Artie Isaac | Net Cotton Content

Tattoo, redux

A 2011 Net Cotton Content post on tattoo attracted more reader comments than any other post.

(Later "This Old Heart" broke that record.) With regard to tattoos, here is the original post, "Skin Deep." 

When I speak with anyone under 90 on the subject,
I discourage them from getting a tattoo.
My opinions — and, even more strident, my recommendations — draw complaints of my cultural incompetent and prejudice.

These accusations have merit. I admit that — when I see a tattoo, I think I know something about the person. What I think I know is surely inaccurate, or at least incomplete. I instantly write a narrative about the person based on the tattoo rather than the more substantial aspects of their character and experience. That's prejudice. I'm guilty.

If you want to read some of these complaints, here is "Tattoo, redo," a follow-up post on the comments.

But this isn't about that.

Another Bottle Washes Up On Shore
This is just my same old message in a bottle: don't get a tattoo.

Why this message again now?

This week's story in The New York Times, "Cycling: A Reminder Of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand," is a clear argument for — and, no doubt, for — tattoo. (It's also a great use of the word "brand," drawing on its every meaning.)

Sports reporter Mary Pilon offers a soulful story about intelligent, articulate, highly motivated people who wear various tattoos of LIVESTRONG. They have inked the highest legacy of Lance Armstrong into their skin.

Now, of course, the stain of doping and his lifelong disqualification and ban is blended with the ink.

LIVESTRONG = Worthy Message
Is "LIVESTRONG" a valid, meaningful, important message? Of course it is.

But this isn't about the LIVESTRONG message. This is about the medium.

Two questions:

• Would anyone get a LIVESTRONG tattoo today? I'm not asking: is LIVESTRONG a wonderful message? I'm asking: would anyone get a LIVESTRONG tattoo today? Really?

And:

• Would you want to start every conversation for the rest of your life — once your tattoo is spied — with a quick review of the fall of the world's greatest sports hero?

Imagine the last words you hear, 75 years from now, spoken by your great-grandchild, standing at your deathbed: "Grandmother[father], so do you think Lance doped?")

The main reason to delay your tattoo by one day — perpetually delaying the tattoo by another day — is this: everything changes. 

Still thinking of getting a tattoo?
Wait another day.

Even if you already have one. Or 100. Wait another day.

The meaning of any name, word or icon will change. Stay flexible. Avoid the ink.  

 

We are all "undecided."

What is it, nine days?

Nine days before we — as a nation — make our biggest decision of the year. Zealots say: "the biggest decision of our lives." (Zealots are sometimes right.)

As a recovering marketer, I can't help but see this in clinical terms. Like the analogies from SATs of yore:

• As voter : consumer, candidate : packaged good
• As voter : candidate, vote : purchase
• As my candidate : other candidate(s), least disagreeable : threatening

But none of us knows if the final analogy is true. There are data. But the truth is elusive.

We Don't Really Know.
We might change our minds. But we are not undecided. All of us know for whom we will vote.

But our knowledge is not based on real understanding of how the elected will govern on January 21st. That's unknowable, no matter what they have said and done. Our decision is — and will be — based on our interpretation of selected data. Thin ice, anyone?

Marty Saperstein, one of the smartest guys who will spend time with me, holds a Ph.D. in statistics. I asked him yesterday, "Is anyone really undecided? Or do they just not want to talk about it?"

Marty said, "That's right. During surveys, when people say they are undecided, we ask them why. Nine out of ten of them respond with a negative. For example, 'I don't want to vote for that other guy because of [some micro or macro issue].' So they are decided, but they might not realize it yet, or just don't want to put it in those terms."

When I asked Marty for whom he is voting, he responded with a question, before giving me the simple answer: "For whom do you think I am voting?" My answer to that question, he says, reveals my own choice, because I will "think the best of him for voting the same way." He's a wily researcher.

By the way, Marty and I are not voting for the same candidate. This is proof that smart people can disagree with me on this election. (More on that below.)

But We Do Care.
Recently I sat with an otherwise equanimous fellow who was redfaced, steam coming from his ears over this election. Steeped in conspiracy theory and reports that have come from under rocks, he spoke daggers about the other candidate. He sounded like he was going to split in two. The rest of the table just watched him.

And I have seen and heard the same passionate frenzy from the other side about his candidate.

Stick a fork in us. We are boiled over.
Usually (by which I mean all other episodes of Survivor), we get to see the vote each week. We never have to wait months — years! — to vote everyone else off the island. Trained by drive-thru dining, we are not a patient people.

We have seen the two finalists do what is not necessary to govern. We have seen the debates. Or, as I think of the so-called debates, two very smart introverts throwing pies at each other. I watched only one of them (the second Presidential) and, frankly, I wish I had skipped it. I wasn't any smarter when it ended.

How I Truly Feel

1.
I believe that those who vote for the other candidate(s) are NOT necessarily ignorant or stupid. We simply disagree on the criteria for employment in this key CEO position.

