Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

This weekend, Dottie and I watched the film “Anna Karenina,” adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s 19^th century novel. I’m not surprised that the Oscars ignored the movie though I am surprised that Hollywood made the film at all.

After all, it’s the story of how Anna, guided by her feelings, pursues romantic love (Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do?) until it destroys her. She is married, she has a son, and, at the beginning of the story, is a respectable member of St. Petersburg society.

Then on a trip to Moscow to try to reconcile her sister-in-law to her philandering brother, Anna meets Count Vronsky who begins an aggressive pursuit. At first, she refuses his advances, but slowly he wears her down—not that she appeared to take much wearing down—and their affair begins.

The novel makes it clearer than the movie that not only were the two having an affair, they were flaunting their affair, cohabitating, entertaining guests in the summer house they rent together, and even having a child.

Anna’s husband, a senior government bureaucrat (and something of a stiff) at first refuses to believe there’s anything going on. Then he asks Anna to discontinue the affair. Finally, pushed to the limit with Anna’s and Vronsky’s  indiscretions, he files for divorce.

As a result, Anna can no longer go out into polite society. Having a tryst was marginally acceptable, but to act like… well, to act like most Hollywood actors and actresses was beyond the pale. Isolated from friends, treating her insomnia with morphine leading to an addiction, Anna even begins to push Vronsky away. She’s like a desperate animal trapped against a cliff with nowhere to go.

The movie ends with her suicide (sorry for the spoiler if you didn’t know the story), something that didn’t surprise me in the book or the movie. She had put herself in a position where there were only two choices. She needed to repent of her bad choices, quit Vronsky and return to her husband in an attempt to pick up the pieces or she needed to end it all. Incapable of the first, she chooses the second, whispering, “Forgive me,” to it’s not clear who just before the end.

Tolstoy knew that there is right and wrong and little decisions add up to a destiny. When doing wrong, the sooner we can make course corrections, the better. The older and the farther down a chosen path we get, the harder it is to change our ways. “Anna Karenina” serves as a harsh reminder of what can happen if we don’t. Which is why it seems a very un-Hollywood movie to make.

Good Decisions

Recently this old story came to mind. You may have heard it, but it's worth a knowing smile if not some serious reflection.

The story goes that a skilled executive had become CEO of a bank years earlier. When he began, the bank was small, but after years--decades really--he had expanded that small bank into a financial powerhouse. And now, in his late seventies, it was time to hand the reins over to a new, younger CEO, a bright and talented man the board had already selected. 

"Sir," said the younger man, "the story of how you built this bank is legendary. As I take over from you, what do I most need to remember in order to continue to grow this business." 

"Young man," the retiring CEO replied, "two words: Good Decisions." 

"That's fine, sir, but how do I go about making good decisions?" 

"Young man, one word: Wisdom." 

"Sir, I couldn't agree more. I need to make good decisions that come as a result of wisdom. But how do I get the wisdom I need." 

"Young man," the older gentleman replied with a steely look in his eyes, "two words: Bad Decisions."

Yup, it's like that, but only if we admit our bad decisions and learn from them. And that, of course, is the hard part.

Neither Pride Nor Despair

In The Ballad of the White Horse, G. K. Chesterton imaginatively retells the story of King Alfred the Great (849-899). The ballad, a poem, opens with Alfred in hiding.

Vikings have overrun his kingdom, most of his knights are dead in battle, and his life is threatened.

Then he receives a heavenly vision in which he is instructed to gather whatever army he can muster and attack in order to drive the Vikings out of his kingdom and back to Denmark. You’d think that given a heavenly vision that success would be assured, but that’s not the case. The vision guarantees Alfred nothing. Instead he is told to rid himself of the twin sins: pride and despair.

He is not to presume on the heavenly vision for victory nor is he to fall into hopelessness a he considers the greatness and strength of the Viking hoard. The vision is as realistic as it is inscrutable:

“I tell you naught for your comfort,

Yea, naught for your desire,

Save that the sky grows darker yet

And the sea rises higher.

