Wisdom
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The hardest part of my day is the night. Sleep does not come easy — has never come easy. I regularly wake at 2:00 am, and stay awake for two or three hours. I use this time to fret about the state of the Earth (precarious), the state of the nation (doomed), and whether that…
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In a lifetime with pen in hand or with fingers at the typewriter (or, latterly, at the word processor), I've written a lot of bad sentences and a handful of good ones. But last week, I composed my absolute best sentence ever. It's pure Olympic gold; a bottom-of-the-ninth walk-off bases-loaded HR; a sensational buzzer-beater. Deathless…
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For twenty-two of a day's twenty-four hours, I'm a contented kind of guy. Not self-satisfied by a long shot, but by and large reconciled to both my modest achievements and to my inadequacies. Yet between 2AM and 4AM, in the dark insomniac gloom, I'm a different person. I struggle with "what ifs," with "should have's,"…
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In the back of our fourth-grade "reader" at P. S. 217, there was an appendix containing proverbs and other jots of wisdom. Most of these were commonplaces: "look before you leap"; "a stitch in time saves nine"; "empty barrels make the most noise." Many of these gnomic bits mystified me. For example: For all your…
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This is a photograph of the buildings on the West Bradford property as they existed when we made the deal in 1967. As you know — children, grandchildren and other interested parties — we are no longer in possession of this part of the property. It passed to Phyllis and Bruce in 1977 and then…
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Now that I'm eighty (80!) years old, it's time to think about what, if anything, I've learned. For many years now, I've been waiting for wisdom to kick in, but so far, no thunderbolts or grand illuminations. Yet I seem to have accumulated a number of maxims and cliches, which leads to the dispiriting conclusion…
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I've reached the age when, neuroscience claims, the "wisdom centers" of the brain (the anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortices) are supposed to leap into action. Do they? Tell truth, I don't know. Have I, without awareness or drama, metamorphosed from a jejune larva, dull as dishwater, into a butterfly of wisdom? When did it…
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Many years ago, sometime during the previous millennium, I was taken to an African game park — elephants, rhinoceroses, giraffes, and lions (the hippos were AWOL). It was astonishing to see these huge beasts. I didn't realize at the time that it was semi-miraculous that these creatures had survived to our day, even in a…
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Although my parents were pure and perfect atheists, they did not advertise their atheism or disparage the religions of others — at least not in my hearing. They were exactly the opposite of what is sometimes called "militant atheists." To be militant would have been to give religion too much regard, too much importance —…
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I've been reading about the death of Alexander at the beginning of the Hellenistic period. It's all new to me, and much of it is fascinating, especially about cultural matters, but there's also page after page of difficult-to-retain accounts of warfare and of particular battles. Here's an example of the kind of material that takes…