2.
Registration and voting are work, but they are among our most important jobs. I am sad about low voter turnout. I agree with David Foster Wallace:

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is  no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”

3.
I am not riddled with fear about my choice not being the choice of the majority. After all, none of us — not even the candidates themselves, despite all the campaign declarations and previous decisions — knows what January 21 will present in the ways of challenges and how the President will respond.

4.
We will have a President and I will salute him. I wish only for the health and enlightenment of humanity, guided by wise and learning leaders.

5.
I long for elections where I am torn between two equally appealing candidates, rather than where I hunt for the least objectionable.

Meet Stanley.
You might remember the fellow I had decided to avoid — and then, at what I had secretly planned as our final lunch, I decided to renew our companionship. I called him "Stanley" in a recent post.

That friend — the real "Stanley" — responded to me in an email. He is Mark Wallinger and he permits me to share his response (excerpted): 

Really, really enjoying my political retirement. Living in Ohio, you can’t escape it all, of course, but I have better things to do with my time than take a survey, answer a robo-call, get agitated by what this party said about that one. This discourse is nothing new, just on more platforms, more frequencies, more often.

So it goes.

And I’m not sipping tea, or walking in woods. Instead, I’m vigorously pursuing things that interest me, my craft, my family and friends.

I’m not manipulated into faux “debates” that matter little. Somehow, in recent years, we’ve been led to believe our opinions on every single subject have value and enter into the frequency of the social discourse. Nothing could be further from the truth. Sometimes it’s just more noise.

The results? I participate less, learn more. And I’m happier now ... and isn’t that a key goal of life: happiness?

I think it's time to schedule lunch with Mark again. Perhaps after the Big Election.

Happy voting. May you — may we all — be delighted with the outcome!

Please, do NOT leave comments of advocacy for any candidate. Thank you.

Remembering Your Name

Five years ago, my first college reunion, the 25th anniversary of the graduation of the Yale Class of 1982, changed my life. You've read about that.

This weekend, I returned for the next one, the 30th Reunion. A smaller affair — the 25th is always The Big One — this was more intimate, less dramatic; less Homecoming, more coming home.

Lux et Veritas — et haimish.

I Close My Eyes.
This morning, after — at last — a full night of sleep, I press closed my eyes and I can see my classmates at the table. I can see the young students, earning a few summer dollars sitting sentry at the gates of Davenport College. I can feel the walks on Hillhouse Avenue on my feet.

I can still hear the lectures: on George Kennan, on The Ancients and Flourishing, on Twelfth Night and Godot. Kennan was the central architect in bringing down the Soviet Union by developing containment 40 years earlier. His grand strategy was based neither on political science, nor on the ready choice between appeasement or war. His design was founded on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky; they had taught him the Russian heart and he understood that heart would reject its transplant into the Soviet rib cage. (Forgive the professor; that was not his metaphor.) The professor's conclusion: rather than the grim pre-professional training today's parents seek for their children, it is the classic liberal arts education that lights the way to true understanding and the path for civilization.

Now, at my table at home, I can see Atul's sharp eyes, feel Elizabeth's hand lightly touch my arm, hear Peter's comic dismay — all of you, so many of you, I can smell your sweet breath as we spoke so closely. My hearing isn't what it used to be. Perhaps it never was. But that gave me license to lean closer to you, near enough to kiss you on the cheek, as we exchanged something more.

With the normal self-esteem of an average Ohioan, I was unbearably shy during my college years — even if I appeared the opposite then, I can prove it to you now — so I grasped the opportunity to smile into the beautiful faces I remember so well.

The Obligation of Memory
At the 25th I said something funny on a panel. It made me memorable to many who had not met me during our bright college years.

The entire experience of the 25th Reunion changed my life — readers here have heard quite enough about that. It inspired a few love letters — mass love letters, if that can be — thanking my classmates and encouraging them to return for the 30th. (Here is the latest.)

Because I entertained in 2007, five years later I was handed another assignment. A very different assignment.

I flew to the east coast, reading a book on Buddhism. The chapter that morning was on the impermanence of everything.

When I landed, I found that Toby, the Class Secretary, had texted me, asking me to read — aloud, at the closing dinner — the names of our deceased classmates. 

The Class Necrology
Some of the innovations of our 30th Reunion were based on our advancing age. We tried things that we'd never tried at earlier reunions. Like serving wine at lunch.

Wine at lunch? What were they thinking? I asked the bartenders. They smiled, "The older the class, the earlier the bar opens." I hope to live long enough to see the mimosas at breakfast. Though I still might not start quite that early.

Another new activity for us: the reading of the necrology. Only now were we old enough. The class was ready to be split into survivors and mourned. At 30 years out, "necrology" has replaced "dean's list."

I accepted the invitation as an honor. An honor that came with fear of incompetence (how to pronounce names of those I've never met) and the dread of superstition (might someone die, even as we sit together?).

When the time came, the Class and Reunion Officers were making their joyous announcements: the Class Gift, attendance records, awards for service to Yale. I sat in the shadows, nearby, but outside the festival dinner tent. I held a list of 34 names. Someone had written at the top of the page: "1982 Deceased List."

