We are midway through December and nearly at the end of
another year. We are also more than halfway through Advent—a time before
Christmas in the Christian church that lends itself to reflection. I haven’t
written much on this blog lately; I’ve been very busy, but also unsure of what
to write about. This year passed by rather quickly, and the tone of the year
was influenced in many ways by my brother’s death from cardiac disease in
February. When I received the news of his death, I realized yet again that
there is no escape from life’s sadness and suffering. I knew that already when
I was twelve years old and my father had his first of several heart attacks. He
survived the first one, and was progressively weaker by the time he had his
second one. I felt then that life was unpredictable, unsafe, and often dark. I
struggled to find meaning in life. Was it only about suffering and death? I was
a churchgoer but was at a loss to know what it was I really believed in or
sometimes even why I went to church. It was not until a good friend of mine
helped me to find what I could personally relate to in my faith that I began to
understand what it was I professed to believe in. When I understood and
believed that God cares about me personally—that is when my relationship to my
faith changed. Many years later, my conclusion is that it is love, and love
alone, that transforms people, changes lives, allows for forgiveness and
acceptance, offers hope and gives us a safe haven during life’s storms. It
gives us something to believe in and to act on. I am not talking about romantic
love, although that is definitely a part of love. I am talking about the love
described in 1 Corinthians 13, the passage about love that is read at countless
weddings:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do
not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the
gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have
a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give
all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but
do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it
does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not
self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does
not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always
trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they
will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is
knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but
when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I
talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I
became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a
reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But
the greatest of these is love.
These words were first uttered/written many centuries
ago, and speak for themselves. They have shown themselves to be quite prescient
in my life. It is clear to me after many years in academia, that higher education
does not always enlighten its recipients or make them better people. Unfortunately,
there are a number of self-centered people with PhDs and MDs who are mostly
concerned with titles, incomes, amount of grant support, and the number of high
impact-factor publications a person has. There is no direct correlation between
higher education and good behavior, unfortunately for the world. It doesn’t
matter much in our current world that a person treats his or her students well,
gets along with his or her colleagues, or finds happiness in playing a
supportive role for others. These characteristics are simply not valued in the
same way as is being a cash cow for your organization. As long as a person
brings in research money, bad behavior, bullying and envy are tolerated. So
yes, knowledge will pass away, as will titles and honors. Aging takes care of
that--the top person of the moment in any profession will lose that status,
replaced by someone younger and smarter—and the cycle continues, as well it
should. If all a person has had is his or her job, and he or she has not
treated colleagues, friends or family well, then he or she can end up bitter
and lonely in old age. Or frantic, desperate and borderline hysterical, because
no one remembers the ‘important’ contributions he or she has made. You would
think that people gain perspective as they age; some do, but you’d be surprised
at the stories I’ve heard about former professors (men and women both) in their
eighties and nineties arguing about who was the better scientist, or convinced
that their contributions to the field were those that revolutionized it. ‘You’re
only as good as your last publication’—is a common expression in academia. The
problem begins when a person begins to believe the hype he or she hears about
himself or herself—that one is irreplaceable, brilliant, a genius, the best in
the field. It’s nice to receive the accolades. Far better to have reflected on
what is really important in life, and to have treated your colleagues and
students in a way that reflects the kind of love that 1 Corinthians 13 talks
about--patience, kindness, lack of envy, lack of boasting, and humility. How
many former top professors will mentor and encourage their one or two brilliant
students without envy, and how many of them will keep those students down so as
to hinder competition? How many of them will actually let go of their control
over their students and let them fly and shine? I’ve seen a few of the latter,
and many of the former.
What have I learned this year from my reflections upon
the good and bad things that have happened? My brother’s death was a real shock
to me (and to my sister), and permeated our lives during this past year. The
complicated situations surrounding his death introduced me to a dark world
where nothing was as it seemed. My brother was a master at pretending that
everything was ok, when in fact it was not during the last two years of his
life. He opened the window into his life a crack and let me see some of what he
had to deal with (financial problems, his being the primary parent), but he
shut it just as quickly, either so I would not worry, or so that he would not
lose face. Either way, he was afraid that he would be judged, because he himself
was often quick to judge. He knew that I would not judge him; perhaps that made
it harder for him to open up, because it would have meant breaking down his own
walls. I wish he had, because I loved him and however difficult his life had
become, I would always have loved him. He, like many others in our
materialistic society, did not want to admit that money, fame, a city job, an
apartment in a tony Manhattan suburb, or materialistic things generally, were
not the answers to happiness in life. But it’s hard in our society to let go of
that way of thinking. He was on the verge of changing his life when he died. Sometimes
you’ve got to just toss in the towel and start over in a simpler world, where
love is the foundation, and not materialism. There were many people who got in
touch with me after his death to tell me how he had affected their lives, especially
when we all were younger—how he helped others, was a good listener, took a back
seat to others—all things I knew and loved about him. My brother was my good
friend when we were younger; we spent many a Saturday evening in Manhattan,
meeting friends, dancing and having a good time together. My friends knew and
liked him, and his friends knew and liked me. Despite having the Atlantic Ocean
between us after I moved abroad, we always got together in Manhattan when I visited
each year in the summertime. He would use his company expense account and treat
me to lunch at one or another restaurant that he had discovered, and we would
walk around lower Manhattan for a few hours and just talk. I am grateful for those
memories.
I am grateful for so many other things this past year—my closest
friends who were and are always there for me, in good times and in bad. I am
grateful for having been a part of a joyous May wedding (the daughter of my
close friend got married) that balanced out the sadness of my brother’s death.
I am grateful for having met a lawyer (the father of my good friend) who helped
me with a specific legal situation related to my brother’s death; I am forever grateful
to my friend for having arranged that meeting with her father. I am grateful to
my husband for always being there for me, without a lot of fanfare and fuss. I
am grateful to my workplace that approved and financed a yearlong leadership course
from which I learned a lot—a course that changed my perspective about
leadership, about my own leadership qualities, and about the importance of real
dialog and communication in the workplace. It seems strange to say it, but
often out of sadness come many good things—reminders as it were that there is a
reason to continue to hope and to believe. There is good in the world, and real love does
exist.
