It’s Your Choice—Not

I recently heard, again, a relatively popular idea which, honestly, offends me. Like many pop-psych or pop-philosophy ideas, it obscures the truth and can be hurtful to some—in this case, me. That idea is this:

Everything that happens to us (or even around us) is at bottom our responsibility because we chose it.

This sentiment is a sorry bastardization of one of the tenets of Existentialism, namely that we always have a choice.

Yes, we always have a choice. Even when it appears we have no choice, says Sartre, we still have the choice of suicide. Well, I’m not sure I can accept that as truth, either, but cases where suicide is not a choice are relatively rare, and I suppose even a person in a straitjacket could “choose” to strain this muscle or that, or speed or slow her breathing. In any event this argument turns the existence of choice into a tautological word game.

What our having a choice does not guarantee is that we can choose our choices, and that is everything. At one time in my life, for example, much as I wanted to pursue my art, I was faced with the following options: I could allow myself to be drafted into a war which I knew to be immoral, flee the country, or find a way to defer my conscription. I did not have the choice of remaining in my country, which I love, and painting full time. Had that choice been available to me I would certainly have taken it, but I had to pick the available option that felt best to me. That selection had side effects that led to other choices, but never to the ideal one.

I have oversimplified that story, of course, but the conclusion would still be that, much as I wished to, I could not choose what I really wanted.

What I find unforgivable is for choice-purists to blame others for suffering life conditions as if by choice. Body type, looks, intelligence and many other qualities are out of our control, but less obvious are the causes for drug addiction, poor mate choices or lack of ambition.

Here is how I “chose” not to be ambitious:

My mother died three weeks after my third birthday. I did not choose to grow up without a mother. I did choose from the options available, though I was not aware of choosing.

 I loved my father desperately. That love may have faded after his remarriage and emotional abandonment of me, but even so, as he was my only remaining parent, I “chose” to struggle for his favor—rather unsuccessfully.

My father was oddly competitive with me. When I taught myself a year of calculus during a summer vacation he confessed sadly that I was smarter than he. “But that’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?” he sighed.

He took up a course in calculus himself. When I asserted my interest in art, he purchased a set of watercolors and told me that he had been able to paint a “pretty decent sunset.” He urged me away from engineering—his career—while insisting that I could be anything I wanted to be. One might wonder if he was steering me away from a competition with him in that arena as well.

I did not compete with my father, my only true parent. My only confrontation was passive-aggressive. I was often angry at him, sometimes hated him, but judging from my actions it appears to me that out of loyalty I “chose” not to compete. I used to believe that I was afraid of him, but later came to understand that I was afraid to lose him, afraid to be disloyal. (On the other hand, he was a pretty good spanker.) My fury with my father sprang from his intransigence. He couldn’t give an inch, so that the only way to get anywhere with him would have been to give up my very self. I chose not to do that, but nor would I confront him in a struggle.

This choice left out an option for success. His comment about my prowess in mathematics may have been the deciding factor in my decision not to fight for success in a subsequent math course. But he did not turn me away only from mathematics. It was clear that if I exceeded him in any field I would make him sad. I chose against that arrangement; though later, when I felt my ethical and actual survival were at stake, I chose to reject him, however sad that made him.

Don’t worry. I’ve since chosen years of therapy, and am no longer motivated by paternal loyalty; but the after effects remain in the form of limited experience and history and I choose to do my best at overcoming them.

I recently saw a video in which a woman expressed rage that she had worked her “ass off” for her exceptional financial success, but was now upset to be reviled by those at lower levels of affluence. It had not occurred to her that many people have worked just as hard as she but are lucky to barely even survive. How did that happen? I can imagine her rejoinder—so repugnantly common—that those people just had not made the right decisions like she had. To such people I want to say, “Well if it is all about choice, then you are reviled as a result of your own decisions.”

God and the Unconscious

If there were an agent, a participant in your life, who knew every action you performed, and every idea you thought; who could bring about your success or failure; who cared about you, even loved you; whom you loved and respected deeply, or at least you knew you should; who never communicated with you directly, but whose messages you could receive and interpret in dreams; whose ways were mysterious to you; and whom you could petition mentally, often successfully, what would you call that agent? A deity? A demon? Or your own unconscious?

