Tag: compassion

Tamara

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I want to take a moment and thank someone. Someone who, after all she’d been through, passed one more lesson on to someone needing a class.

Tamara (Lukowicz) O’Hara had every reason to be me. Every reason to be angry, pessimistic, defensive, and assuming, a person who only saw what was wrong with the world and never what was good. A victim. The war I saw my late wife Lisa wage against cancer scarred me eternally as sure as it took her life. I have guilt that will never be assuaged. It can never be mitigated despite logic and reason, regardless of the assurances from my children that my guilt is misplaced. I have bottled rage with no pressure relief valve. There is no one to complain to or in charge with whom to debate my points.

And I found myself bitter. Angry with the unfairness, inconsolable in my rage.

As a child, Tamara had childhood cancer. She battled it and beat it. She was Lisa’s cousin. I only met Tamara as a young adult after I began dating Lisa in the late 1980s. It was either a Thanksgiving at Lisa’s parent’s house or a Christmas Eve party at Lisa’s mom’s cousin’s apartment. I found her bubbly, engaging, and happy when I first met her. She greeted everyone, me included, with a smile and a story. Her parents and her sister were all there. The whole family was approachable and energetic. I took to them all fast. At the time, I think she was the only person I’d ever met who had survived cancer. Not that I ever asked. At that time, cancer was as foreign to me as hieroglyphics and certainly not a polite topic of dinner conversation.

Every time I saw Tamara, she was the same. I never once heard her complain about anything. Not the dinner, the people, the conversation, work, life, nothing. Ever. Over time, as I matured into marriage and had twins, her perpetual bubbliness I relegated to goofiness! She was goofy! Happy beyond all reason, charismatic seemingly without cause. And that’s when I first missed the opportunity to learn from her. She wasn’t goofy. She was alive in every way.

As we age, relationships fade, faltering, not through animosity, but as our lives are dominated by the mundane. Work consumes our days as we seek to purchase the bread our families eat at night. The kids’ kindergarten work morphs into helping them build a trebuchet for high school. And soon, or so it seems, after decades of this march, we see extended family members at weddings and funerals. We see ourselves taking another step up in the generational parade.

A corollary consequence of this separation is the paralysis of others in time. A different cousin of Lisa’s had a daughter who recently graduated from Columbia. I missed it! Without the periodic injection of news (touching base with that faction of the family), she was forever a student there. It is the mirror image of how we miss the small changes in those in our household. Those that have not seen them (or us) for a while notice the slow changes we miss.

And so it was with Tamara. She was somewhere out there, bubbly and happy. Except that was not how she was. She married in 2015, and I saw her in 2021 at Lisa’s mom’s funeral. She became ill again last November and endured procedures and pain I hope never to experience. She died Thursday at 53 years of age. Far too young for her shining light to be extinguished, leaving those who knew her to continue in a darker world.

I will see her family at the funeral. I will see again the familiar anguish, incomprehensible sense of loss, and appreciation that her struggle and pain are over. Her widower has lost a soulmate. Her parents have lost a child. Her sister has lost a part of herself. Cancer has again stolen one of the best of us. I have lost a belated teacher. A teacher I failed to learn from in life, but one whose message I hope to employ in the future.

Today

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“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

With these words, quoted from Aeschylus, Robert Kennedy consoled African American campaign workers (and millions worldwide) in Indianapolis on this night 55 years ago after having announced to the crowd that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated earlier that evening in Memphis.

If you get a chance today, watch the speech he gave. It is shocking in its beauty and honesty. It was reported that the Secret Service told Kennedy they could not guarantee his safety if the crowd became violent. He gave the speech anyway.

He said, “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the ancient Greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. was 39 years old on that day. Imagine a different universe where he lived. What would the United States look like today? Would we have faced the horrific stain of slavery head-on and ensured equality among all our citizens? Would we finally be living in a nation where his (now grown) are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character? Maybe. Probably not. Intransigence and ennui ossify both the disengaged and unaffected. It is worth noting, Robert Kennedy was dead two months later, himself the victim of America’s gun violence.

