Seven swans-a-swimming

On the seventh day of Christmas, we should take a rest
from struggling and striving, remember we're blessed,
for blessings enrich us when handled with care
and with those who don't have them always be shared.

I shiver at the thought, not because of the weather. The winters in these parts are getting milder, but the cold, hard cash that drives too much of our thinking these days is more than enough reason to seek more warmth. But where can we find it?

It's hard to talk about money without talking about success. For too many people, the measure of success is a person's net value, and when it's about money, it soon ends up being about "me". Like spoiled children, we hear the cries of "Mine! That's mine! You can't have it. No, mine!" Spoiled children are sad enough. Spoiled adults are even worse.

We also like to think, and we're told often enough, that what we have are the rewards of our own efforts. I didn't realize that inheritance was such hard work, but I don't know everything, yet most of the super-rich these days didn't earn their fortunes themselves. There are folks who did "earn" theirs, say Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but does anyone think that Bill Gates worked harder than they did, especially those aspiring to get into the rich club? I doubt it, and so there is an apparent discrepancy between working hard and getting ahead. What about luck? What about being at the right place at the right time? These aren't things you can plan for and they have a strong influence on the difference between success and failure. But, worst of all, we are led to believe that they did it all on their own. And this is one of the biggest untruths in the history of propaganda.

You don't have to believe me. Try Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers for a behind-the-scenes look at what is really happening: being in the right place at the right time is more important than anything, and practice is more important than talent. These individuals then tend to get more than their share of support from everyone else, making success more of a collective than solitary effort. This is borne out in biology and evolution. David Sloan Wilson argues quite convincingly in his 3 August 2011, New Scientist article on selfless evolution that cooperation, not competition, is the strategic, that is, long-term evolutionary mechanism. Humans survive best and longest if they cooperate. Competition is destructive, and this is certainly the effects that we are seeing from the latest economic catastrophe.

Put more succinctly, "we" is much more important than "me", at least when thought about in the long-run. Nature knows this, but we seem to have forgotten. Our forebears, though, were also forced by nature to come together, to huddle together in search of warmth and hope for the year to come. It was a part of their experience. We haven't outgrown the experience nor have we found a worthy substitute for it, but the Twelve Days of Christmas give us the chance to regain that experience once more.

Six geese-a-laying

On the sixth day of Christmas, we should stop and reflect
on those who get lost or ignored through neglect
by well-meaning people, like you and like me
but they're there nonetheless, if we choose but to see.

If you've taken the time to give yesterday's question any serious thought, you will most likely have noticed something. It's hard to find a "why" in what you have or want to have ... more often than not we start thinking about what we want to be. This is a existentially fundamental distinction and it makes all the difference in the world. Erich Fromm, the émigré German psychoanalyst, wrote a book in 1942 which should be on everyone's reading list: To Have or To Be. It's not an academic volume of technobabble and overweening erudition, rather it is a simply written, human book that asks you to ask yourself the meaning question, too.

The question whether to have or to be has taken on renewed significance this year in particular as we have seen one country after another fall into extreme financial difficulties, as we witness the epidemic level of foreclosures being exercised by banks, as we struggle to escape the largest economic crisis in our lifetimes and which may be even worse – at least in certain regards – as the one that led to the Great Depression. Let's face it: we're not in very good shape and promising solutions are as good as nowhere to be found.

The result? A air of barbarism, I would say, and I don't think I'm exaggerating. If you want to know what someone thinks, just listen to their choice of words. It will tell you everything you need to know? Has it occurred to anyone besides me that the tenor of public dialogue has become harsher, crueler, more cynical, brash, aggressive and violent. Oh sure, we all know the effects of a good pepper-spraying or clubbing, but what about a well-executed tongue-lashing? You can wash the pepper spray out of your eyes and the cut on your head will heal, but the psychological wounds that are inflicted with words are some of the hardest to heal, and some never, ever heal properly.

Let's be honest, our entire public dialogue, be it in the public square or the presidential debates, is about one subject and one subject only: money. We only ever talk about money. The schools are collapsing because they have no money, and most people don't have money to send their children to other schools. Public services don't function without money and so the fire department watches a house burn down in Kentucky because the owner hadn't paid the subscription fee. Americans don't want to pay taxes because they don't know how the money is spent ... well, maybe building bridges to nowhere but certainly not fixing the ones that are in need of repair. If you step back and listen, I would be willing to bet that within the first 30 seconds of any conversation, debate or argument about any public issue, the money argument will arise: how are we going to pay for it ... or even better, who is going to pay for it.