34 Names
I recognized a few of the names, but had met only one of the people. Michael Harms, a sweet kid, acted with me in Ah, Wilderness in the Davenport Common Room. We played brothers, forcing us into a brotherly relationship — easy to do with Michael. Within months he was dead, killed on a summer job, driving a truck, never to return for his senior year at Yale.

I saw Michael's name on the list and I remembered. I remembered receiving Ann's call that summer. "Michael is dead." I had been his brother on stage, but I knew — dammit, I knew — I had hardly come to know him. I cried my first tears for the dead, those tears that are really for the living, as we realize that promise of our continuing relationship has been broken. Michael's smile haunts my heart to this day. 

I calculated: 34 = 2.5% of the class. Most everyone will have known someone on this list. This won't be about that poor bastard. This is going to be personal. This is going to be about us. We poor bastards.

I sat quietly, outside the tent, beside a Development staff member. She was there to hear the announcement of the class gift, a victory. Her list is so different from mine. The necrology is a list of people who will never write another check to Yale.

I held the paper in my hands. I meditated on the thought I think when I am beneath my tallit, preparing for worship. Danny Maseng, my teacher, says that — during that moment of solitude — he reminds himself that he is in the community for communal reasons: "Not for me, but for them."

The sun had set. It was cloudy, but there were more than three stars above that tent. Shabbat was over.

The Jewish calendar is so old, it is full of holy days. It was now Shavuot, the anniversary of Moses presenting the law — traditionally, one of two experiences we have all shared. We were all together there, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, just as we had earlier been together at the Red Sea, leaving bondage. Shavuot is traditionally observed by an all-night study of text.

An academic all-nighter. How appropriate. This group, under the tent, have all taken their turns studying all night — during college and even now, from time to time, when the worthy material meets the honorable motivation. It is so ordinary an experience among Yalies that we don't even know that 99% of Americans have never done it and would dismiss it as masochistic.

Creating Silence
Earlier in the day, I saw drama students in an open rehearsal, working on a scene from Waiting For Godot. They had demonstrated the power of silence and I'd been thinking about silence all day. All year, in my Vistage work, I've been learning, as Susan Scott teaches, to "let silence do the heavy lifting."

I knew that my job wasn't the pronunciation of the names. That was the output, not the outcome. The outcome was to walk with my classmates into a moment of solemnity and respect. To foster dignity for all of us, dead or alive.

During the day, my friends and I had joked about how I could best be "Mr. Necrology." After all, everyone had once been voted (at least by Admissions, if not the high school faculty) most likely to succeed. But who is voted most likely to read the list of the dead? Not I.

At lunch, I had suggested that I might ask for people to hold their applause until the end. I was kidding, but Steve made it funny: "Please hold your silence until the end." That's funny. And unusable. 

Steve knew I wouldn't say such a thing, but I struggled for something to say. I sat, listening to the dinner crowd talk over the speakers. The announcements were festive, so it made sense that some listened, some applauded, some maintained their meaningful conversations under the tent.

I knew this: if anyone talked over the reading of the list in my hands, they would regret it. The tent would have changed from dinner to church and they would have been the ones talking out loud with a glass of wine in their hands. Afterwards, they would have been sad about it.

I had to quiet the tent.

I didn't do much. Joking aside, we hadn't talked much about how to introduce the subject. I'm glad that Ed, a Reunion Co-chair, took the minimalist approach, "It's my pleasure to introduce Artie Isaac." Those words didn't change — one way or the other — the ambient noise in the tent.

"Hello. Good evening," I said. Still, the noise in the tent. After all, that's why we had come together. To make that wonderful music of conversation. Not to hear about class gifts and awards. And certainly not to say Kaddish. 

I mumbled something that seemed funny, a little funny, but was not. "Of all of the moments of this evening, this is the moment you will wish you had not been talking." It was an awkward, stumbling sentence, and I hadn't thought it through. After a day of thinking of so many things to say in introduction, this came out unconsciously.

I paused for a new "beat" (as they say in the Drama School.) "It is our obligation to review the list of names of our deceased classmates. I have a list of 34 names. Here they are."

I heard the silence. My classmates were completely silent. Hundreds of us — amid a grand meal in the most beloved of places, a courtyard where I became an adult, a small lawn where I am rooted forever as both flower and weed — silent.

I read the names.
I read them as slowly as I could. I pronounced as best I could. I paused to comment on Michael Harms' name, for he was chronologically the first. And on George Vitelli's name; he had died only weeks ago. 

I added a blessing: "May their names remain a blessing to all of us who knew and loved them."

(I hadn't thought of the obvious gesture: to ask everyone to raise a glass in a toast. It never occurred to me. Now that it does, I'm glad I didn't. I understand drinking in memory. I guess it's just not my nature.)

I didn't hear it, but several told me later: it wasn't completely silent throughout the tent. There was the sound of several, softly crying.

I closed by softly mumbling, "Thank you." What I meant was, "I love you." For those reading now, please know it: I love you. That is what I meant, but could not say.

More Names
After I left the microphone, throughout the evening, classmates came to me with additional names. The name of a classmate who committed suicide during our senior year had been omitted. Another, the victim of a flash flood. And another. I realized that I am, for now anyway, the holder of the list, so I jotted down their names and will send them to Toby.