At 58 years old, after a decade of railing against gun violence, that uniquely American disease, I am still haunted by the following sentiments when tending to my own heart and not the soul of our troubled nation:

Robert Kennedy:

“Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”

“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their peers, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Christopher Hitchens:

“Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”

“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can’t be apolitical. It will come and get you. It’s not that you shouldn’t be neutral. It’s that you won’t be able to stay neutral.”

“For years, I declined to fill in the form for my Senate press credential that asked me to state my ‘race,’ unless I was permitted to put ‘human.’ The form had to be completed under penalty of perjury, so I could not in conscience put ‘white,’ which is not even a color let alone a ‘race,’ and I sternly declined to put ‘Caucasian,’ which is an exploded term from a discredited ethnology. Surely the essential and unarguable core of King’s campaign was the insistence that pigmentation was a false measure: a false measure of mankind (yes, mankind) and an inheritance from a time of great ignorance and stupidity and cruelty, when one drop of blood could make you ‘black.”

Today, a former president was arrested and indicted on criminal charges in Manhattan. Donald Trump is the antithesis of Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. because while they carried the torch of justice to move society ever closer to a bright future, he chose to pour gasoline on smoldering embers and moved us backward toward our dark past.

At a time when our country is as divided as ever, short of outright conflict, I hope there are more of us whose “purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better” than those who want to see it burn.

Eyes

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Grief is a hole carried deep within. It is the oxygen-deprived void, generally unseen by anyone else, living within our soul whose weight varies from day to day, moment to moment, from a quick catch of your breath to drowning suffocation.

Queen Elizabeth II died yesterday at the age of 96. Unless you’re 95, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t sign that lifetime contract today. My cousin died yesterday, too. Life did not afford her 96 years. Absent the global outpouring of tears, her loss is no less devastating than that of the queen to her family. Grief is sure to wash over her family as sure as the queen’s.

Regardless of your feelings toward the British monarchy, whether you feel it is superfluous in 2022, an anachronism to modernity, or the steady hand on the till as time unfolds, the queen’s passing marks the end of an era. She worked with fifteen Prime Ministers throughout her long life, the first being Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill was born in 1874, a mere nine years after the end of our Civil War. She served as monarch for 70 years or about 28.5% of the entire history of the United States.

To remember a time when she was not monarch, you would have to be over 75 or 80 years old. Consider the changes the world has undergone during the time of her reign. Of course, few of us knew her. I can only project my interpretation of the video and deed she presented to the world. However, it seems that, whatever you feel about her, she sincerely believed in the queen’s duty above all else. No doubt, this came at a tremendous personal sacrifice. Whether it was a private life forfeited after her uncle’s abdication, a restructuring of her relationship with her husband Phillip in deference to her role, or the official position she had to take over any maternal impulses she may have felt, forbearance and sacrifice was her duty.

Grief is a hole carried deep within. However, there are occasions when it is visible. Words record the pain she endured at her father’s passing, King George VI, in 1952. Modern technological capabilities captured some insight into her grief after the passing of her husband. As we isolated ourselves in reaction to the savage viral death brought by COVID-19, the queen sat alone in St. George’s Chapel on that day in April 2021. Captured by Jonathan Brady of the Associated Press on that day, here she sits with her grief.

Look at her eyes. That is grief. The hole carried deep within, momentarily visible in her lost stare. I know that look. The paralysis grief creates, the mental gymnastics, and incomprehensible lack of understanding one goes through envisioning a world without a loved one are visible to anyone remotely aware. It is the eyes that expose our grief to others. It is through the eyes that tears flow. It is through sight that we feel sympathy and empathy. And it is through our eyes that grief reveals us shattered and lost.

If we are lucky, time softens the edges of our grief. We catch our breath at a memory, song, scent, or place, but we no longer suffer the drowning suffocation as often. We learn to control access to the most devastating memories; we learn to remember without reliving them. It is not an easy skill to learn.

