On Details – A change of perspective (NY Penn Station)

NY Penn station can be a pretty busy place. Passing through, it’s easy to dismiss it as just a crowded train station, especially if you’re in a rush to be somewhere.

But there’s a lot more going on.

***

This past weekend, I took shelter at Penn Station for a few hours while waiting for my acting classes to start. My first move was to chill at the Tim Horton’s/Nathan’s food area, where they have seats and tables. After 2 hours of reading and writing there, they kicked me out for not having purchased anything.

Here’s something I did to pass the time that you might like to try (it doesn’t necessarily have to be at Penn Station – that’s not the point).

***

TRY sitting on the floor in “the circle” area, back leaned against one of the pillars, and just sit there and pay attention for a half hour or so.

Your perspective changes.

And because of that, you notice a lot of cool things.

First off, everything seems grander. Especially if you’re in “the circle.” There’s something about the circular walls and ceiling that already immediately impresses, and having your butt on the floor only heightens that sense of grandiosity – you notice just how high the ceiling is from the floor, and how much space there is, and how tiny you are.

Watch as people pass by. Observe the remarkable variety of commuter, of body types, of movement styles, of auras. Watch the juxtapositions between the individuals that comprise this variety. I watched a midget clutching a paper bag walk by a tall guy wheeling a suitcase – because of my angle from the ground, he appeared nearly twice as tall as her! It was weird.

Try closing your eyes in weariness. Let your other senses kick in. Listen to the footsteps go by, and to the sounds of bustle that surround you, occasionally interspersed with ETA announcements. Notice how different types of luggage wheels produce different qualities of sound – some roll more smoothly, others with a more sandy gritty grainy quality, from friction. The same for footsteps – notice different walking rhythms, and different contact sounds from different footwear.

Listen to the variety of languages, to the street language, the curses, the coughs, the sickness, the phone conversations, the shooting of the breeze between the Krispy Kreme employees at your back, the starting and stopping of blenders crushing ice at Planet Smoothies, like a dull street drill in the background. Take in the scents – occasional whiffs of cologne, or the sometimes foul odor of the homeless.

Observe the weary around you – the homeless people catching some shut-eye, or tired commuters taking a nap. Three laborers were passed out right next to me, and I noticed how they all assumed very different positions for their nap. One was on his back, legs spread eagle in a V, and head resting on a sand-colored tote bag. Another slept on his side, head (baseball cap still on) on his backpack, arms and legs carefully layered on top of one another – a much neater and tidier form of public repose. The third slept on this side too, but much more sloppily – legs tangled together, as if seeking warmth and touch from each other, and his head facing the wall, as if to block out the rest of the world.

***

It really is a whole world of it’s own, New York Penn Station.

And I’ve only described one tiny fraction of it for you today. Try describing some for yourself.

Warning: When you get up, you may get a head rush.

***

Pay attention to the world that surrounds you. Fill in the details.

Find joy in doing so.



-David

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On Education – Intro (Tutoring Sean at Calvert House)

Today I would like to share with you an important memory of mine. It’s a memory that inspired me, gave me hope, and showed me what was possible. And it’s a memory that really gets to the heart of our social venture.

***

When I was still a student at the University of Chicago, one of my extracurriculars was tutoring Chicago youth. One of the organizations I tutored with was Calvert House, the Catholic Center at UofC. Once a week, for two hours in the morning, a small group of students (including myself) would tutor a group of “less-privileged” kids, ranging from elementary school to high school students.

“My” first kid was Aaron, a 7-year-old who was addicted to wrestling, violence, and naughtiness, and had quite a limited attention span. I tried my best, but I didn’t manage to connect with him. “Tutoring” him really sort of became just “babysitting” him.

Which is fine. I think a large part of the purpose of places like Calvert House is just to provide a safe and encouraging environment, several times a week, for kids who might normally not have such an environment.

In general, I noticed that many of the tutor-tutee relationships operated this way – more like hangout buddies or “Big Brother/Big Sister” type relationships, where kindness and camaraderie were placed as top priority.

***

For a large portion of my life, I operated under the same assumptions, believing that sheer kindness was the best way to help someone. For instance, as co-captain of my high school ultimate team, I remember on “running days” when we’d run a 3-mile loop along Dempsey St, I’d sometimes run at the back of the pack, with the “stragglers,” to try to pace them and offer them kind words of encouragement.