And now, one more.
Not for the class of 1982, but the class of 2012, this beautiful young lady: graduated just last week, Marina Keegan died during this weekend's reunion dinner. A car accident near Dennis, Massachusetts. Here is an essay she presented to her classmates, "The Opposite of Loneliness." She writes as meaningfully as anyone could about the power of reunion, though she will never experience one.

I have cried twice this morning for Marina, a woman I never met until her death illustrated that we are woven of the same blue threads. I know her name will be read at her 30th Yale Reunion. People will still cry for her. May "Marina Keegan" remain a blessing for all who knew and loved her.

What Is Yale In Me?
I'd returned to New Haven with a goal, to try to figure out the end of this riddle:

My hands work in Ohio. 

My heart beats wherever my beloved rests. 

My imagination refuels in New York City. My soul is rooted in the Negev. My breath is fullest on the Bright Angel Trail. 

What of New Haven? My __________ lives here. 

While I was back in New Haven, I filled in the blank: "daring." Yale gives me the courage to be increasingly authentic. 

Who gave you courage? May you remember them on this Memorial Day.

This Old Heart

Hearts age physically. They also age emotionally.

Neither is particularly pretty.

*******************

A couple years ago, the old man spoke. 

We were at lunch, the only lunch we ever shared.

"May I Tell You A Story?"
He didn't say why he wanted to tell it. But, as he shared, his motive appeared: he was processing a brutal fact of his life. 

Here is the story, a story of love and loss. He said:

At college, back in the '60s, I was in love with a young woman. She was a delight and we were soulmates.

As we faced graduation, we mutually decided to let our careers take us to different cities. We intentionally discontinued our relationship, one thing led to another, and we fell out of touch.

So far, a frequent story. He continued:

A few years passed and I was transferred to a different city, placed in an office, seated at a desk, and — at the very next desk — there she was. Imagine that! What a coincidence! Kismet? I don't know. There she was. And she was as delightful and well-matched for me as ever.

But, while we were separated, she had married. She was happily married. But here I was. There she was. And she was married. Happily married. I understood.

The old man raised a finger, to stop me from commenting. He continued:

Time passed.

One or the other of us eventually left the company and the city. 

More time passed.

It happened again. This time, I was traveling and we bumped into each other. Just like that. Can you believe it? A complete coincidence, again. What are the odds? Anyway, we were suddenly together. And between us: all the old feelings of admiration and longing. We chatted with heart, and a fact was quickly revealed: she was available, she had divorced.

But now I was married. Happily married! And so on. The situation had reversed to the same effect. Our conversation was limited by propriety; our meeting and parting, to a genuine embrace. 

Time passed. Again, we lost touch.

He paused. He continued:

That phrase — "but I was married" doesn't convey the value of my marriage. You know of my marriage. Legendary. The envy of others. But, more than that, the treasure of my life. The font of our children. My wife, our love, were, to me, everything.

I had met his wife. I had heard about their love. I nodded.

He was quiet. I waited. Then:

As you know, my wife died several years ago. Cancer. Untimely. Awful.

And, so, naturally, I have increasingly wondered, where is my friend, my college girlfriend, that woman who I thought was my soulmate, but never knew because our good lives interrupted us?

I don't know. I just don't know. I can't find her. I don't know where she is.

We sat quietly. He clearly feared the worst. That she was gone. Dead. Or disappeared.

I muttered something about how — now, with Facebook — that won't ever happen to my children and their lovers, how people of the social networking generation can be gone but remain easily found.

I wondered why the old man didn't pay a private detective $100 to find his lost friend. If I suggested this to him, I'm sorry I did. The idea is too obvious. If he had done it, it obviously hadn't turned up anything. If he hadn't done it, he had a reason. Perhaps his reason was old-fashioned mores: one just doesn't do that. Or perhaps he placed True Love in the hands of Lady Kismet.

We all know this pain.
The ache in the heart. A pressure in the chest. 

I've seen it — and felt it — in childhood. In high school. In college. Beyond. 

She said "no." Or "no more." Or "you? really?" Or, worse nothing of all. Once she spoke Russian.

I don't think any of their judgements were wrong. Each was following her heart, as she must. (And, to be fair, at times, I was the one saying, "no." Those times don't hurt as much. Huh.)

Still, when my infatuation wasn't met in kind, I was left, holding my bruised heart, not knowing what to do, feeling humiliated, embarrassed. This seems pathetic, that I should have had the maturity with which to address the challenge: distraction, learning, recovery, renewed adventure.

I chose only distraction, the weakest of the alternatives. I placed my broken heart in the trunk of my car and drove on. 

What is the cure?
I thought I knew. Here's what I thought were the cures: 

• Time. Doesn't it heal all wounds? It doesn't. Decades pass, but heartache merely goes cryogenic, as easy to thaw as a frozen meal — Heart: Ready To Eat.
• Next. Isn't new love, a true love the antidote? It isn't. The perfect marriage — of which I know, for mine, if not perfect, is surely the least imperfect — isn't a cure. The new relationship is a heart transplant, not a heart repair. The old heart lies beside the photograph, still beating its retreat in the trunk of the car, good for little else. Except, of course, to remind us we are alive.
• Maturity. Don't we ever grow up? Not I. Another widowed friend in his 70s recently spoke of the pain. His heart was freshly broken. Not, this time, by bereavement. But rather by a week of dinners, on a vacation that had to end. "How dear," I thought shallowly. "How real," he felt deeply.