The queen is gone. So, too, my cousin Gwennie. People worldwide may mourn the queen’s loss as if a steel and cement pillar of our societal foundation has crumbled and left us on infirm sand. Her family and my cousin’s will know grief exposed through our eyes. Be a comfort to those showing the signs of grief’s pain. None of us are immune to its theft of air any more than death steals life. The hole grief creates in its immediacy is devoid of oxygen. Help each other breath.

Control

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Can this be how it works? I’m 57 years old and see more life in the rearview mirror than the open road ahead. With that perspective, I find it’s become essential to reflect on what I’ve done with my time on this planet. Blissfully ignorant of the repercussions of news events growing up in bucolic suburbia, adulthood, parenthood, citizenship demanded my attention as I aged. I’ve experienced events no one wants. People summarize it as “life” when you see death. I’m not special. Just frustrated.

After the massacre at the movie theater in Aurora, CO, I began to write. Not with the expectation of affecting change, but rather to give my anger, my emotions, an outlet, an offramp for the toxic blood poisoning my body. I saw gun violence stealing a generation. While some social issues had moved the Overton Window, political intransigence (keep cashing the NRA’s checks!) and eventual American ennui accepted gun violence as baked into the American fabric in the name of “freedom.”

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, CT, I began to speak. Surely, a tragedy of this scale would shock Americans (and politicians) out of their stupor. Nope! I talked to groups in Texas as the lone spokesperson for the Brady Campaign in Texas. The only one. That alone tells you all you need to know about the calculus of “I NEED my gun, dead kids and teachers be damned.” Thoughts, prayers, and sad face emojis flooded social media until America’s fruit fly attention span moved on to the latest “tragedy” affecting Kim Kardashian.

My anger peaked with the death of my wife. Fuck cancer makes a great tweet, a guttural reaction without consequence. Utterly suicidal and dying with my wife, I could not yell at the tumor. I took it out on God for a while (also useless) and even turned to God for a bit (utterly meaningless). There was no one to blame, no revenge to be had. No offramp for my anger.

And then Americans, in the obvious next step for a society that had abdicated all personal responsibility and suffered no consequences, elected a narcissistic moron president—a billionaire (if you believe him) speaking for the uneducated rubes. Merit and logic were dead. With each lie, with each crime, I expected consequences. None came. Robert Mueller fumbled the ball with no defenders anywhere near him. Facts were relegated to the trash bin. Tweets became governmental edicts. And I waited. Furious.

When I get angry (when I get down), it is because things should be easier. “Keep the simple things simple; the hard things are hard enough.” But nothing was easy. Changing a light bulb resulted in the glass bulb snapping off the metal base, a trip or two to Lowes, and a call to the electrician. Nothing was easy. Ultimately, I realized it was an absolute lack of control. There was nothing I could do about any of it. My wife was dead, guns were more important than life, freedom from fact and responsibility replaced actual democracy, and rabid evangelicals believed in Trump as the messiah. Stop the world; I want to get off.

And now we have Ukraine. Again, one man brings the world to the point of a world war—one man. Ukrainians are fighting to survive- as a nation and a people. “Denazifying” Ukraine? Really?

I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot speech as I watch an army destroy entire cities. Stepping back for a second, it seems bizarre that NATO and the UN watch the massacres with tepid financial penalties because Ukraine doesn’t belong to their club. It’s like a high school clique turning its back on a less cool student getting beaten up because they don’t wear the “right” jeans. I understand the political ramifications of engagement. But on a human level, it seems callous and impotent.

So here I am—no one special, poisoned with anger and unable to control or change anything. Hell, I can’t even watch baseball now! The billionaires are too busy fighting with the millionaires. I get the feeling that if aliens did visit earth, they’d look down and say, “Nah, they’re petulant adolescents with nascent technology and a penchant for killing each other. Keep driving.”

So, my clock continues to tick down, and I’m not ignorant enough for its promised bliss. I’ve read Viktor Frankl and Thomas Paine but still cannot find reason or acceptance. How do I accept all of this? How do I “let it go?” No, seriously, I’m asking.