Then one day I read The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, one of my all-time favorite books. And this quote from the chapter “Good and Evil” struck me as remarkably true:

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.

Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.

Even those who limp go not backward.

But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.

You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,

You are only loitering and sluggard.

Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.

But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea, carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.

And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.

But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little, "Wherefore are you slow and halting?"

For the truly good ask not the naked, "Where is your garment?" nor the houseless, "What has befallen your house?"

The fact is, some people have more passion for life than others do. But everybody has some (see my earlier post On Entrepreneurship – Its health benefits).

How best to bring it out? How best to teach? To educate?

HOW BEST TO INSPIRE?

It’s not by “limp[ing] before the lame, deeming it kindness.”

Patience and kindness and camaraderie and sensitivity are essential, but they should be woven in alongside a genuine and even aggressive intention to inspire and to teach.



I believe there is no better way to inspire than by example. Show how to be strong by being strong and expecting the same.

***

One day, my kid Aaron didn’t show up for tutoring, and simultaneously another kid’s mentor didn’t show up.

So I was paired with Sean, a 7^th grader.

If I were to abstract for a moment and pretend I were a teacher w/a class full of seventh-graders, each needing individual attention, and many w/priorities other than learning (priorities I had to discourage, for the sake of classroom order), I admit, I’d probably marginalize Sean as a “lost cause.”

Sean had nearly zero confidence. He dressed awkwardly, and it always seemed his clothes didn’t fit him. His breath always smelled, and his body language spoke of deep insecurity. He could hardly unzip his pencil bag with conviction, let alone hold a conversation.

I immediately identified. I was that same kid, just a few years prior.

The point is, Sean was deeply insecure and lacked confidence – he was the kind of kid you’d be most inclined to immediately “buddy up” with and be ultra nice to.

I chose to avoid that route. Because frankly, it may be easy, and it may be nice, but it’s not very effective.

Instead, I treated him with expectation. I chose to believe in him. And I refused to accept less than what I thought he was capable of.

Looking from the outside, it may have appeared I was being too aggressive, too stubborn, and too unreasonably expecting. Alec, the senior who oversaw everything, definitely gave me some strange looks. I didn’t care (partially because I could tell he was only doing it for his resume, as evidenced by his constant discussion of said resume).

We were working on mixed fractions. I figured out a way to explain them by drawing pizza diagrams, and successively dividing slices into smaller and smaller fractions by halving them, then adding together the new slices, the freshly divided ones now representing new units, new fractions.

At one point, Sean managed to solve a fairly difficult problem on his own using the method I taught him. And I’ll never ever forget the change I saw in him, just in that one moment.

I swear, he sat up straighter in his chair, his body no longer slouched, and he gave off an entirely different vibe. It wasn’t confidence. No, it was far more nervous than that, and far more premature.

I’m fairly certain he terrified himself. I watched his hands tremble in excitement, and his speech stumble as he clumsily, but correctly, explained his logic in solving the problem.

What was it?

It was his recognition of his own potential.

Seeing the concrete evidence with his own eyes – his ability to solve that problem on his own – fundamentally changed him.

I have no idea how Sean is doing today, and I’m not naïve enough to think that one session, with one small success, will turn a life around.

But it might.



And if you keep at it, with the same mentality of belief and expectation and guidance from the teacher, coupled with belief and discipline and hard work from the student, and over an extended period of time, I think it’s likely.

I believe it is these moments of inspiration, of recognition of one’s own potential – one’s own genius – that should be the primary aim of all education.



Not the memorization of facts and theories that can be used to impress and woo at interviews or cocktail dinner parties.

***

Did I contradict Khalil Gibran by pushing Sean? NO.

The fact is, I pushed him, but I pushed him at his level.

I was doing basic algebra in the 5^th grade. He was doing basic fractions in the 7^th grade.  It doesn’t fucking matter.

I saw potential in Sean, and I saw in him a willingness to embrace that potential. So I encouraged it. Aggressively.

I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, partly because I don’t have time, and partly because some people are so utterly closed-minded it would take forever to help them. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’d be hard as hell.

Furthermore, it’s not my business to help people. Not unless they want to be helped. For that reason, most often I try to withhold judgment on people I don’t have a good reason to judge. In fact, the people I judge most, and most harshly, are usually the people I care about most, because I know my friends can take my critiques in the right spirit.