We are all freshman at the senior dance. We are all at summer camp.

Is this is a high-class heartache? 
After all, many of us are so contented in fruitful relationships.

But there are those whose heartache is based on loneliness. We must respect their sorrow. It must be greater. But from here, with these hearts on the floor, we can't tell.

We're looking at old hearts in the trunk, pained that we cannot live two lives at once. Driving on.

Will someone please call a surgeon
Who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart
That you're deserting for better company?
I can't accept that it's over... 

 

I wish us all strength and a fullness of heart.

Choosing Diversions

Different strokes for different folks.

Or, as my Australian friend Catherine says, "Horses for courses."

So what are your strokes?
I can tell you what is not a stroke of mine: violence.

I really don't like it. 

And I don't consider it entertainment.

So if your stroke includes violence that leads too often to a reckless result — like, say, permanent brain injury — I'm out. 

My friends who are sports fans will counter, "People get injured walking across the street."

Sure enough. But who cheers when that happens? I'm not standing in the way of people taking risks for their passions. I'm simply disappointed and somewhat depressed when everyone stands and cheers for violence.

Call me "old fashioned." If disdain for violence is a crime, let me be guilty.

The Big Question
To be fully human, we need to ask ourselves throughout the day, "What does this experience mean to me? How am I expressing myself? Does this experience lift me, making me my best potential self, or does it lower me, degrading my potential?"

It might seem like a ponderous question for most people. However, with frequent asking, it becomes a light and enjoyable question.

So ask yourself: "When I see two people punching each other, what is the feeling that is stirred within me? Is it sporting? Or just thirsty for violence?"

Perhaps the answer is: o.k., watching violence stirs the primitive within. That leads to this question: is that what you want? 

Will hockey truly attempt to reform? Probably not. Because the "cost to the sport," is really a cost to the wallets of those who own the gladiatorial contest.

When people speak of "the sport" as an ancient ideal, I think, "Give me a break. Your ideal is worth cheering for people who defend the game by inflicting damage on one another? If so, do tell: what are your other ideals? Are any of them in conflict with this one?" 

I love the strength and grace of college hockey. But, so long as the major league behaves like the bush league, I'll stick to baseball. Unless and until the players brawl with regularity on the diamond. Then I'll leave the ballpark and crawl back under my self-righteous rock.

But this isn't about sports.

It's about the Arts.
I don't consider violence against women to be entertainment. It nauseates me. 

And when violence against women is presented as "art," I am ever more disgusted.

The arts has a way of saying, "We don't like this. We abhor it. So let's get some popcorn and watch a lot of it."

So I walked Out.
This was about a year ago, when the movie was new. I was in our beloved Drexel Theatre. I bought my ticket. I bought my popcorn. I sat through the coming attractions before the feature presentation.

Up came The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. This movie — claimed to be a "film" because it has subtitles, was introduced in independent cinemas, and is based on a best-selling series of novels by the late Stieg Larsson —  didn't last 30 minutes. For me, it didn't. I walked out.

Walked out? Well, what else is the appropriate reaction to watching a woman being beaten and sodomized?

I'm not able to keep thinking, "This is art. I am a patron of the arts." Call me a philistine, but when I'm watching a young woman harassed, battered, restrained, and penetrated, I have very few choices:

• watch — and have the primitive within me fueled. (Really, now, honestly: what is the feeling within you when you watch Noomi Rapace raped? She's a fine actress, so it looks real enough. What are you feeling? Artistically inspired? Doubtful. Aroused? Hmmm. Nice.)
• leave — and sit outside the theatre on a nice summer evening.

Of course, if this weren't art, the third and most appropriate choice would be to call the police. (The Onion's coverage of the recent assault scandal in sports was brilliant. Here it is: "Nation's 10-Year-Old Boys: 'If You See Someone Raping Us, Please Call The Police'.")

I'm conflicted.
This is awkward. I'm on the board of trustees for Friends of The Drexel, Inc., the new not-for-profit organization founded to secure and sustain the future of the historic Drexel Theatre as a distinctive cultural asset to Bexley and the greater Columbus community.

Showing violence against women isn't part of the mission, but the Dragon Tattoo movie was great at the box office. And more articulate, more cultured people than I defend the movie with passion.

I can say only this: "I know what I'm seeing. It's a woman being beaten and raped. Watching that is not — anytime, anywhere, under any Cloak of Sophisticated Culture — a form of entertainment or enlightenment for me. Never."

Independent arts cinemas turn their noses up at showing what they consider low-brow, like Terminator. And, so, we are showing this?

What's The Big Deal?
The big deal is that we are what we eat. And we are who we know. And we are where we go.

Let me add: We are what we cheer for. And we are what arouses us.