Unfortunately, it is all only about the money anymore.

Five gold rings

On the fifth day of Christmas, the time just got away.
Instead of deep reflection it was dash and rush and pay.
But, with a bit of effort and help from all around
we made it back quite safely where peace and love abound.

Let's pick up on the theme we started on the Third Day of Christmas, meaning? The question we asked then is an important one, much more important than we like to think: what gives meaning to our lives? This is not a trivial question, regardless of how simply it is phrased. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote once that knowing why one lived allowed on to endure almost any how. This rather simply stated insight led the Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), a survivor of the Nazi death camps, to use this as the basis for his highly successful logotherapy.

Meaning matters. What Nietzsche intuited, Frankl experience, and this under the extremist of circumstances. Meaning made the difference in untold number of instances between life and death, and while it may not be as existentially stark now as it was in Frankl's life, the rules of the life game haven't changed that much. So, the question that springs to my mind is how many of us have actually sat down and thought seriously about what gives meaning to our lives. If you never had, it's long overdue. If you have, is it the same as it once was? And keeping in tune with the Spirit of the Season, it is precisely this time of year ... the time between the years as it is ... that we should find a few quiet moments to reflect on just that. What gives meaning to our lives?

This isn't about New Year's resolutions that we never keep. Why should we? We make them because we think they'll help us become a better or healthier or happier person, but do we really know that that means? Of course we don't keep them because they are little more than add-on rules that simply get in the way, another set of obligations that are imposed upon much like the perceived unreasonable demands we get from our bosses or spouses or children or ... . Yes, I believe that most of us are so wrapped up in the details of our lives that we are not as clear on what is meaningful in our lives as we should be.

Meaning's a big deal. It's the answer to the "why" question. And "why" is always a big deal. So, do we work to live or do we live to work? Do we live for our children or merely through them? Do we live for the things that we have and own? Do we live for what we learn? It should be clear that I'm not asking why we get up and go to work everyday (or not, if we don't have a job), I'm asking if you know why you are even alive to begin with? It's a much more serious question.

The answer to that question is the gold – not brass – ring on the carousel of life.

Four colly birds

On the fourth day of Christmas, we should take the time
to think of those others whose lives aren't as fine
as ours, in their fullness, their richness and glee,
for much suffering results from unintentional greed.

Before pursuing the thread of meaning which was introduced yesterday, I'd like to stop for a moment and reflect upon the relationship between light and spirituality that was mentioned as well. For as long as I can remember, and I'm pretty sure for as long as anyone can remember, there has been an intimate connection between Light and Spirit, between Light and whatever it is we conceive a God-like entity to be. Prior to monotheism, the sun literally played the light role. Within the monotheistic traditions, God was associated with light. What is more, even in the non-theistic religions, such as Buddhism, candles and light play no insignificant role. Why might that be?

Regardless of any other associations we may be carrying around in our heads, anyone who has ever taken a closer look at light itself cannot help but be amazed. OK, a bit of stretch. We can't see light. If you look into a container full of only light, all you will see is darkness. What we see, literally, are those objects from which light is being reflected. We don't see light, we can only perceive its reflection. And for those of you that are now having thoughts of mirrors forming in your heads ... yes, we have to ask ourselves perhaps which side of the looking glass we're on.

Seriously, however, light may be the most fascinating thing in our universe. Nothing can accelerate faster (for you neutrino buffs ... Einstein only spoke of acceleration, not velocity), but even more amazing, it is the one thing that can apparently be two things at once. When speaking of light, we most often hear words like "ray" or "wave", for light does in fact behave like a wave, under certain circumstances. Strangely enough, though, light can also be found in particle form, as photons, as they are called. In other words, sometimes light is a wave, sometimes a particle. When is it one, and when is it the other? The answer, as is so often the case in life, is "it depends".

The situation plays a big part in it, of course, but at the "moment of truth", it appears that the light "knows" what it needs to be and expresses itself appropriately. As strange as that may sound, there is a strong case to be made for light "making the decision" itself. Expressed in simplest terms, light apparently shares certain properties of consciousness. I certainly don't expect you to take my word for it. A well-argued and well-documented presentation can be found in Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe. (For those of you who don't know of him, Young is the person who figured out how to make helicopters fly.) Could it be that light itself is the link between the physical and metaphysical? It's hard to say, but it certainly gives us something to think about at this reflective time of year.