The thing about our social venture – we hope to target a very specific subset of people who struggle with depression: college students who know they are depressed, who want to get better, and who are willing to take action to do so.

These are the people I admire, whom I identify with, and whom I want to help unleash their potential.

***

You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.

***

In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness: and that longing is in all of you.

***

Embrace your longing for your giant self, and be bold in doing so.

Learn.

-David

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My Anchors – Intro (Your story)

In my previous post, I promised to share an “anchor” of mine, as an example.

My original intention was simply to recap for you the time I spent in China this past summer. Though I was only there for four months, those four months were probably the most significant single block of time in my life thus far.

When I sat down to try to do it, however, I found it impossible.

The fact is, I am a person who actively uses several different anchors.

Now, I don’t always have the best memory for a lot of things. Often I won’t remember, or even pick up on, things that would be incredibly obvious to most people.

When it comes to the things that are important to me, however, I have a great memory.

Some memories I’ve stored so vividly I can practically relive them, sometimes down to actual footsteps, or the turn of a door handle. I recognize that some of these details may have been fabricated by my (flawed) memory. But the point is, I pay very close attention to the things that matter to me, and as a result they stay with me in a powerful way, and continue to affect me long after I’ve experienced them.

For instance, due to my nomadic lifestyle, I often find myself in transit. If I’m in a situation where it’s impossible to read or write, or if I’m simply not in the mood for information intake, even for something as informal as people-watching, I’ll simply revisit memories in my head.

I can actually do this for hours at a time. Sometimes I’ll play scenes, sometimes I’ll focus on a snapshot, sometimes I’ll just flip through faces.

Sometimes I’ll put one on replay, but sometimes I also like to mix it up.

Sometimes I’ll do this with really trivial mental material.

Often I’ll do this with my anchors.



I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, because I think it’s crucial to understand:

In the end, everything becomes just a story.



Whether horrific or mundane, momentous or inconsequential, everything becomes just a story.

One of my all-time favorite movie endings is that of Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York.” The final words:

“It was four days and nights before the worst of the mob was finally put down. We never knew how many New Yorkers died that week before the city was finally delivered. My father told me we was all born of blood and tribulation, and so then too was our great city. But for those of us what lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew was mildly swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again... for the rest of time... it would be like no one even knew we was ever here.”



­-Amsterdam Vallon, played by Leonardo DiCaprio

Even the most revolutionary of events, or the most influential of men, eventually become nothing, lost or forgotten.

Thanks to a powerful human desire to preserve and chronicle, and to refuse to let go, we have remnants to hold on to and to appreciate.

These remnants take the form of stories.

But ultimately, even the most extraordinary stories of the past are of limited importance. Paltry even.

History is utterly insignificant compared to the vital force of now.



And the now – the present – doesn’t hold for any single story.



At its heart, that is what your life is – just one more story in the story of humanity.



But take fierce pride in the fact that your story is in the here and now.



Because of that, it is as important as any story that ever lived.

So live your story with vigor, and embrace your life with joy and passion. Don’t live too much in the past.

But every once in a while, take the time to revisit your story, and to learn from it, not just from reading “the classics” or "the Great Books" of the Western Canon, or whatever other stuff other people tell you is important.

Realize that far more than with any book, or any blog, or any other assembled collection of words, you can relate to your own story.

Not only can you relate, you can distill the essence from your story, and use that essence as an anchor to hold you steady through life.

With all of this in mind, I’ve decided to start a series of posts on my own essential stories, on My Anchors, of which this is the introductory post. Many of these will come from my time in China, but I'm sure there will be many more from elsewhere.

This will be one of the most selfish sections of this blog. Hopefully you'll still be able to learn from my stories and my anchors, and most importantly, use them to help you shape your own stories and anchors.

THEY SAY

You walk around slinging the story of your life on your back.

Your story informs how you see, how you feel, how you do.

Wellspring of your thoughts and actions, self-woven with the most vibrant bits and pieces of your life, and held together by the stitches of your personality, your story is inescapable.

It is who you are.

Make sure your story is a good one. It's in your hands.

