You Have Been Waiting For

The Gate
by Marie Howe, from What the Living Do

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

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See also:

• "The Poetry of Ordinary Time," On Being, April 25, 2013
• Howe, M. (2008). The kingdom of ordinary time. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (library)
• Howe, M. (1998). What the living do: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton. (library)
• Howe, M. (1988). The good thief. New York: Persea Books. (library)

What Really Gave You Joy

How to Make Origami Paper from Notebook Paper

Stuart Brown in conversation with Krista Tippett, from "Play, Spirit, and Character," On Being, June 19, 2014: 

I don’t want to foster broken bones and concussions and that sort of thing in kids, but an inherent part of being playful is taking risks. What you don't want to do is have the risks be excessive. And the natural history of play in the world, both animal and human, is that persistent play increases the risk of death and damage while it's taking place, but it appears to be absolutely necessary for the well-being and the future of the species.

So it's a conundrum. But to remove all risk from kids' play is to not allow them the spontaneity from within to develop themselves. It's a judgment call on the part of parents. And this is where I have some beef with the media — in that "if it bleeds, it leads" — the perceptions of the levels of violence and risk in our culture are really beyond what the actual risks are, so that a responsible parent feels they can't let their kid be out on the streets in the afternoon and that sort of thing...

I think it's safer for the person who is a player to take a few hard knocks and maybe have a fracture in childhood, than it is to insulate them from the possibility of that. I think that that constricts their psyches and their futures much more.

Any parent with a young child — say a child over three but under 12 — if you just observe them, and don't try and direct them, and watch what it is they like to do in play, and get some sense of how their temperament intermixes with their play desires, you often will see a key to their innate talents. And if those talents are given fairly free reign, if you allow those innate talents to build upon themselves and the environment is favorable enough so that it supports that...I think that then you see that there is a union between self and talent.

And that this is nature's way of sort of saying this is who you are and what you are. And I'm sure if you go back and think about your children or yourself and go back to your earliest emotion-laden, visual and visceral memories of what really gave you joy, you'll have some sense of what was natural for you and where your talents lie. I think it’s pretty important.

Listen to the whole conversation...

Citizens of Two Realms

"The search for reason ends at the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we measure, where we weigh. We do not leave the shore of the known in search of adventure or suspense or because of the failure of reason to answer our questions. We sail because our mind is like a fantastic seashell, and when applying our ear to its lips we hear a perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore. Citizens of two realms, we all must sustain a dual allegiance: we sense the ineffable in one realm, we name and exploit reality in another. Between the two we set up a system of references, but we can never fill the gap. They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody, as life and what lies beyond the last breath."

~ Abraham Joshua Heschel, from Man is not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion

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See also:

• "The Spiritual Audacity of Abraham Joshua Heschel," On Being, Dec. 6, 2012
• Able to Live in Two Worlds (Shinzen Young)

Learn to See Humanity

Excerpt from "The Psychology behind Morality," an On Being conversation with Jonathan Haidt and Krista Tippett:

Ms. Tippett: Here’s something from your writing that — it’s a very striking statement. “The myth of pure evil,” — and again, religions are a place we talk about good and evil — “the myth of pure evil is the ultimate self-serving bias, the ultimate form of naive realism.” That’s a pretty strong statement.

Dr. Haidt: One thing that you find in most of the great wisdom traditions is the idea that reality as we see it is an illusion, it’s a veil, it blinds us, and enlightenment is taking down the veil, seeing things as they are, transcending dualities. And that, I think, is really crucial for thinking about civility, because that’s what happened to me in writing this book and in doing this research.

I was a self-righteous, conservative-hating, religion-hating, secular liberal. And, in doing this research over many years, and in forcing myself to watch FOX News as an anthropologist, with just, I’ve got to understand this stuff, over time, I realized, well, they’re not crazy. You know, these ideas make sense. They see things I didn’t see. The feeling of losing my anger was thrilling. It was really freeing. When you get people to actually understand each other, and they let down their guard, and they learn something new, and they see humanity in someone that they disliked or hated or demonized before. That’s really thrilling. And that, I think, is one of the most important emotional tools we have to foster civility. Because once you get it started, it’s kind of addictive.

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See also:

• Friendliness Resistance Training
• Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. New York: Pantheon Books. (library)
• Haidt, J. (2008, March). Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives. (TEDTalks) 

So Much More than You Really Know

Jennifer Michael Hecht in conversation with Krista Tippett, "Hope for Our Future Selves," On Being, March 27, 2014:

It’s an extreme reaction, but lots of people die after a suicide. They come in groups...

But don’t ever forget the flipside, which is your staying alive means so much more than you really know or that anyone is aware of at this moment. We’re in it together in this profound way, and you can take some strength from that. For me, that’s been very important...My two arguments that you owe it to other people and that you owe it to your future self, are both about looking at what the individual means. 

Because when you look at a person within a group, and all the trends we follow: the clothes, the car, the not-car —all these trends that we follow, you realize the extent to which we’re enmeshed. And when you look at yourself and realize that you have fallen in and out of love with the same person, you have fought with friends, thinking you’ll never speak to them again, and you love them again...

We have different moods that profoundly change our outlook, and it’s not right to let your worst one murder all the others.

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See also: Hecht, J. M. (2013). Stay: A history of suicide and the philosophies against it. New Haven: Yale University Press