Sunshine

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We are a broken nation. Short of another insurrection, we are living in a cold civil war. One side is armed with guns, bullets, and hatred. The other side is armed with reason, truth, and awe at the dissension one man (Trump) could release. Republicans will win at any cost, including the nation’s destruction, if it means Democrats win a skirmish. Democrats eat their own and want a group hug with Republicans.

It is difficult to find the silver lining, the momentary oasis from hatred and paralysis during these times. It is hard to imagine “normal” life existing outside our echo chambers. Stochastic terrorism and dog whistles from the right. Infighting and inertia on the left. However, I found it about six months ago.

While scrolling through the division and vitriol on Twitter, I came across a neuroscientist at Concordia University in Montreal. Yes, Canada, where stereotypes abound of civility and courtesy. Dr. Nadia Chaudhri posted about a fundraiser she had organized, called the Nadia Chaudhri Wingspan Award. It awarded scholarships for minority and historically marginalized students in neuroscience. It was inspiring to see in the age of Black Lives Matter, Oscar’s so White, and other diversity and inclusion awareness campaigns.

Dr. Chaudhri was more than a neuroscientist and associate professor. She was also a wife and mother. And she was Pakistani. Born in Karachi, she attended Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania on a full scholarship, becoming the first woman to win the Williamson Medal for outstanding academic and extracurricular achievement. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburg and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of San Francisco. She was also dying of ovarian cancer at age 43.

As we whittle our list of “acceptable” people with whom we agree on everything, it became clear reading Dr. Chaudhri’s tweets that she was a tireless advocate for the Wingspan Award and an incredibly loving wife and mother. Living in Canada didn’t matter. Being from Pakistan didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was a good person. She was just a good person trying to do the best she could for those she cared about in an impossible situation. I never met her, but she was a good person. And that mattered. I enjoyed reading her tweets about her husband Moni (who she called her Moon) and her son (who she called her Sun).

When the chemotherapy no longer worked and the clinical trials failed her, she tweeted that she was entering the inpatient palliative care program at McGill University’s Health Centre and was meeting with her six-year-old son to tell him she was dying. Yes, memories flooded my brain of my late wife and I having that discussion with our children, but I wept for her, her son, and her husband. My son is getting married in a couple of weeks, and my daughter is recently engaged. I cried because I knew her young son would have to enjoy his significant life events without his mother there just as mine have.

She continued to raise money for the Wingspan Award by having people sponsor her to shuffle through the palliative care ward each day. She posted them on Twitter. As her Twitter account swelled, so too did the donations. She raised over $615,000 (CAD) from 8,600 donors. From her hospital bed, she replied to every person who donated. She posted paintings she did, usually of cards or gifts people had sent her. In one painting, she depicts her husband and son burying her ashes under a tree, hoping that her son would understand her wishes and come to peace with what was to come next in his young life. On September 9th, she was promoted to full professor. She celebrated with her husband, son, and the hospital staff with coffee ice cream.

When her legs no longer supported her daily fundraising shuffle, she danced in place in bed, the focus always on the scholarship.

Even when the inevitable happens, like a fool, I feel caught off-guard. Dr. Chaudhri died on Tuesday, October 5th. I sobbed. I sobbed because I would now be without the sunshine she brought with her inspiring tweets. I cried because the underrepresented in STEM lost a champion. I wept because I knew what her husband was feeling. I sobbed because I knew the world her son would now grow up in without his loving mother. It didn’t’ matter that she lived in Canada, that she was from Pakistan, that she advocated for the coronavirus vaccine for everyone, that she was excited she could vote in Canada’s recent election. It mattered because she was a good person.

Find those that inspire, that bring sunshine into this increasingly dark world. Better yet, be that sunshine for someone else. Thank you, Dr. Chaudhri.

Freedom…

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The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution reads:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Can someone, perhaps a Constitutional scholar (or someone who attended the University of Hard Knocks because, apparently, that’s the same thing), explain to me how these “rights” as written by James Monroe came to be interpreted as freedom from responsibility? Please?