Can we make a case for not being who we are when we are cheering for — or aroused by — something violent? (I've tried. It's a weak case.)

Where can we turn for wisdom?
Not to me. I'm not the arbiter of taste.

Now that you are an adult, you have to decide what is beneath you. I'm just asking you to draw the line — rather than letting popular culture draw the line for you. Because we all know where popular culture will draw that line.

Columbus's native son, James Thurber once said (I'm paraphrasing here, because I cannot find the original quotation): "I'm glad to be going blind, so I can't see where popular culture is headed."

Want something more helpful?

The actor Bill Murray: “When you become an adult, you get to choose your diversions. You should choose them carefully.” 

Where is God?

[This morning, the rabbi is out. So a friend and I will lead Shabbat services. The friend has skills and will do all the hard stuff: Hebrew, music. I'll do what I do best: distract people throughout the service. And I'll give the sermon. Here's the sermon.]

Shabbat shalom. The Rabbi is off the bima. You are about to learn that this would have been a good time for you to leave town. Here we go.

It's been more than a couple months since Simchat Torah, when Jews everywhere rewind every Torah scroll in the world. And we start over with Genesis. 

We've read about creation and the patriarchs and matriarchs. This week, in the portion of the Torah called Vayeishev, starting with Chapter 37, we still have Jacob and we are turning to Joseph and his brothers. The stories are interesting and, frankly, with Joseph, his brothers, Potiphar, Tamar and Onan, among the most salacious reality television the Bible offers.

This week is a religious school teacher's dream. The stories are fascinating to parse and debate. Why are they in the Torah? What do they mean for those of us who attempt to live Torah-centric lives?

There are great questions.

But I'm not going to discuss any of that.
I'd like to step away from those stories and contemplate the question: Where is God?

This seems like the time to do it because, as Gunther Plaut points out (The Torah: A Modern Commentary, page 244), this portion's long literary unit — which could be televised as Survivor: The Coat of Many Colors — is notable in a number of ways. One is the the increasing absence of divine revelation. Except in one small part — though the role of God is no small part — God has left the stage.

So the question I would like to explore today is: Where is God?

Ask yourself: Is God near? What does it mean, "God is near"? What are the signs and your feelings that God is near?

Ask yourself: Is God far away? And what about "God is far — or gone"? What are the signs and your feelings that God is far or gone?

Moving Away
In the Torah, God starts near and gradually moves away. The sole actor at the beginning, God creates the earth and populates it, speaking directly with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Some years are spent in training the people. And then, God steps away. Eventually, later in Exodus, God retains a lawyer, Moses, who serves as local counsel in God's place.

God seems like a parent; humanity, the children. God creates humanity, raises them, then steps away and let's them live their lives. 

What do you think? How is God like a parent? How is parenting not like being God? When is God a good parent. When is, if I might ask, God not a good parent?

However we might judge our Parent, God, like a parent, starts out all powerful, or at least seeming all powerful. At the end, parents are left only all loving. The power is gone, eventually or sooner. God is left all loving, whether you look to the original Chasidic tradition or Christianity, which are both traditions based on an all loving God. 

A Disclaimer on Belief
When I was 12 years old, it was time to meet with the Rabbi for the first conversation about becoming Bar Mitzvah. Back then, as I recall (which might not be accurate), fewer students than today led a Bar Mitzvah service. So the rabbi started by asking my intentions.

Rabbi: What are you thinking about Bar Mitzvah?

Artie: Would it be wrong to do just for the presents?

Rabbi: Yes.

Artie: Would it be wrong to do it if I don't believe in God?

Rabbi: Yes.

Artie: Well then, Rabbi, I'm 0-for-2.

Within a few years, I had completely walked away from Judaism — a walk that spanned 26 years before returning in my late 30s.

What About The Professional Jew?
One of the few things I've learned about Judaism is that the Rabbi might have overstated the answer to the second question. Today, as I understand it, belief in God isn't a prerequisite to being a Jew. In fact, this is a case where some of our best, don't.

Years ago, I asked a beloved Rabbi, "Do you believe in God?" I was expecting the simple answer of a true believer.

"May I speak frankly and confidentially?" the Rabbi asked. I nodded. (I think enough years have passed for me to tell this story.) His answer: "That is a complex question."

Wha? "Do you believe in God?" is a complex question?

For me, it's a simple question when the answer is "no" and it's a complex question when the answer is "yes." Because for anyone whose faith is on-again/off-again, "yes" needs a complex qualification.

Personally, I don't consider my religion a faith. I consider it an ethical tradition that — from time to time — might achieve moments of faith. So, I think the Rabbi of my childhood, the one who told me that belief in God was necessary to be a Jew, offered me an easy exit.

Here's what I believe now:

1. Whether or not one believes in God, it is better to live as if (a.) we are all related and (b.) we are never alone. This way, even without belief, we won't abuse our neighbor and we won't behave as if our actions have no meaning.
2. The mind of God is very big. It's inconceivable that any one of us would know the one true way. As Mrs. Isaac says, "It is conceivable that everyone is right." That is, everyone except those who sacrifice people, literally or figuratively. This has led me to a humble preference: I prefer to believe in everything, rather than to believe in nothing. 
3. Facebook is, in at least one important way, playing God. (Here is my Theology of Facebook.)