Whichever you might choose to call Her/Him/It, you would be right. As Carl Jung said, internal or external, it really doesn’t matter. It makes no difference at all. Consider this: Your unconscious is completely inaccessible to you (else it wouldn’t be your unconscious); you believe in its existence only because authorities in psychology have convinced you to, because you have no direct knowledge of it. Year by year scientists are discovering more and more intelligence in your unconscious that you cannot access—sometimes quirky, sometimes genius. Your unconscious possesses qualities that could have been ascribed only to God in generations past. The ancients, for example, believed that innovative ideas came from a goddess, or a muse. Today we ascribe our creativity to a secret part of our minds. Either way, we can’t talk directly to the source of our ideas. We have to beg and tease and cater to Her whims.

Whether Her accomplishments are the work of an Unconscious operating in my head or a God in another dimension no longer concerns me. It’s about semantic fashion as much as any notion of what’s “true.” Once called God; now called the Unconscious, it’s our support, our strength, our hidden reality. Experientially, God and the Unconscious are in the same category: influential power that exists outside our direct perception.  I want to call Him “God” instead of “the Unconscious” because saying “the Unconscious” all the time is awkward and “God” is easier to type.  And sounds nicer, more personal.

I may have, by now, offended both believers and atheists. But think a little more. None of the qualities you love about God are threatened or changed if you allow someone else to call the same force in our lives by a different name: God, Yahweh, Shiva, Krishna, Allah, Christ, Jah, The Unconscious. Allowing us to call the same power by different names costs you nothing. We might talk about differences in policies, or creation myths, or proscriptions, but the idea of a God is something we all have in common. You cherish stories about your deity that are different from the stories cherished by other denominations, but a sensitive listener will hear the underlying truths that we all share. Those truths are just as meaningful when we interpret them in the context of the Unconscious. That notion is certainly not original with me.

If you’re still having trouble, read Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces, or anything of Carl Jung’s that catches your fancy. And there are many other resources out there that address the idea.

And if you are still having trouble, or even angered, then perhaps you are not a monotheist after all. That's okay. You might find Spinoza's Ethics to provide an interesting, different view. 

Now to stretch the powers of God just a little beyond mere psychological explanation, please consider allowing Him the occasional miracle, in theory. This is not as great a stretch as you might imagine. The Unconscious wreaks wonders. To speak about it as if capable of outright miracles is not that unreasonable. Many do believe the Unconscious to be capable of miracles. And if we are using the term “God,” speaking about Him as performing paranormalities (I made that word up) is downright respectful.

You may fear this as the thin edge of the wedge, a sneaky way for me to get all religious and spooky, but I promise to keep my head. I just want to talk about God without stirring up narrow loyalties and animosities.

I am only just beginning.

Bad Guys, Good Guys, and Just Plain Guys

We imagine that the world is at war across many battlefronts: Muslims vs. Christians, blacks vs. whites, rich vs. poor, Hispanics vs. Anglo Americans, cops vs. civilians of color. But wait! Not all Muslims are terrorists; not all blacks are criminals; not all poor people are lazy thieves; not all Hispanics are drug smuggling rapists; not all white people are racist killers. Not by a long shot.

The real war is between the sociopaths and the compassionate. We can define sociopaths (or psychopaths, depending on whom you read) as those who choose to hurt others for reasons of their own satisfaction without remorse. Some will step on the fingers—or bodies—of others to climb the ladder of success. Some will commit hate crimes.

Any introductory course in economics will explain how the circulation of a dollar creates many times the value of that dollar. The rich person who squirrels away a billion dollars, taking it out of the reach of the economy, is injuring the economy, a sociopathic act. The poor person who decides to improve his economic standing by committing armed robbery is a sociopath. The cop who shoots a black driver because she doesn't like his attitude and the black sniper who targets white policemen (or anyone) are sociopaths. The Muslim mass-murderer is a sociopath.

Martha Stout, Harvard psychologist, claims that one in 25 of us is a sociopath. Others say one in 20. More important than the exact ratio is the fact that there is a ratio. This ratio crosses all races, all nations, all religions, all economic classes—in short, all accidents of birth.

Once life choices are made however, we might expect to see higher concentrations of the remorseless in certain careers and social groups. Politicians often seem to put personal gain above conscience, as do the super-rich. Perhaps the police force attracts more than its share of sociopaths. Some experts say the media does.

But consider this: The ratio of one in twenty-five means that twenty-four out of twenty-five in any population is not a sociopath. Twenty-four out of twenty-five Muslims are not sociopaths. They might hate the European Crusader, but they are not murderers. Surely every African American is justifiably distraught over police shootings of blacks. Some may be angry over every shooting, even justifiable shootings. They may fear, dislike, even hate police; but twenty-four out of twenty-five do not resort to harming or killing others as a remedy. Some raise their voices; some protest in the street, some fume at home; but conscience stays their hands. Cops may be frustrated by crime. Many may be prejudiced, even racist. But to the majority, hurting innocent people is an inconceivable response.

