Alexandersmap

    Tag: George Bailey

    • Just Like a Bridge

      “Every man is a bridge, spanning the legacy he inherited and the legacy he passes on.” — Terrence Real

      My father is still with us as I write this. His body is fighting his failing mind and currently winning the battle. But we all know the score. He’s not long for this world.

      He was one of sixteen kids. It’s easy to get lost in that number of humans moving from adolescents through puberty and into adulthood living under one roof. Most of them stayed in close proximity to one another, a few moved far away just to have some elbow room where they could learn to fly on their own. They’ve stayed tight, perhaps because they realized just how special their family was, or maybe just because they found they liked each other’s company. They’re an easy bunch to grow fond of. Watching them gradually pass on has been a lesson all its own. And now it’s dad’s turn.

      I was one of four when our parents split up and found their way to other people. Both of them found their (rest-of) life partners immediately after that. Maybe that was luck, or a stubborn commitment to make their next relationship work… or both. I know I’ve learned from both of them and the life partners they chose afterwards. Each of them did the best they could. It’s up to those of us who follow in their footsteps to step off of that bridge and make one of our own.

      We are each the product of the people who raised us blended with the people who surrounded us as we grew up. That person we became inherited some baggage we may carry forever or leave on the curb as we work to change our identity. The trick is to carry the best of us while exchanging our worst traits, habits and beliefs for better ones. We are all works in progress.

      Somehow, in that blend of parental influences combined with a hoard of uncles, aunts and cousins, then blending in new siblings and step-siblings, we must decide who we will be and go be it. So much kin—how do we possibly carve out an identity of our own? Just who will we become when we are wrapped up in so much inherited identity?

      I can see that I developed into a George Bailey-type character (from It’s a Wonderful Life), with a tendency to stick around even as I want to fly. A gift of presence and dependability anchoring the drifters in our lives. Whatever it is, I watch that movie with the same frustrations George Bailey has, and the same realization that what I’m anchoring was worthy of the tradeoff. We know that a good bridge needs to be anchored in something solid on both ends. As with my father in his final days, I’m still holding on, and the story hasn’t ended just yet. It seems that I’m just like a bridge after all.

    • Smaller Bites

      George Bailey : [George hears a train whistle] There she blows. You know what the three most exciting sounds in the world are?
      Uncle Billy : Uh huh. Breakfast is served; lunch is served; dinner…
      George Bailey : No no no no. Anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles.
      – Scene from It’s a Wonderful Life

      I’m eager to get back out in the world again. That’s no secret to readers of this blog. And really, I could go at any time now. But this is a time of graduations and funerals postponed while the pandemic was raging. Of catching up with people you haven’t seen face-to-face for a long time. And celebrating the freedom that comes with being fully vaccinated even as we remember what we lost along the way.

      “Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” – Og Mandino

      I’m not the sort to walk away from people. I see a lot of myself in George Bailey. I don’t subscribe to the concept of “ghosting” someone. I check in on the neighbors, friends and relatives and generally hold things together, remaining available for those who want or need to reach out. And this works out to be a richer life for having done so. The trade-off in time to explore the unknown remains in my mind even as I embrace the moments with connections.

      Connections… You’ve gotten better at them over the years, but that cold stoic exterior is tough to penetrate. You learn to drop it and get busy living as life progresses. As you recognize that moments are fleeting and people come and go from your circle.

      We’ve only just begun to know each other, really, when they announce that it’s last call. Do you want that last conversation you might ever have with a person to be a checkbox of bland “how’s it going?” questions or a deeper dive into the soul of the person you’re engaged with? There are two ways to ask that question: the surface level way and the grab you by the hands, look squarely in your eyes and mean it way.

      This world wants to divide us. It wants to cancel people, categorize people, shun those with differing opinions. We all tell ourselves stories, and we all wonder what the hell that other person is thinking when they expose their beliefs. Who’s right?