So, where is God?
I don't know. But I know what I feel like when I feel that God is near or far. 

Does distance make the heart grow fonder? Or as the Roman poet, Sextus Propertius put it: "Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows."

As God and humanity see distance growing between them, so must parents and children.

This year has one of our children off to college. I know how helpless I sometimes feel to have my power diminished by distance. It leaves me all loving, with little I can do about it.

In the late of the night, when I cannot sleep, when I am consumed with worry for our creation, all I can do is wonder if I still enter into my child's prayers.

God is near when we pray for the well being and healing of our friends and family.

The Purpose of Management

I've spent the past several months having increasingly deeper conversations with entrepreneurs and business owners. It's been an enlightening, joyful honor for me.

Observing these businesspeople is humbling. Most of them have a highly defined sense of purpose.

Here's one way of describing what I am seeing.

Guess What? It's Lutheran.
I heard this first when I taught creativity to MBA candidates at the Capital University Graduate School of Management. (This was years ago, before I came to Ohio State.)

The dean of the business school, Lisa Dolin, informed me that Capital University was founded by Lutherans, based on Lutheran ideals. And, if memory serves, she described a fundamental Lutheran mission like this:

The Lutherans recognize that we are more effective in some roles than we are in others. Some people are best at making shoes. Some people are best at dancing in those shoes.

So it is the purpose of education to help each person find his or her most productive role. Because, if we are all at our most effective, doing the thing that we are most meant to do, doing the thing that we do the best, doing the most important work of our careers, then we will — as a human population — really be moving the world forward.

We will truly be completing the act of creation.

Is that really Lutheran?
So I'm told. But I think even the Lutherans would agree — with delight — that this is a universal ethic. It would be universally beneficial if universally applied. And where it is not applied, it ought to be.

I might have added that last sentence, about finishing the act of creation. (I always try to worm that idea in.) But, it's fair to say that this world — as we have it now — is surely not finished. One only needs to look at the front page of the newspaper to realize that.

So What Is Management?
Management is helping our employees — and customers and families — identify their most important roles. And then helping them to focus on that work. The work of their careers.

Everyone profits.

This is where Management intersects with The Meaning Of Life.

Heavy. 

Another Take On This Idea
My wise cousin Steve Weiler said to me — years ago, just when I needed to hear it — that he tries to focus his life on doing "only those things that only I can do."

I asked him, "Well, what are those things that only you can do?"

His answer — with a humble laugh — is like mine: "Not all that many things!"

There are relatively few things that only I can do. But one thing is certain: I know when I'm doing them. And I know when I'm doing something that someone else could do. And, frankly, in those moments, someone else could surely do it a lot better.

Easy To Focus? (No.)
So, with so few activities that only I can do, it should be easy to stay focused.

Sadly, no. I'm easily distracted. I often find myself doing work that would be better done by someone else. 

That's why I made this chart.

Agenda-Free Advice for the Perpelexed

Here's the draft of a sermon I plan to give tonight at Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio.

Agenda-Free Advice

(A Temple Israel Sermon)

Where were we? What was I saying last time I was up here? 

This is Shabbat Shuvah. Shuvah is about returning, so I'm trying to return to where we were when I was last on the bimah. 

Well, it was last year around this time. It appears that the rabbis are full up writing their High Holy Day sermons. So, if I offer to give a sermon at what might very well be — amid the rush of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — the least attended service in the history of Reform Judaism, I might be allowed to do it.

So I offered. And here I am. (I'm glad both of you could be here.)

So, where were we last time I was up here? Oh, I remember: I was boasting about how distracted I get during services. I tried to make the case for how daydreaming might be the most effective form of worship.

And I encouraged you to try to get lost in your worship. Stop stressing about keeping up. Fall behind everyone else. Go wherever the moment takes you.

That was either great advice, deepening the experience of the High Holy Days for you.

Or it was terrible advice, giving me a slight advantage over you in getting my prayers heard — while you were daydreaming.

In either event, I'm sorry. I shouldn't be giving religious advice.

And, that brings us to where I left off last year.

This sermon is about bad advice. And good advice. And what makes one different from the other.

***************

This sermon is about agenda-free advice.

During the past couple months I've been doing a lot of reading about the subject. By "a lot of reading" I mean "I've skimmed the better part of a book."

For me, that's a lot of scholarship.

That's the reason I'm not a rabbi. Because a real rabbi knows that reading half a book is not being a scholar.

Still, now I am an expert in agenda-free advice.

First, I will define it. Then I will tell you where you can find it. Then I will tell you how to give it.

Then I will sit down.

***************

What It Is
Agenda-free advice is advice given by someone — an "advisor" — who has no direct investment in the advice. The advisor won't be helped or hurt substantially by your decision to accept or reject the advice.

The advisor wants to help, so there is that agenda. But the advisor seeks Tikun — your healing, your advancement, your improvement. The agenda driving the advisor is your agenda, not the advisor's agenda.