Reeling from a global pandemic, science handed us a way out. And it was made free and accessible to everyone! And yet, after sitting on our asses for a year, we cannot be bothered to get vaccinated. We can’t be bothered to do what is right for our family, our neighbors, our nation, the world. Because FREEDOM! But freedom from what? Can someone answer that question? What’s the end of that phrase? Freedom from what? 

I see yard signs now saying UNMASK OUR CHILDREN! Unmask? Oh, you mean to leave the decision to protect your child, my family, and everyone too stupid to vaccinate themselves to you and your internet search medical degree?

I still wear a mask inside stores. Do you know why? I’m vaccinated! The CDC says I no longer need to wear a mask indoors. I wear the mask indoors for two reasons. First, because the vaccine has provided cover for those too selfish to vaccinate themselves; in other words, those unvaccinated can claim to be vaccinated and therefore no longer need to wear a mask indoors. I wear a mask indoors with those I do not know because I do not trust them. Their freedom from responsibility leaves them vulnerable to the virus and a prime candidate to join 600,000 other dead Americans. And, honestly, I’m done worrying about their lives. If they’re too selfish and cloaked in the wisdom granted by the Fox News science and medical experts Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, I don’t care if they live or die. Just as they have rid themselves of caring whether I live or die. Second, I wear the mask because I could be carrying the virus and be asymptomatic due to the vaccine. Despite my anger at the unvaccinated, I wear it to protect them from me.

 Freedom from responsibility has replaced both the first and second Amendments. We have the freedom to say and do anything we want, but we now assume it was granted without responsibility. No blowback is expected or appreciated. We have been locked indoors for a year. And when finally bored enough, we ventured out. Some of us were vaccinated. But the bored move about freely. And as soon as we ventured out of our homes, we did so, not with the vaccine, but with our guns. Free to leave our homes, Americans are now subjected to multiple mass shootings a day. Because Freedom! But, again, no one finishes that phrase. Freedom from what, if not responsibility?

I weigh too much. Guess what? It’s because I overeat. Not because of my boss, my spouse, my government, or my family. And guess what? When I take responsibility for my weight and eat better foods and less of it, I lose weight! If I eat red meat, there is a chance my heart will suffer, or my cells may rebel in cancer. The danger I am subjecting others to is limited. My family will suffer my loss. But my job will be filled within a week, and the world will carry on. However, not vaccinating myself leaves me vulnerable, along with everyone with whom I come in contact. The danger is expanded exponentially—the exposed beyond just me. And to do that to others is selfish and devoid of responsibility. 

The irony of this situation is that those refusing to be vaccinated directly infringe on my freedoms! I may soon be required to wear a mask everywhere again because the unvaccinated will drive us back into restrictions and lockdowns. I did the right thing for everyone, but I may soon be restricted from moving about freely because of the unvaccinated.

The first definition of socialism in the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines socialism as:

Any of the various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Can we agree that seatbelts are a socialistic response to automobile injuries and deaths? Can we agree that highways are a socialistic response to bad roads being too expensive for each of us to build alone? Can we agree that the military that the right fawns over and spends almost a trillion dollars on a year is a socialistic response to existential or dogmatic geopolitical threats? If so, can we not also agree that solutions to problems need to be made on a granular level exclusive of a nation’s political definition? Can we agree that it is possible and appropriate to have a socialistic response to a problem within a democratic republic? That perhaps reductio ad absurdum or ad hominem arguments against proper answers to issues are simpleminded, foolhardy, and just plain wrong?   

 My rights are being infringed as a vaccinated citizen both by those who will not vaccinate themselves and those who think a gun gives them power and absolution. Freedom from responsibility is now the American creed. 

Comfort for Aurora

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Remembering the Victims

“In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address you this tribute to the memory of my young friend, and your brave and early fallen child.” Abraham Lincoln, May 25, 1861 in a letter of condolence to the parents of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth

I did not know Jessica Ghawi, Alex Teves, Alex Sullivan or any of the other nine victims murdered in the horrific July 20, 2012 shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.” I do not know any of the 70 people who were injured that night and survived. But as an advocate for gun violence prevention, Jessica, Alex, Alex and many others have become my (forever young) friends. It is because of them that we work for a safer future so others are not sacrificed on America’s insane firearms alters.

