Thursday, December 26, 2019
Christmas 2019
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Grief and Loss
As Colbert explained how his upbringing subsequently pushed him toward escapist fantasy literature and comedy, Cooper questioned how the late-night host learned to accept tragedy as a way of life. “You told an interviewer that you have learned to—in your words—‘love the thing that I most wish had not happened. You went on to say, ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ Do you really believe that?”
“Yes,” Colbert replied, later clarifying the quote originated with Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien. “It’s a gift to exist, and with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. I don’t want it to have happened. I want it to not have happened, but if you are grateful for your life—which I think is a positive thing to do, not everybody is, and I am not always but it's the most positive thing to do—then you have to be grateful for all of it. You can’t pick and choose what you're grateful for.”
Colbert added that the common bonds of suffering can often bring people closer. “You get the awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being if it’s true that all humans suffer."
I believe this is an important reminder that life is a gift to he appreciated. All of it. The bad along with the good. Yes, loved ones will die, accidents will happen, friends and family will get sick. This is all -- as tragic as it is -- life.
Bob Ross, the TV painter with the frizzy hair and soothing voice, perhaps said it best in an episode of his show The Joy of Painting from fter his wife, Jane, died from cancer.
In the episode, he's painting a scene with a lake resting between two majestic mountains. He loads his brush up with a dark mixture of paint and starts to dab it all across the bottom of the mountains.
"Don't worry," he tells viewers, "I'm only adding this dark for contrast. Gotta have dark. Gotta have opposites, dark and light, light and dark, continually in painting. If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you basically have nothing," he practically whispers, his brush tapping rhythmically on the canvas. "It's like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come."
Friday, December 20, 2019
Belief
Democracy
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Hiriketiya
After leaving the freeway in Matara, we wound our way along a two-lane highway, occasionally coming car door to sea several times before veering off the main road onto a cobblestone path leading down to the sea.
Hiriketiya is a hidden cove surrounded by cliffs, tall coconut palms, and the press of the green, green jungle. The forest descends all the way to the sea. We stayed at a modern and hip hostel called the Salt House. Complete with fish tacos, yoga, and cold beer.
The hipster infiltration of Sri Lanka was evident, though not overwhelming or unwelcome. Brick-oven pizzas and beer on the beach were pleasant niceties after the longish drive. We had Thanksgiving dinner by the ocean, waves crashing on the rocks at our feet, the kids exploring tide pools in the fading light of dusk, surfers splitting the sea behind them, lingering in the swells well past sundown. Our table sat on a wooden deck overlooking the water; the kids ate spaghetti and meatballs. Elise and I shared french fries and Lion lagers. That night as we walked home, fireflies lit our path, illuminating the darkest parts of the jungle; I didn't even know there were fireflies in Sri Lanka.
The next day, we spent the entire Black Friday on the beach. We borrowed a long board from the hotel, and Peter and Sam took turns surfing. The break was bigger and further out in Weligama, well over their heads, so I swam next to them as they paddled into the surf. There can be no pursuit as tiring as accompanying your son or daughter learning to surf. I pulled them past the break, then pushed them into the wave. I couldn't see them over the break, but knew they caught when they just disappeared beyond the wave towards shore. I would then swim back to shore to pull them back out again; I slept well that night.
We have always said Sam is like a puppy dog, tireless. If you threw Sam a frisbee, he would do the human equivalent of catch it in his mouth and return it to you endlessly, until your arm got tired, until your arm fell off. Elise even calls him by the nickname "puppy". Sam is to surfing as a dog is to a tennis ball. He was relentless in the waves, holding his own with surfers twice his age, staying in the sea until his cheeks and nose were pink and blistered (we bought him zinc oxide when we got home).
As Sam enters middle school and the fury of adolescence, he occasionally has what Elise likes to call "snow globe moments", times when his brain is like a snow globe that has been shaken, waiting to settle. He doesn't know why he is angsty or upset. Likely, there is no rational reason for his reactions during these moments, except for a torrent of neurons firing in his pubescent brain, lightning crashing. But there can be no better balm or elixir to combat this storm than the churning sea. There is likely no greater gift Elise or I could bestow upon him then the opportunity to sit in the ocean and watch the water come in and go out underneath him, a steady rhythm when there is nothing else steady in his quickly-accelerating existence.
And there were monkeys. The view from our patio: