Knowing Life
Rachel Naomi Remen

The Kingdom of Ideas
Wilferd A. Peterson

My Funeral
tom walsh

The Possibilitarian
Norman Vincent Peale

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Knowing Life (an excerpt)
Rachel Naomi Remen

One of the things that I have learned since my medical training is that it is possible to study life for many years without knowing life at all.  Often things happen that science can’t explain.  Many very important things cannot be measured, but only observed, witnessed, and ultimately trusted.  Life may not be limited by the facts.  Science defines life in its own way, but perhaps life is larger than science.

A friend of mine, director of research at a nonprofit institute, had become interested in spontaneous remission of cancer.  As his interest became more widely known, people would call or write him to tell him their stories of unexplained recovery from serious illness.  One of these was a young man who claimed to have had a spontaneous healing from a dire form of bone cancer called osteogenic sarcoma.

He had been diagnosed many years ago as a college student.  Noticing a hard lump in his right thigh, he had gone to see a doctor.  A biopsy had confirmed the doctor’s suspicion of cancer, and he and his parents had been called to a meeting.  Sadly, the doctor told them of his findings and strongly recommended that he have his right leg amputated at the hip.  He was nineteen years old.  Despite the urging of several doctors and his parents, he had refused this surgery and had gone home to his parents’ farm without any treatment to live out his life.  Nothing further had been done for him except that the pastor of his church had asked those people who were so moved to pray for him at seven o’clock every night.  People prayed for two years.  Over time, the mass in his thigh had simply grown smaller and finally disappeared.

It turned out to be easy.  The doctor, a relatively young man at the time he treated this patient, was listed in his state’s medical association and still in practice.  Encouraged, I called and got him on the phone.  After the usual introduction, I told him that I was calling to see if he had kept the medical records on a former patient.  It was so long ago that I doubted he would remember, and then I told him the man’s name.  His response was immediate.  “Of course I remember him,” he said with feelings. “I’ve thought of him many times over the years.  What a senseless tragedy.  Are you calling on behalf of the family?”

“No,” I replied, and told him that the man was still alive.  “Thank God,” he said. “Where did he have his surgery?”

“He didn’t have surgery,” I replied.  There was a pause.  When he spoke again, I could detect a change in his voice.  “Then what happened?” he asked.  So I told him the story as it had been told to me.  There was a long silence and then, without another word, he hung up the phone.  I called him several times afterward, but he never returned my calls.

Most of us encounter a great deal more Mystery than we are willing to experience.  Sometimes knowing life requires us to suspend disbelief, to recognize that all our hard-won knowledge may only be provisional and the world may be quite different than we believe it to be.  This can be very stressful, even frightening.  But if we are not willing to wonder, we may have to hang up the phone on life.
   

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To enter the Kingdom of Ideas, become as a little child.

"There is nothing more resembles God's eyes," wrote Nikos Kazantzakis, "than the eyes of a child."

A child has wide-eyed interest in everything.  As God did, he looks upon the world and finds it good.

A child does not block the flow of goodness into her life by thoughts of fear and prejudice. Her mind is as open as are her eyes.  She experiences the wonder of life.

A child is an explorer.  He is curious.  He wants to know what is on the other side of the moon, or the room.  He investigates things to find out what they are and how they work.  He asks questions.  He loves to experiment.

A child lives in the world of fantasy where all great ideas are born.  It was probably a child who first dreamed of flying through the air, hearing voices and music from the sky, penetrating to the ocean depths.  Before the reality comes the dream.

A child has the magic gift of imagination.  She sees things that aren't there.  She creates in her mind the kind of a world she wants to live in.  She visualizes things as she wants them to be.

A child has freshness of response.  To him the world is ever new and full of miracles and adventures.  He reacts spontaneously to the discoveries he makes each day.

A child follows the simple way.  She does not become bogged down in the complex and the obscure.  She is natural, direct and genuine.

A child is confident.  He has not learned all of the reasons why a thing cannot be done.  He ignores obstacles because he does not know they exist.

This we learn from the child:  The more childlike we are in our approach to problems, the more creative we will be.  Try the fresh approach of a child.

My Funeral

It's coming up, you know--my funeral will be here one day.  It may be in one week, and it may be in fifty years, but one day I will die, and there will be some sort of service for me somewhere, and hopefully someone will show up for it!  I know it won't be tomorrow because even if I die today, they couldn't get things arranged quickly enough to have one tomorrow.  The earliest it could be, I think, would be Thursday or Friday.

I will die, and there will be some sort of service.  Personally, I'd prefer to have my funeral while I'm still alive, but society frowns a bit on that idea, so it will have to happen when I'm not there to hear the things that people say to me.

And what will they say?  To be honest, I'm not sure.  I'm not completely sure how people see the things that I do--how they interpret my motives, how they interpret my actions and inaction.  I may not volunteer to help fix a friend's house because I'm overwhelmed with other things to do, but they may see it as being neglectful.  I may not offer to give one of my stepchildren a ride to school because I know that it's important that they develop a sense of independence, but they may see it as me being selfish or inconsiderate.

One of my favorite assignments in any class I've taught has been to have the students write eulogies for two funerals.  At the beginning of the semester, we read "The Death of Ivan Ilych," and the eulogies from family and "friends" are usually quite scathing indictments of a man who led a purely selfish life.  A few months later, at the end of the semester, we read O! Pioneers, and the eulogies are celebrations of a woman of great character who has given much to others all through her life.  The contrast between the two ceremonies is startling.

I don't have any control over how other people see me and what I do, and I've stopped trying to have any control over what others think or believe.  But there are some very simple things that I can do--sincere things, not superficial things--that will go a long way towards ensuring that the people who may say something at my funeral will have nice things to say.

First of all, I can give sincere compliments whenever I see the opportunity.  Compliments are like energy bars--they lift people up and make them feel better, for it shows that someone else has appreciation for their effort, their taste, their beliefs, or their actions.  Could you imagine what it would be like if you were to receive a compliment an hour for the rest of your life?  How would you feel?

I can encourage people as much as possible.  Encouragement, like compliments, is free, and it's important that we share as much of it as we can, even those who don't seem to need it.  They are very often the people who most need encouragement.

I can focus on the positive, and share that focus with others.  Even in the most negative of situations, there are positives to be found, and while we must deal with the negatives, we simply can't ignore the positives.  Sharing positive energy helps others greatly, and it pulls us up higher into positivism.  It must be sincere, and it isn't appropriate in every situation, but the power of positive thinking has been well documented as one of the most helpful aspects of our lives.

I can give love.  This is the most difficult, I think, because the people who most need our love are the ones who have put up the strongest barriers to receiving it.  I know people that I try to do things for, but they respond by being defensive or even confrontational--often in their minds, as soon as someone else does something for them, they owe that person, and they're uncomfortable just receiving something.  They don't want to be in anyone's debt.  I have to say that I've been that way most of my life because of the ways that I grew up, and I try very hard to break out of that pattern.  Which brings me to the other side of the coin:

I can receive love.  When other people do kind things for me, how do I react?  Do I accept them gracefully with gratitude, or do I take them for granted, or even worse, ignore them and let them go unacknowledged?  Receiving love without feeling indebted can be very difficult, but it's one of the most important things that we can do for others:  let them love without feeling threatened or afraid to share their love.

Giving and receiving love don't necessarily have any physical aspect--I'm loving another person when I'm doing that person a favor, listening closely, encouraging, or just letting that person know that I'm there when he or she needs me.

There are other things that I can do to make my funeral a positive occasion, but if I'm to do just these five regularly, and stick to them for a long time, can you imagine what my funeral will be like?  My hope is that people see it more as a party than as a time of grieving, and what I do today and tomorrow, of course, is going to determine what kind of atmosphere that you'll find at my funeral.

What's yours going to be like?  Because I hate to tell you this, but you're going to have one, too.  What are you doing today to make sure that it's a positive, uplifting experience for everyone involved?

I man I have always greatly admired was the late Charles F. "Boss" Kettering, scientific genius of General Motors.  The creator of the self-starter, the Duco paint process for automobiles and many other modern devices, Kettering was one of the most stimulating thinkers I ever knew.

To his aides at General Motors, Kettering often said, "Problems are the price of progress.  Don't bring me anything but trouble.  Good news weakens me."

What a dynamic philosophy!

I knew another man, the late Harlow B. Andrews of Syracuse, New York, who had this same kind of approach.  "Let's see what possibilities there are in this situation," he would say, while others sat around taking dismal views of everything.

It was amazing how often he found possibilities, too, and then the gloom artists would wonder why they hadn't seen them.  The answer was that the possibilitarian was always looking for answers and they never were.  You usually find just about what you really look for.

Harlow Andrews, whom I like to call a possibilitarian, was a wholesale grocer, a banker and an inventor.  Some say he invented the electric dishwasher.  I recall his wife complaining about the number of dishes he broke while experimenting with this "contraption."  He had one of the first supermarkets in the United States.  Years ago, he brought perishable food from California to Syracuse by fast refrigerator train and sold it five days later in his store.  They say he used to drive the fastest horses in Syracuse--not so much because he liked speed, but because he was always hurrying to keep engagements with people who needed his help.  In wintertime, he would enter the sleigh races on Onandaga Lake.  Though he had but three grades of schooling, he was a dauntless man, rugged, wise, and urbane.

You just couldn't disturb this man with difficulties no matter how high you piled them.  He never seemed to have more fun than when he went into action against a tough problem.

Much of his wisdom, I know, came from the Bible.  He knew it from cover to cover, lived with its characters and marked the most unusual and striking comments on the page margins of his Bible.

The big question isn't whether you have problems; the all important factor is your attitude toward problems.  How you think of the problem is more important than the problem itself.

If you want to be a possibilitiarian, visualize your difficulty realistically as a challenge to your intelligence, to your ingenuity, and to your faith.  Then ask God for insight and guidance in dealing with the hard fact.  Keep on praying and believing.  Know that there is an answer and, with God's help, you will find it.

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Alone in his car heading west, it's easy for Jason to feel sorry for himself and mad at the world.  But then he gives a ride to Hector and learns life isn't as negative as we sometimes see it.  The friendship between this young man and his 70-year-old passenger is an inspiring story of love and of dealing with obstacles in life.  It's a story that you'll treasure long after you've finished reading.

Three Cavaliers, Tom Walsh's second published novel (fifth overall), is now available!  Click on the image to the left to order!

     “Here you go, gentlemen,” Jenny said as she came back with the check and refilled their coffees.  “I hope that you have a very nice trip, wherever you’re heading.”
     “I am going to Pocatello ,” Hector told her.  “And Jason is going to Seattle .  Thank you for your kind wishes.”
     “You’re very welcome,” Jenny said with a smile.  “Drop by if you’re ever in the area again.”
     “Will do,” Jason said, pulling some cash out of his pocket.  Hector looked at the check and then gave nine dollars to Jason.
     “This is what I owe,” he said.  “With a tip.”
     “You’re a pretty big tipper,” Jason said.
     “Yes, I am,” Hector replied.
     “I am sometimes,” Jason said.  “I guess I have to be in the mood to leave a big tip.”
     “I am always in the mood to do something nice for other people.  Besides, I am old, and I cannot take my money with me when I leave.  I might as well pass it on to nice people.”
     “Yeah, you’re right.  It’s easier to say than to do for me, though.”  Jason added his money to Hector’s and pushed it all under his plate.  “Let’s get out of here and on the road.  It’s about that time.”
     “Let me use the bathroom first, and I will be right out.  I do not want to make you stop any more than you have to.”
     “Sounds good.  I’ll meet you outside.”
     As he stood, Jason’s legs once more reminded him of the abuse he was putting them through, and he stretched a bit as soon as he got outside.  The sun was now up much higher in the sky, and the night was long since gone.  He felt the sun’s warmth on his cheek and he breathed deeply of the morning air, wishing it were a bit fresher but willing to take what he could get.  He looked over towards the highway where the cars and trucks were speeding by, and he felt the road calling him, pulling him.  He always felt that way when he was traveling, as if the road had some sort of power over him.  He never liked stopping, even though he knew he had to.  He always had to force himself to stop for food and for gas and for coffee—if it were up to him, he never would stop on any trip he took, as long as he was doing the driving.  It was different when he was in the passenger’s seat; then, he felt like stopping all the time.  Hector came out of the restaurant.
     “It’s a beautiful morning,” Jason said, looking up at the clear sky above them.
     “Yes, it is,” Hector agreed.  “It is a beautiful morning to be on the road, especially with the sun behind us.”
     “You’ve got that right.  It would be a real bitch if we were driving into it.”  Jason looked at his watch.  It wasn’t even seven yet, even though after the long night of driving he felt like it should be noon.  If he had still been at home, he wouldn’t even have been awake yet.  “You know,” he said, “it’s a shame that so many people miss the mornings.  They never get up in time to see it and feel it.  Mornings are pretty beautiful.  Hell, I never see the mornings unless I’m on some sort of trip or something.”
     Hector looked at him closely.  “You are right—mornings are beautiful.  They are the symbols of new birth and new beginnings.  Every day we have the opportunity to start everything new, yet we almost never take the chance.”
     “You really believe that?  That every morning’s a new start?  Seems to me that we bring too much of yesterday’s crap into today for us to be able to start all over again.”
     “When you say ‘we,’ do you mean you?”
     Jason laughed.  “Probably.”
     “We bring to each day what we wish to bring to the day.  That is all.”
     “Yeah, but what if you have a whole bunch of work left over from the day before?  You’re not really starting all over again—you’re just finishing up whatever you didn’t finish the day before, aren’t you?”
     Hector smiled.  “Are you?”
     “Of course you are.”
     “Is it not possible that the first part of the work was yesterday’s work, and the rest is today’s?  Work is not like a football game that must be finished on the same day it is started.  Just because we start a task today does not mean that all of that task is today’s work.  Sometimes we must be patient and let the work tell us how long it needs to be done well.”
     “That makes sense, I guess.”  Jason got into the car, and Hector got in on the other side.  “I still think we bring too much of our yesterdays into today.”
     “I believe many people do, but not everyone.  Besides, is it not possible that that is not a bad thing?”