On a hectic freeway it may seem that the majority of drivers are out to get each other—but count! For every jerk that weaves through traffic and endangers others you will see twenty to twenty-five well behaved drivers.

For the first five years of my teaching career I worked in a most unruly environment. Our junior high school was on a corner, and on each of the other three corners of the intersection was a housing project. I broke up a fight every week. The classroom was loud, and none of the classroom management strategies offered by the pundits made a difference. Sometimes it was overwhelming, but at those times I stopped and stood still. I looked at each student in turn, searching for the well-behaved, and I found a lot. Just one or two youngsters were whipping up the rest of the class to bedlam. I began calmly thanking each well behaved student, and gradually the classroom settled down and isolated the troublemakers.

It is also essential that we distinguish the instigators from the followers. The followers may be the True Believers described decades ago by Eric Hoffer, but we need to identify and defeat the aggressors who choose to advance their cause by harming others. To defeat them we do not set out to kill or injure innocents: that is their way. Pitting one sociopath against another does not defeat either one, but validates and strengthens both. A sociopath does not mourn another sociopath. We will never “save” a sociopath, but must struggle instead to win the hearts of the non-aggressive majority of the population.

At the other end of the empathy-spectrum there exist the compassionate, another minority. Between the two minorities lies a wide no-man's land of people who can be persuaded to action in either direction, depending on the skill of the recruiter. Not bad guys, not good guys, just guys.

The weapons of the conscience-free are fear, deceit, hate, and violence. The tools of the compassionate, if they are to remain compassionate, are wisdom, love, understanding, and nurture. This is the most important thing I have to say, all else is just a careful definition of terms. It is important because while the sociopaths are waging a very successful campaign, too many of the compassionate are doing little more than wringing their hands—and it is time to engage.

We stand by and allow the middle population to wrestle the evil-doers to the ground and lock them up—a necessary evil—but we must be much more active and much more creative. It's hard for some whites in the middle population to let stand unedited the sentiment “Black lives matter.” But if we are compassionate, why can't we say, “Yes, black lives do matter”? This is not the occasion for touting that white lives or blue lives or all lives matter. Of course they do, but is that the thing to say to a wounded person?

Let’s find ways to commit kindness—not just to random individuals, but to the groups that appear to oppose us. Let’s find the loving hearts of all people, and recognize them. Surely there are tens of thousands of creative people who can conceive of kind ways to win over those who are as yet uncommitted to either violence or kindness.

The compassionate rich will find ways to re-insert their wealth into circulation in a more creative way than to simply give enough to charity in order to catch a tax break.

I have yet to hear a public official openly thank a peaceful demonstration for restraint and good behavior. Sometimes, when a tragedy occurs, good behavior will be mentioned, but I am talking about thanking demonstrators for no reason other than that they deserve thanks. If I am mistaken and peaceful demonstrators have received thanks, it has not been loud enough or perhaps the media have chosen not to report it. Why not take out large print ads or make public service announcements of thanks in the media? Or if officialdom will not, why not the clergy, or a true philanthropist, or you and I?

The important task is to recognize and reward nonviolent and compassionate behavior, especially among our opponents. The immediacy and wide reach of information provided by technology makes it possible for us for the first time in history to recognize that we—all of us in every segment of the population and every contentious group—all of us have a common enemy and a common, but unexpected, solution.

And perhaps an evolved person or group of people could work to motivate other evolved and empathetic people.

This is my first step.

Zero Tolerance--Calculated Response

I agree with the call for no tolerance of unwanted sexual attention…but…

Here follow some of my own experiences:

When I was a pre- and early teen my stepmother frequently squeezed my buttocks in a playful fashion. I thought nothing of it. But sitting at the fireplace on Christmas Eve when I was twelve she wrapped my arm around her neck and placed my hand on her breast, patting my hand and pressing it to her, while asking me to please not run away. (Probably my sister had told her of my contemplations.) I sensed that she meant to be seductive but I couldn’t wait to get away.

When I was fifteen and sixteen my family doctor “checked” my legs as part of each visit, remarking on how well formed they were thanks to my running track. He would have me drop my pants and he then kneeled on the floor and with both hands felt each leg from the ankle to the thigh. In the process his head came into contact with my penis and I tried to back it away to no avail. I was horrified because I thought he would be mortified to know that my penis had touched his head.

I had no idea what was going on, but on one of my last visits after carefully examining my penis he asked me my opinion of homosexuality. I said I had no problem with it but that I was not a homosexual. He complimented me that I would make a good doctor.

Through those years I went to the barber every two weeks or so to keep my butch haircut short enough to satisfy my father. Whenever I used the white porcelain arm of the barber’s chair he leaned up against it, causing my knuckles to be trapped against his soft crotch. I had no inkling it might be intentional, and waited for him to move so I could remove my hand and prevent him the embarrassment of discovering that my hand had touched him there.

I remember two instances of truly prosecutable sexual offenses. When I was ten the owner of a bicycle shop pulled my young female companion into his lap right in front of me and manipulated her vagina through her clothes. When I urged her to leave with me, the proprietor said no, she didn’t want to go, did she? We did manage to get out of there without further injury. That same year a gang of bullies chased me and a girl into the woods, pulled my pants off and forced the girl to put her mouth on my penis. I later had fantasies of killing those bullies. Nothing ever came of those two assaults; I was too young and naïve to realize they should have been treated as a police matter. But I am not confident the police would have done much about it.

In my twenties after some playful banter with a pretty young woman she lunged at me, and, kissing me, stuck her tongue forcefully into my mouth. I was taken aback and to this day have no idea if that was an invitation or a rebuke.

In the presence of my wife around that same time a female friend plunked herself in my lap and wriggled around, then teased me for not “getting it up.”

Between marriages at age thirty-three I went to a clinic for a non-specific urethritis. The female physician’s assistant spent far too much time manipulating and examining my penis but I endured it because—who knew? Maybe it was necessary.

It was the ocean in which we swam, the air we breathed. Things were very sexy and no clear lines had been established between the appropriate and the inappropriate—or perhaps they were, but were not publicized. Aside from forced oral-genital contact or the vaginal manipulation of a child none of the things I witnessed or experienced would have generated much reaction, and aside from my discomfort, did not truly injure me.

I am just a regular, average man. It occurs to me that if all this stuff happened to me it must have happened to almost everyone—of both genders. I imagine we could wipe out almost the whole of Congress, CEOs, anyone we choose if we set the net fine enough.

I too was a participant in the times in which I thought I lived. I remember unjustifiably “copping a feel” of the breasts of two young women, once of one and many times of another. I had no idea I was causing harm—it was playful to me and my victims were people I knew well and cared about. That was very long ago and way back then when I awoke to the true gravity of my indiscretion I forever stopped the behavior that I have long regretted.

I certainly never went so far, though, as to grab (or even touch) anyone nonconsensually by the pussy.

In my thirties I took a woman to dinner and we kissed by her car in the parking lot. She started crying and brought up her boyfriend and I, incredulous that she had just kissed me under those circumstances, stupidly asked her, “Do you love your boyfriend?” 

There had been nothing about the kiss that felt at all one-sided--she had even removed her glasses beforehand--and I could only ascribe her tears to her confusion. A mutual friend, one very dear to me, later told me that the woman claimed I had forced myself on her. I don’t know. Maybe something about it felt that way to her, but I can’t help wondering if she was deflecting her own guilt.

And there were people who reacted badly to my simply saying I liked her, or who flirted very specifically with me but objected to my own, purely verbal, response.

I do wholeheartedly support a policy of no tolerance. But, because of the ambiguity of my own experience, I cannot support a policy of total, nuclear response to every level of unwanted sexual advance. 

All it took to shake me out of my 60’s mindset was to be told, very seriously, “No, that is not okay.” I can’t help but think that if someone had spelled that out for Al Franken he would not be in the pickle he is in today. I am, on the other hand, quite certain that Harvey Weinstein and many others would not have changed their behavior, and that is because the feelings of others do not exist for them.

But I am a little alarmed that we are presently firing individuals or calling for their resignation without regard for the nature of their offense or even, in some cases, a full investigation. The issue strikes me as weaponized on the one side and a proclamation of “Look how good we are!” on the other, when a more reasonable approach would be to quietly take the perpetrator aside and deliver an emphatic NO.

The times they are a’changin’, and the changes need to have been spelled out before we can justify an all-out universally vigorous prosecution. The call for “training” in Congress and elsewhere indicates that there is a general awareness of an adjustment of standards.

Zero tolerance, calculated response. Okay?

Violets in the Street

When my stepmother was eighty-eight and I was fifty-nine she said, “I never realized how very thoughtful you are.”

It surprised and pleased me. What had she seen that led her to that conclusion? It also angered me to remember all the times I had been thoughtful in our family and never been recognized for it.