-David

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On Motivation – Finding your anchor (Part I)

It seems there are so many external sources of motivation these days. For the young college student, the first few links of the motivational chain may go something like this:

GPA – Recommendations – Internships – Grad/Professional School – Jobs

And so on.

Add to the mix external factors that are less tangible but still exert a strong presence, existing somewhere in the ether: parental approval, societal influences, etc. It can get pretty overwhelming.

Presumably this will all lead to the grand finale: “The good life.” But what does that even mean? What does it mean for you?

The thing about external sources of motivation is that they’re just that – external.

Mangle or knock out one or two links of the chain, and you may end up shafted.

What then?

Even if things go smoothly, many people find themselves discontent with what they have, even years and years after they’ve accomplished everything on “their list,” or at least the list they made taking cues from external pressures.

Hence, the mid-life crisis phenomenon.

Traditionally, we look upon the mid-life crisis as a source of amusement, even hilarity.

But is it really all that funny?

If you think a little deeper, it’s actually pretty tragic. People with an enormous amount of potential channel all of their energies and ambitions into following the links of the chain, and in the process subordinate their individual genius to fit the cookie-cutter standard.

What a fucking waste.

And how utterly lethal to personal growth and health.

If you plan and carry out your entire life according to external sources of motivation, you cheat yourself in the grandest way possible.

You destroy the essence of you.



What drives you? What gets you jazzed? Passionate? Fired up? And on a consistent basis – day in and day out?



These are the questions you must start answering now, and those (evolving) answers are what will stay you through the most difficult of times. That is,

You must find your anchor, and you must find it now.



What will sustain you when life hits you with a grand piano from the 100^th story of a skyscraper? (Thanks Looney Tunes, for the idea)

And how do you find this anchor?

The thing about an anchor is that it must be personal – it must come from the inner.

None of this external crap.

To find your anchor, draw upon all of your previous experiences, and really reflect hard on what’s important to you. Then use your imagination, and just go with it.

Know that words and images and memories can be powerful tools.

They can be used both positively and negatively.

I strongly encourage you to dig deep and find your anchor, and to use that anchor as a source of eternal strength.

Fuse together words that are meaningful to you, images that stick with you, and memories that are powerful for you, and use them to motivate yourself, even when you have nothing else left going for you.

Remember that you don’t have to have just one anchor. You can have many, perhaps different ones for different situations.

And don’t feel like you’re being inconsistent if your anchor(s) change over time – that’s perfectly fine, and might even be an indicator that you’re doing a good job of living.

They say that mid-life crises are becoming quarter-life crises these days. Usually, this carries w/it a sort of gloomy doomsday prophecy tone.

I say that this is a great sign. It’s better to grapple with the crucial issues sooner, rather than later (or never at all).

If you are of college age, or near it, and you are going through some really difficult shit, know that now is the ideal time to go through shit.



You have so much time to learn, and so much time to course-correct.



Radical change is possible in the shortest of times.



I know because I did it.



If you’ve made major mistakes in our life, pledge to yourself to learn from them, then forgive yourself and move on.

Keep on making new mistakes, and keep on learning from those too.

Struggle in uncertainty is good. It helps you move toward clarity.



-David

P.S. Read the continuation post for an example of an anchor – one of mine.

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On Details – Intro (The little things)

One “symptom” of depression is an overwhelming feeling of “emptiness.” We feel like our entire lives have meant nothing – that we are nothing.

I believe that part of the battle in fighting depression is filling in the details. Being able to see the beauty in every day detail, and learning to take joy from and focus on that beauty, rather than on pain.

I was once hospitalized at one of the “best” clinics on the East coast. Among the activities we were encouraged to attend was “Art.”

Frankly, it was bullshit – infantilizing, demeaning, and ineffective. And the person who led the session did not at all grasp the nuance of what it’s like to struggle through the day with severe depression (granted, I’m sure it’s a highly variable experience). There were also 2 premed students joining us to “observe” – they seemed quite utterly detached from the group, and rather self-absorbed, which made me strongly question their future ability as doctors. But I digress.

Still, being a team player, I played along, if only half-heartedly.

Many of my fellow inpatients were dual diagnosis – in addition to depression, they concurrently struggled with (and were diagnosed with) disorders like alcoholism, narcotics addictions, etc.

Several made reference to their drug addictions in their art. One girl drew the street crossing and chicken joint where she met w/her dealer to purchase heroine. An older man (proudly) drew a horse, also in reference to heroin.