The trial for the monster responsible for this all too familiar, American-centric, gun-related carnage is underway in Colorado and I find there is no way to accurately or compassionately convey my love to the survivors, their families, or the families of those murdered without sounding as if I can possibly understand their grief, pain, suffering, loss, anger… even this list seems somehow presumptuous. To those strong enough and compelled to attend the daily court proceedings, this list of presumptions must also include: the ability to sit in the same room with such a monster, knowing that he is attempting to “game” the jurisprudence of Colorado with his “superior” intellect, and the self-control and commitment to a civilized society not to throttle him when he lifts his veil of innocence whenever the jury is not in chambers. Cameras are everywhere.

It is, therefore, ironic that I find the most reflective and appropriate comments in the haunting words of one who would himself later become the victim of gun violence. In a letter dated Nov. 21, 1864, President Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a mother who it was believed had lost five sons in the Civil War. He wrote:

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. 

And so, with these borrowed words, please let the victims and their families know that I am thinking of them, grieve for them, honor their children and don’t presume to understand their pain. I haven’t the right words. Allow Lincoln’s to carry my comforts.

Character Candling

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candling egg

From Merriam Webster:

candle (transitive verb): to examine by holding between the eye and a light; especially : to test (eggs) in this way for staleness, blood clots, fertility, and growth

Have you ever looked at a word you’ve written a thousand times as though it couldn’t possibly be spelled that way? You doubt yourself, double check it in the dictionary and carry on. I have recently had the opportunity to reassess personal relationships I’ve held sacred, but upon examination found I have done so without a compelling reason.  No longer a child, I held up these individuals to the same light of reason, logic, compassion and magnanimity  to which I would hope to be judged, not unlike candling an egg. Rather than record my observations, I sought insight from those more intelligent. Here are my thoughts via their appropriated words, alpha by author:

“Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”     Maya Angelou

“Beware the man of a single book.”     St. Thomas Aquinas

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”     Isaac Asimov

“The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.”     W.H. Auden

“I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.”     Reuben Blades

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”     Derek Bok

“There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.”     Robert Burns

“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”     Albert Camus

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”     George Carlin

“The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.”     George Carlin

“I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.”     Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I am not ashamed to confess I am ignorant of what I do not know.”     Marcus Tullius Cicero

“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”     Marcus Tullius Cicero

“To live is to think.”     Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Confidence is ignorance. If you’re feeling cocky, it’s because there’s something you don’t know.”     Eoin Colfer

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”     Confucius

“Ignorance is the night of the mind, a night without moon or star.”     Confucius

“The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.”     Confucius

“He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.”     Confucius

“Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.”     Dalai Lama

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”     Charles Darwin

“And, in fine, of false sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant.”     René Descartes

“Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they’ve never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.”     Maureen Dowd

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice.”     Albert Einstein

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”     Albert Einstein

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”     Harlan Ellison

“Fear always springs from ignorance.”     Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”     Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”     Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”     Euripides

“Anger exceeding limits causes fear and excessive kindness eliminates respect.”     Euripides

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”     F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.”     Gustave Flaubert

“Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”     Benjamin Franklin

“The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.”     Benjamin Franklin

“The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance.”     Benjamin Franklin

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”     Benjamin Franklin

“I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.”     Kahlil Gibran

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”     Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil — or else an absolute ignorance.”     Graham Greene

“If you’re gonna be stupid you gotta be tough.”     John Grisham

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”     Stephen Hawking

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”     Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

“The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.”     Elbert Hubbard

“God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas but for scars.”     Elbert Hubbard

“The learned man knows that he is ignorant.”     Victor Hugo

“The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”     Thomas Jefferson

“Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth.”     Joseph Joubert

“The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing — to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”     John Keats

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”     Søren Kierkegaard

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”     Martin Luther King, Jr.