“Night shall be thrice night over you,

And heaven an iron cope.

Do you have joy without a cause,

Yea, faith without a hope?”

None of us knows the future except that the older we get “the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher.” And in light of that, neither pride nor despair will do.

Pride is an illusion: “I’m prepared, healthy, and rich. All will go well and I will live a long, long life full of happiness.” We can hope so, but we can’t know that and it’s foolish to bank on it. Life is far too uncertain.

At the same time despair is an illusion: “My life will move from one failing to the next, nothing is certain about the future except future misery, sickness, and death.” We can’t know that either and it’s foolish to pretend we do. Again, life is far too uncertain.

Instead of pride or despair, we, like King Alfred, need faith. It’s only faith that enables us to rejoice without pride and to mourn without despair. It’s faith that enables us to rid the land of the Viking invaders knowing full well that sooner or later they will be back and the next time they may win. Faith makes us happy pilgrims in the valley of tears.

And there is no time like the present for cultivating our spiritual lives in order to grow in that gift of faith. In fact, it’s now or never.

Coming to Terms with Death: Some Thoughts on Easter

When I began this blog, I mentioned something about coming to terms with death. All men are mortal. Caius is a man. Therefore Caius is mortal. Yes, true enough, but as Ivan Illych says on his deathbead in Tolstoy’s short story “The Death of Ivan Illych,” “The syllogism… had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself.  That Caius—man in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.”

Well, this is the right weekend to think about coming to terms with death. This evening begins what Catholics call the Easter Triduum. During it Christians first remember the Last Supper. Jesus knew he is going to be arrested, condemned, and executed. And so he gives his followers a way to remember him and to share in his life. Then by agonizing prayer, he surrenders his will. This is the way it must be and he acts with confidence in the face of doom.

Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day of Christ’s death by crucifixion. Christian believe that just as his life was for others, so his death was for others. The cross is the supreme example of redemptive suffering—an idea almost completely lost today, but really not that hard to understand. A mom in labor experiences redemptive suffering. Yes, it hurts badly. Yes, she suffers, but the pain releases her child to life in the world, an enormous good. It wasn’t “meaningless” suffering. Can our aging, ailing, and eventual deaths be redemptive as well? Does all of our aging, ailing, and eventual deaths have meaning—meaning apart from the meaning we subjectively give them? I believe they do.

Holy Saturday is far and away the strangest day of the year. On Holy Saturday, nothing happens. Oh, we’ll be doing preparation for Easter dinner, but it always ends up being a still quiet day of limbo—a hanging between death and life.

By 8PM we’ll be in church (since at 8:15, there won’t be any more seats) for the Easter Vigil that begins at 8:30. A solemn procession, baptisms, confirmations, and Bible reading after Bible reading in the dark until… “Christ is Risen!” the blare of all the lights coming on at the same second, and the Last Supper all over again.

Living, dying, dead, more alive than ever.

In participating in the mystery of the Easter Triduum year after year (actually week after week since every Sunday is a little Easter), we come to terms with the true facts that all men are mortal, Jim is a man, therefore Jim is mortal, but because of the cross and the resurrection, there’s more to the syllogism and to the story.

Bounder of Adventure

"We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!" --Bilbo Baggins in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been listening to lectures by Joseph Pearce on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The story is, of course, about Bilbo Baggins' adventurous journey from his comfortable home and comfortable life through a great deal of discomfort to the Lonely Mountain and back again. Back again to his comfortable home at Bag End, but Bilbo never returns to his comfortable life. Bilbo comes back permanently changed. The respectable, old-before-his-time Bilbo became the somewhat disreputable, eccentric Bilbo we meet at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings. He's the Bilbo who is friends to dwarves, elves, and younger hobbits, the one who seems to behave younger every year.

And how could it be otherwise. In the course of his adventure--something he was never interested in to begin with--Bilbo spent weary days trekking and weary nights trying to sleep on the ground in the wild. He was threatened by trolls, captured by goblins, chased by wolves, and nearly eaten by Gollum. Bilbo killed a giant spider, rescued his friends from prison, and matched wits with fire-breathing Smaug, the dragon. He experienced the joy of Rivendell, the terror of battle, and the deep sadness at the death of his friend and traveling companion, the dwarf king Thorin.