Some just scribbled on paper, with no particular aim at all.

Not knowing what to do, and never having been particularly artsy in terms of drawing/painting, I grabbed some colored pencils and a big blue plastic alphabet stencil off the ping-pong table (we actually used a ping-pong table as the table – the art room became the rec room later at night).

I folded in half a blank white piece of 8.5 by 11” printer paper, then stenciled out a word on the left half. I’m straining but can’t remember exactly what word (I could probably find it if I sifted through old boxes). I’m pretty sure it was just my name.

D A V I D

The letters on the stencil were pretty big, in terms of stroke width, so that there was room for me to trace the inside of each letter on the stencil w/a colored pencil and still have the interior of the letter still stay empty (white). I remember this pretty well - I think the stencil was originally designed for markers.

But then I grabbed another stencil, also made of dark blue plastic, from the ping-pong table. This one didn’t have any letters at all – it was just patterns. There were flowers, big and small, and the level of detail was astonishing, at least for a stencil.

On the right half of my piece of paper, I traced out a few of the flowers, again w/colored pencil, using different colors for the different parts of the flower. It came out really pretty, and not at all due to any artistic ability on my part – the stencil simply had very intricate detail.

Then I looked at my piece of paper, and thought about how I was going to present it to the group (we were supposed to talk about our artwork at the end of each session).

And then it hit me.

To some degree, I initially was really just bullshitting. Drawing whatever tenuous connection I could find b/w whatever things happened to be on the paper, just so I’d have something to say. (This is an essential survival skill that all students who go through today’s education system develop, and usually by the time we make it to college, we’ve got it pretty well honed)

But I took one look at the big empty letters on the left half of the paper, and then at the intricate flowers on the right half, and I knew exactly what I was going to say. It came out something to this effect:

“The left half of my paper embodies the emptiness and nothingness I feel when I think about my life. The right half is my hope for the future – where one day I’ll be able to fill myself up and learn to appreciate the small details again.”



They – famous architects, and wise people, and Chinese restaurant fortune cookies – say that God is in the details.

To some extent, I believe this – I find that many of the most miraculous things in life are things you wouldn’t notice unless you really paid attention.

With all this in mind, I’ve decided to start a series of posts on Details, of which this is the introductory post, where I will point out some of the every day (and not so every day) details that inspire me.

I guess this is really a subcategory of my series of posts on Joy, but it’s separate enough to merit a new category.

Hopefully you’ll learn to (start?) pay attention to some of the little things in life, and to find (create?) joy in doing so.

The little things - they’re some of the greatest gifts anyone could ever give or receive.

And they’re free.

-David

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On Acting – Intro

As someone who aspires to be an actor one day (in truth I see myself as an actor already, it’s just a matter of getting training under my belt, and a job), I’m very excited about the potential acting/acting training holds for changing the individual, and for changing the world – and thus for solving depression.

Here’s an excerpt of an email I sent to my team a few weeks ago, when the idea first took root in my mind (it was a very rough idea then, and remains so now):

“Hey guys,



So I've been reading a lot of acting books lately, and I'm getting really excited about the prospect of ACTING TRAINING becoming a mainstream cure for depression.



As an actor, you identify with the need of the character you want to portray, then use your body as the instrument to portray the motions appropriate to this need. In doing so, you must utterly remove yourself from everyday reality and learn to lose yourself in the real life dream you are creating as an actor. You become hyperaware of your body and mind and you learn to master them.



What better way to train oneself to escape the mental loops and mind traps of depressive thinking? And to weld that with taking concrete action when you least feel like doing anything at all? And to build confidence and a sense of self-worth while doing so?



Actors who take their craft seriously realize that they are acting every second of every minute of every hour of their lives, and this type of mindset will provide a sort of constant vigilance for depressed people to guard against suicidal/negative thinking. And acting is all about physical and mental exchange with fellow actors - that will put a check on isolation (both physical and mental).



Just a thought - and an example of how something seemingly disparate could become extraordinarily relevant.”



Since then, the idea has only grown on me. I see enormous possibility. I intuitively see that acting is all about THINKING BIG, IMAGINING BIG, and most of all, ACTING BIG! This kind of mentality is exactly what‘s needed to help someone overcome depression.

