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Irma and Harvey: a love story
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s a sad reality of human nature: we miss out enjoying the blessings that fill our lives because we take them for granted. Until we don’t have them any more.
How many hours do we fritter away on texts and tweets and Facebook updates? Are these more satisfying than friends and family, more enlivening than smelling the roses and gazing at the stars? Not in a thousand years.
We think we can have it both ways. After all, the roses will be there tomorrow; and the stars will be there forever.
Until they aren’t. Having been bred for beauty, many of our roses have no fragrance whatsoever. And most of us have never beheld the wonder of the Milky Way. It disappeared decades ago behind the veil of urban pall.
AWAKE, MY GLORY!
Nature has its own way of reminding us to pay attention. Sometimes it’s through extraordinary beauty. And sometimes it’s through awesome power. Last month, the light of the sun disappeared at midday as the eclipse moved across the country. This month, the fury of life-giving water uprooted the lives of millions.
Photo Credit: Washington Post
The misery inflicted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma was horrific to watch, and exponentially more horrific to endure. From thousands of miles away, Americans shook their heads at scenes of devastated communities, shattered homes, and displaced families. We wrote relief checks, offered prayers, gave thanks for our own safety, and carried on with our lives.
We wished we could do more. But what more we could do?
Consider this: Maimonides writes that anyone who hears of human suffering and does not respond with repentance and good deed is a cruel person.
The most effective way to make the world a better place is by making ourselves better people. Yes, I can work to save the rainforests and save the whales. I can raise money for refugees and volunteer my time to Habitat for Humanity. I can do these things, and I should.
Ultimately, however, the only thing I can be certain of changing is myself.
If I give charity out of guilt, I’m really just bribing my conscience to leave me alone. If I write a check because I think I’m going to relieve human suffering, I’m merely indulging my ego. It’s true, of course, that the recipients will benefit from any act of giving regardless of motivation. But am I benefitting myself as well?
LEARNING TO LOVE
Acts of kindness and charity should be expressions of sharing another’s pain – a natural, reflexive response to human suffering. When I give what I can, whether a lot or a little, I join with others to raise our collective voice and proclaim that we will not stand idly by and abandon others to their fate, even if we have no real control over how fate will deal with them.
Purely motivated giving transforms us into giving people. By taking action when others are in need we learn to love our fellows as we love ourselves. And when we do, we become more appreciative of the relationships that are the source of true happiness.
The Jewish prayer book contains a series of blessings we recite each morning to acknowledge who we are and why we exist. Among those blessings we find the following:
Blessed are You, L-rd, our G-d, King of the universe, who stretches out the earth above the waters.
Our place in this world is precarious. The laws of nature operate with both granite consistency and fickle unpredictability. If we want to weather the storms of life, we need the support of others, which means we have to be there when others need support from us.
As individuals, we are exposed and vulnerable to the vagaries of happenstance. As a community, we find that the winds of fortune will not overturn our lives, and the waters of uncertainty will never extinguish our spirit. Out of the darkness of misfortune, the light of fellowship will shine down on us like the brightest of stars.
Caravan to Midnight 2
It was my pleasure to be invited for a return interview with John B. Wells on Caravan to Midnight.
Listen to the interview here:
Looking up through the branches
It seemed like such a good idea at the time.
I took one look at the picture in the do-it-yourself book my wife brought home from the library and immediately fell in love.
Doesn’t every kid want a tree house? I certainly did. However, we had no suitable trees in our yard, so the idea was a non-starter.
But now it was different. With my own children just old enough to enjoy it, that big elm tree in the center of our yard seemed heaven-sent for such a purpose. The creative design cried out to be turned into reality, and I made up my mind on the spot. My wife didn’t even try to talk me out of it.
The illustration showed how the tree house would seemingly grow right out of the elm’s trunk, the base hovering six feet above the ground and the top about as far beneath the lowest branches. Four sturdy beams would angle down from the corners of the floor, secured into notches cut out of the hoary bark and held in place by railroad spikes. Beams on the top would mirror those on the bottom, over which panels would form a sloping roof.
It looked simple enough.
Ask the right questions
How should we program driverless cars to respond to life-and-death situations? That’s the question posed by computational social scientist Iyad Rahwan in his recent Ted Talk.
His answer?
It’s a good question.
If all the seas were diamonds
It’s not raining money, but it might be raining diamonds.
Not here on earth, of course. For that you’ll have to go to the planet Neptune. At least, that’s what scientists are now telling us.
I won’t pretend to understand the phenomenon of spontaneous diamond showers deep inside the ice giant that lurks at the outer reaches of our solar system. Nor will I attempt to explain how scientists here on earth are simulating the process.
Instead, let’s talk about the practical applications of mass diamond production.
It’s long been known that the diamond industry artificially inflates prices through market manipulation and manipulative advertising. Diamonds may be forever, but so are Cubic Zirconia — and most people can’t tell the difference. So why spend $5000 on a two karat diamond when you can buy a comparable CZ for 30 bucks?
To paraphrase Will Rogers, people will eagerly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like. The adage has been repeated by many, including Lev Leviev, the world renowned “King of Diamonds.”
Because of their hardness and heat conduction, diamonds do have genuine value: in the manufacture of cutting and drilling equipment, as well as for research and technology. But as far as jewelry, the cost is all about hype.
Which should make us pause to wonder: what if it really did start raining diamonds?
A famous parable tells the story of a poor man who travels to a far away island where the ground is littered with diamonds and precious stones. The moment he gets off his ship, he falls to the ground and begins stuffing his pockets with gems.
The people around begin to laugh. “Why are you picking up worthless pebbles?” they ask. In an instant, the man realizes that the stones, worth a fortune in his own country, have no value at all here. And since the obscure island is only visited by ship once a year, he will have to find a way to support himself until the next ship comes to carry him home.
After making some inquiries, the man learns that the most profitable source of income on the island is cooking-fat. He discovers that he has a particular talent in this area, and before long he is making an excellent living in the cooking-fat industry.
The year passes quickly, and when the ship finally arrives the man packs up all his valuable fats to bring home with him. He reaches the port just as the ship is getting ready to make sail. All at once he remembers the reason why he came in the first place. He hurriedly bends down to scoop up a few stones, then has no choice but to board the ship before it departs.
Upon returning home, the man’s family rejoices at the fortune with which he has returned. But the man is forlorn. “You don’t understand,” he says sadly. “If I hadn’t forgotten why I was there, we might have a thousand times what I brought back.”
If we bother to think about it, it’s be obvious that shiny stones are not the source of happiness. Objects have value because they are useful, because they are beautiful, or because they are rare. But when we allow others to convince us to make them rich by investing in things with no intrinsic value, is there anything more foolish?
King Solomon says: There is one who thinks himself rich and has nothing; there is one who thinks himself poor and has great wealth.
The blessing of family, of friends, of community; the joy of kind acts and charity; the inspiration that accompanies wisdom — these are the gems that are truly priceless. They cost far less than shiny stones, and they make our lives infinitely richer.
As long as we don’t forget.
Yonason Goldson 