      Who cares? We aren’t going to get anywhere in this world if we don’t start living empathically and seeking to understand the underlying story that frames someone’s worldview. For the world to progress, we must learn to see past the party affiliations, nationality, skin color, orientation and generational biases and learn to connect human-to-human. For we might never have this opportunity to engage with each other again.

      Worldview… How do you gain a bigger worldview if you don’t get out and see the world? Well, maybe by taking smaller bites. Human-to-human interaction instead of continent-to-continent leaping. At least for now. He said. Convincingly. And wrote a poem to boil all these words down into 23. For George. But also for me:

      So, my friend
      I know I keep asking,
      “when are we going?”

      but, you know
      what I really meant was,
      “how’s it going?”

    • Masters of the Art of Life

      Dive deep with me on this quote, there’s a lot to it:

      “In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister [“Only the master shows himself in the limitation,”] says Goethe. Mâle résignation, this also is the motto of those who are masters of the art of life; “manly,” that is to say, courageous, active, resolute, persevering, “resignation,” that is to say, self-sacrifice, renunciation, limitation. Energy in resignation, there lies the wisdom of the sons of earth, the only serenity possible in this life of struggle and of combat. In it is the peace of martyrdom, in it too the promise of triumph. – Henri Frédéric Amiel, Amiel’s Journal

      “Manly resignation” seems counterintuitive, contradictory and weak to some. But dig deeper here into the words used to describe resignation: self-sacrifice, renunciation and limitation. These are anything but weakness, they’re honorable traits. It takes courage to stand up and voice a counter argument, to say this isn’t right, this will not stand. It takes courage to face ridicule and violence. The weak are the blind followers.  What shall you be?

      Only the master shows himself in the limitation… visually I leap to Obi Wan Kenobi raising his light saber in concession to Darth Vader in Star Wars. But who really won in the end? In real life, it means finding common ground, conceding a point, compromise for the greater good. The art of diplomacy.  The REAL art of the deal, not the con man version.  All very adult traits that Congress might wish to return to. Traits any good leader has. Any good parent. Any good spouse. The United States is not currently being led by someone who shows himself in the limitation. But the country recoils and will spit out this poison pill eventually. I hope in a few months.

      “Masters in the art of life” suggests the easy path on its face. But life isn’t easy, and the art of life is making it look easy while you press ahead doing the work that matters.  Any fool can set aside responsibilities and chase after pots of gold on the other side of the rainbow. Decide what to be and go be it, but remember the truly great people, the masters in the art of life, are the people who sacrifice of themselves for the greater good.  Not frivolously, but for the things that matter.  Who are the masters in the art of life?  I think of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, John Muir, George Washington, Clara Barton, and dozens more.  All of them very human, with flaws some were/are eager to point out as if to elevate their own standing.  But all rose above the common man or woman, showing themselves in resignation, not of the fight, but of the easier path.

      Maybe we all can’t be the answer on some future Jeopardy trivia question, but we can be an anchor in our family, in our community, in our careers.  We can be linchpins, as Seth Godin would put it, that hold things together even in the most trying of times.  And maybe that’s enough. To throw another couple of movie characters at you, it’s so much harder to be George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life or Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, but don’t we have to try?  Looking around at the moment, it seems plenty want to try.  That’s the recoil in action.  The pendulum swinging back to center.  This is not who we ought to be.  This will not be who we will be from now on.  We can be better than this.  Decide what to be and go be it.

      In a bit of trivia perhaps interesting only to me and the parents who conceived me, Amiel wrote that entry in his journal 114 years to the day before I was born. He was 31 at the time. He was wise beyond his years. If there’s a joy in reading, its in mining gold from the ages. Tapping into the Great Conversation is available to all of us, so why don’t more people seize the opportunity?  To master the art of life, it helps to learn from those who have been here before.  I’m a work in progress myself, but try to learn a bit more every day, and apply some of that wisdom in my own life.  I may not be Obi Wan Kenobi, but I can try to be George Bailey.