What's the opposite of agenda-free advice? Let's call it: "agenda-rich advice."

What might be the advisor's agenda?
A mentor of mine says: "After a business meeting I want the other person to think three things: 1. That I'm smart. 2. That he or she likes me. And 3. That he or she feels vaguely uncomfortable because there is work to be done."

I love that description of agenda-rich advice. It's when the advisor wants to do more than help. The advisor wants to move you toward a mutual agenda.

Sometimes the agenda-rich advice is an attempt to make you more like the advisor.

That's not bad. It can be quite good.

But it isn't agenda-free advice.
Agenda-free advice doesn't want to make you into someone else. Agenda-free advice wants you to be more authentic. Like that midrash about Louie arriving in heaven and apologizing for not being more like Moses. The gatekeeper says, "But the goal was not for you to be more like Moses. The goal was for you to be more like Louie."

That's shuvah. Returning. Returning to authenticity. Returning to who you are.

Agenda-free advice is when the advisor has only your agenda in mind — and the advice is pure, purely in service to you. Then the advisor walks away, with no ownership in your next steps.

Where can you find agenda-free advice?
I have found it in only two places.

Round Trip

Several years ago, I was sightseeing in the beloved Negev Desert. Our group had paused in a heavily visited wadi — where passers-by had left thousands of cigarette butts.  

Disappointed by the litter, I asked our Israeli tourguide, "Why doesn't Israel do something about all this litter?"

He looked down at the mess, as if he'd never really seen it before. "Litter?" he asked. "Right. We should do something about it. And it's on our list. But there are other things we have to get done first. Litter is not at the top of the list."

That's easy enough to understand. Higher up on the agenda are the existential challenges.

Same Here
My commute downtown this morning isn't the Mideast Peace Challenge.

But there are many expectations of me and I'm favoring the existential ones.

You see, I'll be on a bicycle.

What Expectations?
The law, the automobile drivers, and — especially — the local bicyclists who advocate for mutual respect on the road want me to stay in the street, on the right, and stop at traffic lights and (I suppose) stop signs.

They want me to follow all the laws as if I were driving a car.

Even Doug Morgan gives me disapproving puppy-lawyer eyes when I ask if he really thinks I need to follow the traffic laws. "What you are doing is, of course, wrong," said Doug when I described my standard bicycling procedures, which are indeed, of course, wrong. 

What I'm Doing
I ride guided by the following priorities, in order of my obedience:

1. Maximize my personal safety and the safety of others.
2. Obey traffic laws.

The traffic laws are important, but — with the order of my priorities — I will always choose personal safety and that of others over traffic laws.

Some Laws Were Made For Obeying
I hereby promise to follow the laws of physics: gravity, centrifugal force, momentum, and center of balance.

I also promise to follow the laws of etiquette. I will stop, dismount, and walk my bike whenever I am anywhere near a pedestrian. That's just simple courtesy. I will signal my intentions to all.

But Some Laws Might Get Me Killed (This Morning).
The law that I ride in the street might get me killed.

We all know how distracted drivers (including me) can be. 

The clearest view of this sad state of affairs is from the handlebars of a bicycle. About half of all drivers are surprised to see me, because they are erstwhile occupied with sipping, tuning, reading, navigating, texting, singing, thinking, eating, picking, and — oh, yes, with whatever cranial capacity remains — operating a one-ton assembly of steel, rubber and glass.

I have almost been struck by several cars, driven by people who either never saw me or lost their momentary focus on my safety. (In their list of priorities, I am not much higher than "3. Don't drive over the dead skunk.")

(For more on automotive safety, read Malcolm Gladwell on automotive safety.)

Where People Are Killed
I once told our kids, when they were playing near the street, the following statistics as quickly I made them up:

 

Ninety-five percent of kids killed by cars are killed in the street. Five percent are killed in the first 10 feet of the lawn or on the driveway. None of them are killed when they are upstairs in the house.

Where I am on my bike has a lot to do with the probability of survival. 

You will find me on the sidewalk. Or in intersections that are empty, even if I am crossing against a signal, if that's what is safest for me. 

I live a fairly legal life. Feel free to call me inconsistent. I also teach ethics. Feel free to call me an annoying fraud.

Not Yet Enough

I'm not sorry. Not about this. 

The recently publicized scandal at News International — about hacking phones and bribing police — has drawn an official letter of apology from News Corporation's Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch.

But his apology falls short. An apology requires certain technical aspects. (For those, read here.)

What's Missing?
Mr. Murdoch doesn't take the step to the first-person singular. He's apologizes on behalf of the corporation, which is appropriate, but like Oedipus, he seems unaware of his own actions.

Perhaps he's avoiding legal exposure. O.K. But, until he apologizes for his personal actions — encouraging phone hacking and bribing police — he hasn't fully apologized.

And he certainly hasn't demonstrated that he's not currently continuing the same behavior.

Oh, he's sorry, all right.
He's sorry. And his ethics — manifest during decades of tasteless, blindly ambitious media, encouraged to break stories at any cost — are especially sorry. 

But he seems only sorry that his flunkies were caught.