And not only does acting hold enormous possibility – the products of acting (movies, plays, culture) wield enormous power for change too! For instance, check out this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/middleeast/04iranfilms.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

In general, I think fame could be leveraged more effectively to create positive change in this world, beyond just publicity trips and charity concerts, etc. There must be a better business model to accomplish this, in a society where unfortunately fame’s the name of the game, to a very large degree. But that’s another discussion for another time…

With all of this in mind, I’ve decided to start a series of posts on Acting, of which this is the introductory post, where I will present my ideas for how acting training can help people overcome depression. Some of these ideas you may see in the section on Action, but others you will see here.

I’ve been accepted to a weekend program w/the Stella Adler Studio for Acting in NYC (8 hrs/day on Saturdays and Sundays), and I look forward to sharing with you some of the things I learn!

Check back in for more in the Acting series! My classes start January 16^th!

-David

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On Action – Intro (Part II Hold a baby)

Hold a baby.

***

My brother is 14 years younger than me.

The first time I babysat him alone, when he was just a few years old, he cried for hours.

There was nothing I could do to console him, so I just held him against my chest.

He was so close, I could feel him cry, could feel his body writhe up and down against my chest as he sobbed, and if I held him away from my body for a little, I could see the ugly contortions of his face.

When I say to “hold a baby,” I don’t mean take your favorite toddler niece into your arms, sigh at how cute she is, then hand her off to the nearest adult.

The thing about actions – there can be so much more to them, below the surface.

When Daniel Day-Lewis wields a blade in Gangs of New York, he’s not acting. It’s real.



He took lessons as an apprentice butcher. He dressed as a butcher would, and refused to wear warmer clothing or take medicine after being diagnosed with pneumonia during filming. I imagine he let himself and pushed himself to become a butcher for months and months before they started filming. By the time we get to see him hold a knife on screen, he’s holding it not as an actor, but as Bill the Butcher in the 1800s. He’s considered every possible circumstance in order to understand why he’s holding that knife.

When I say to “hold a baby,” I’m asking you to do the same.

Look at the baby, not as if it were a cute “thing,” but as if he or she were a human. As if he or she could one day be the future President of the United States of America.

In my mind, when I see young children, when I hold a baby – that’s the kind of thought that runs through my mind.

There is no single human being, dead or alive, that inspires me more than my six-year-old brother.

Because he represents the future, and to me that is greater than anything that exists now, or that ever existed before.

***

I am a very ambitious person. To the point of lunacy, even.

Sometimes, when I look at my current situation – I have no money, no credentials, no real set path to follow that will lead me to success – I briefly remember that all my visions for my future are in my head, and my head only.

All I have are my hopes and my ideas. And a few cloudy notions of how I can put them into action.

And yet I intend to do extraordinary things with my life. Revolutionary things.

There's a good chance I "fail." But even if all of my deepest hopes and desires, and a lifetime of sweat and guts and pure unrelenting work – even if all that comes to bear fruit, they will never compare with the hopes, and promise, and possibility of future generations.



I hope with all my heart that my brother surpasses me in every possible way.

And that future generations surpass him.

There’s an eternal comfort I take in knowing how truly small I am in the scheme of things. In knowing that one day not too far from now I’ll clear out to make way for the new – that I’ll pass on the torch.

“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”



-George Bernard Shaw



We hold the splendid torch for only a moment, and no matter what we do with it – whether we sweat or bleed or even die for it, or whether we sit back, relax, and take it for granted – we still hand it off in the end.

All this reminds me that any failure is temporary, as is any success. In the end, the world moves on.

So don’t impart any sort of cosmic significance to your situation, no matter how dire it is (or how fabulous).

Remember that no matter how much pain you face, you can and must endure, and having endured, you will one day pass the torch on to the young.

***

When my brother finally ceased crying that night – ceased from pure exhaustion – I experienced a momentous calm in the room.

I was changed.

Changed in the subtlest of ways, so subtle that there was no way I ever could have articulated it back then, years ago.

But this powerful memory stuck with me until this day, and it helped me to appreciate the gravity and the beauty and the sacred promise of the young, and to put things into perspective in light of that appreciation.

Hold a baby, and approach the task as if every moment in history has culminated to lead up to the action you are about to take.

Let it change you.

-David

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