“A fool can easily be known by what proceeds from his or her mouth.”     Adedayo Kingjerry

“Living is easy with eyes closed.”     John Lennon

“Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.”     Michael Levine

“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”     Abraham Lincoln

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”     Nelson Mandela

“Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.”     Groucho Marx

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”     Henry Miller

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”     George Orwell

“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”     Blaise Pascal

“And whenever anyone informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.”     Plato

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again.”     Alexander Pope

“There is no reply to the ignorant like keeping silence.”     Proverb

“Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; an argument an exchange of ignorance.”     Robert Quillen

“When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.”     Will Rogers

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”     Bertrand Russell

“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”     Bertrand Russell

“Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind.”     Bertrand Russell

“Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.”     Seneca

“There is no darkness but ignorance.”     William Shakespeare

“A knavish speech sleeps in a fool’s ear.”     William Shakespeare

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”     William Shakespeare

“The shortest route to courage is absolute ignorance.”     Dan Simmons

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”     Socrates

“It’s an universal law– intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”     Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”     Maurice Switzer

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”     Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind.”     John Tillotson

“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”     Leo Tolstoy

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”     Mark Twain

“Ignorance is a virus. Once it starts spreading, it can only be cured by reason. For the sake of humanity, we must be that cure.”     Neil deGrasse Tyson

“He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.”     Voltaire

“The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.”     Voltaire

“If your brains were dynamite there wouldn’t be enough to blow your hat off.”     Kurt Vonnegut

“Irony is wasted on the stupid.”     Oscar Wilde

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”     Oscar Wilde

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”     P.G. Wodehouse

“Ignorance is not bliss – it is oblivion.”     Philip Wylie

“Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.”     Zig Ziglar

Which quote is your favorite?

Mine?

“Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills.”     William Shakespeare.

Although you may recognize it as:

“The pen is mightier than the sword (or gun).”

Soft Targets

~ thoughtsatlarge ~ Leave a comment

The events in Boston today are still raw, the embers are still burning, the wounds are still being dressed and the limbs are still being amputated.

When did living in America become a balancing act between freedom and paranoia? When did we decide that churches, schools, movie theaters, grocery store parking lots and marathons should no longer be considered integral parts of our daily life but “soft targets?”

Politicians on both sides of the aisle will call for prayers now. The gun lobby will ignore compassion and state that if only a “good guy with a gun had been there” blah blah blah, and nothing will change. We will wring our hands and shake our heads, call for justice and ignore the facts, demand vengeance and persecute the innocent in misplaced bloodlust, run to Wal-Mart to purchase our assault weapons and hunker down in our bunker waiting for the end of times.

And then our fickle little minds will forget and move on to the next crisis where we will wind up our public outrage for a new group of victims.

What happened to compassion and empathy? Are they so anathema to the personal success and safety in America that we are doomed to suffer for our arrogance? When did celebrity and instant gratification replace intelligence and hard work?

I am heartsick to learn that the final mile of the Boston Marathon was dedicated to the families of Newtown affected by the evil events at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. Sickened to learn that there may have been another device under the very VIP viewing section in which they were seated.

I refuse to live in a society where we gauge our potential activities by some weighted average based on their “soft target” quotient.  I should not have to sit in a movie theater with an eye on the best route of egress, or view the pole obstructing my view as “cover”, or worry if I need to use the restroom whether my children will be attacked while I’m gone. I should not have to worry at a sporting event that I am in a large group and therefore a great target for mass casualties. I should not have to worry that when some student who did not prepare for an exam in college calls in a bomb threat and when my children congregate with a large group of students waiting for the “all clear” that they represent a soft target.

America used to be the land of the free, now we are the land of the paranoid, where 300 million guns exist to “protect” us from our own government and fertilizer is no longer used exclusively to feed the world, but to detonate and kill, where politicians disgorge vitriol and fabrications in order to make the evening news and Congress enjoys a 13% approval rating. We blame the President, Congress, the education system, parents, the environment, the weather, any other country and everyone else with certainty, but we never look in the mirror. The golden rule has been bastardized to be “Do unto others before they do unto you.” We harden ourselves and avoid soft targets. Can’t we do better? Don’t we want better? Shouldn’t we demand better? We continue to burn holes in the calendar. Am I whistling alone in the hurricane?