This is what happens, he later warns his nephew and heir, Frodo when you leave your front door. Before you know it, you're on an adventure. And who knows what will happen around the next bend in the road?

At a recent dinner with a long-time friend (who may or may not be an old friend--depending on your perspective), we discussed what I would call the next big adventure. "My wife and I figure we have about twenty years of active work left," said my friend. "The question is what to do with that time and who to do it with in order to really make it count." 

Dottie and I similarly have about twenty years left as well. It may be longer, but let's call it twenty. How do we make those years count for the good of our family, friends, community, the Church, and the world? How, where, and with whom can we best influence the next generations toward the good, the true, and the beautiful? What's our next and possibly last great adventure?

Sure adventures are "nasty disturbing uncomfortable things." Sure they make you late for dinner. But how sad to settle for sedentary comfort when, as Bilbo put it:

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it meets some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

After all, if I could say, it wouldn't be much of an adventure, would it?

Luxury or Comfort

This morning driving to work, I was listening to a series of lectures about J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit by scholar Joseph Pearce.  In the course of talking about the book, Pearce quoted the first two sentences of chapter one:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit hole, and that means comfort.

As he read, I finished the quote—incorrectly. Instead of “that means comfort,” I, in the privacy of my car said, “that means luxury.” Well, that says more about me and I suspect many others than I’d like. Tolkien and the Bilbo Baggins valued comfort. We value luxury. Bilbo had a fireplace for his cooking; I want a Wolf range.

Comfort comes from the Latin com-fortis meaning strong. Luxury comes from the Latin luxuria meaning rankness or excess. Comforts strengthen and console us. Luxury is more than is reasonable and too often weakens us and makes us want more and more and more.

Perhaps my misquote was the result of the brand new Audi S6 that passed me along the way or perhaps, to use Tolkien’s imagery, it was the dragon in me. While Hobbits love comfort, dragons are the ones on Middle Earth who love luxury. For a dragon, enough is never enough. More is always better even if you can't use anything you own.

Now I realize that the whole point of The Hobbit is breaking away from comfort. Comfort blocks the way to adventures and it's only in the adventure of the journey to Lonely Mountain that Bilbo learns heroic virtue. Having said that, I suspect that for many of us just breaking away from our craving for luxury to be content with comfort could be the first step on a journey that, as it becomes an adventure, teaches us heroic virtue as well.

Feeling Just a Bit Ill

The end of last week, over the weekend, and even today, I don't feels so well. Neither does my wife, Dottie. In fact, she been in bed the last two days, hardly checking her work email at all. Now that's unusual.

While there's nothing good about being sick, there is something very good about being reminded that I am not immortal, invincible, or irreplaceable. The sense--contrary to all reason--that I am immortal, invincible and irreplaceable is, in fact, a mark of adolescence. You rarely hear a middle-aged person or a senior saying, "Hey, hold my beer and watch this." At some point we outgrow the need to jump off cliffs, swim with sharks, drive at 110 miles an hour, and ski down the mountain without turning.

The trick is to get our spirits to follow the good judgment of our bodies. One of my friends was close to the founder and president of a nonprofit organization who was in his mid-seventies. "What's your succession plan?" my friend once asked. The older man just stared at him and then changed the subject. Later one of the organization's vice presidents took my friend aside and informed him that they never, never bring up a succession plan. The president simply would not discuss it and became angry if pressed. He was operating as if he was immortal, invincible and irreplaceable.

As it turned out, he created a situation in which he was, in fact, irreplaceable. When he became seriously ill, the organization's revenue took a significant dip. Within a few months of his death, the revenue did a nosedive, huge layoffs began, and the organization he so carefully grew nearly declared bankruptcy. How sad and unnecessary.

Part of wisdom is recognizing our limitations in every area of life and in every phase of life. Something to remember the next time we feel under the weather.