I pictured violets in the street. Every time I tell this story I picture violets in the street.

When I was ten and my stepmother was thirty-nine I went to a nearby field and picked a large handful of wild violets to give to her. She loved violets, they were her favorite flower, and she cultivated several small flowerpots of African violets. On my way home as I crossed the street in front of our house, the bundle of violets came apart in my hand and most of them spilled to the street. There were not enough of them left in my hand to make a decent gift so I let them go, and I went into the house weeping with shame and disappointment.

“What’s the trouble?” my stepmother asked as I lay inconsolable on my bed. I could not tell her. And I never did.

I call her my stepmother here, but my sister and I were never allowed to disclose that she was not our natural mother. It was never spoken of, even in our family, though my sister and I did occasionally speak of it. But that’s another story.

When you are a thoughtful person it doesn’t occur to you to say, “I’m being thoughtful right now.” When you are a thoughtless person it doesn’t occur to you to say, “I am being thoughtless right now.” No one can say that truthfully because to do so requires some bit of reflection.

When you are a thoughtful person you might remember something and say, “I was thoughtless yesterday,” and you will wince inside. It is very painful. When you are a thoughtless person you might remember something and say, “I was thoughtful yesterday,” and the recollection will bring you great satisfaction.

When you are a thoughtful person if someone says, “That was thoughtless what you did yesterday,” you will feel pain and think about what you did and apologize. When you are a thoughtless person and someone says, “That was thoughtless what you did yesterday,” you are aggravated and you tell that person that, one, you were not thoughtless and two, that it was the other person’s fault.

When you are a thoughtful person you are not thoughtful all the time, but you are regretful when you become aware of your missteps—and every time you remember them thereafter. When you are a thoughtless person you are not thoughtless all the time but you don’t think about it one way or the other, perhaps because you act out of a sense of duty.

There are many thoughtless persons in the world, and they are angered at the thoughtlessness of others. Thoughtful persons are also angered by the thoughtlessness of others.

But when you are a thoughtful person and are the recipient of a thoughtful act you are deeply grateful. When you are a thoughtless person you don’t notice thoughtful acts.

When my son was thirteen and I was thirty-seven I passed an empty space in the Walmart parking lot and took another two spaces beyond. He asked me why I did that and I explained that there was a car behind us and if I had taken the first one the driver of that car would have had to wait for us to get out of the way, whereas this way both of us could pull into our spaces. He remarked that I was thoughtful and I rejoiced inwardly because if he was noticing the thoughtfulness of others there was a good chance he would himself become thoughtful.

One has to work at evolving into thoughtfulness. Remaining thoughtless all one’s life is pretty easy.

When I was sixty-eight and my stepmother was ninety-seven I drove two thousand miles to be there for her and help out any way I could. The day I arrived she said, “I love you but I want you to go.” I asked why and she said because she didn’t want me to see her like this. A thoughtless person finds a thoughtful person easy to love. I wanted to tell her this was not the worst I had seen her but I left her room in tears. Her friend/caretaker chastised her then came out to talk to me and told me how older people could be but I was not crying because of my long drive but because this was a completely accurate and poignant depiction of my whole life with her.

I stopped in the next morning before my departure to say goodbye and I could tell from the look she gave me that she knew we would not see each other again. She wanted our goodbye to be somehow profound. She made no mention of regret over sending me away. I said my goodbye but was restrained. I do not regret my restraint.

A thoughtful person’s ability to love is not infinite.

Acknowledge Consciousness!

I recently finished reading a book by Stanislas Dehaene titled Consciousness and the Brain. This was the third book bearing a seductive title that had disappointed me to the point of anger. The other two are The Mind’s I by Douglas Hofstadter and Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett.

Each of these three books bludgeoned me with information about brain function and about how one or another kind of electrical stimulation creates this or that conscious feeling. Researchers have used all kinds of fancy technology to map the active part of the brain or plot brain waves and correlate these data with the experiences reported by the patient. The implication is that feelings and ideas and the subjective sense of self are not the stuff our consciousness is made of; they are nothing more than electrical impulses beeping around among neurons and dendrites and synapses.

 

The Brown Jacket, Oil, 1965, 32 x 24

The conclusion, which each author holds off until the end, is that consciousness is just an illusion. And they’re so smug about it!

Let’s assume for now that these three eminent scholars are using the word “consciousness” in the same way, referring to that subjective sense of awareness of self. This is a difficult thing to name; all the standard English terms are ambiguous. “Consciousness,” “awareness” and the like are most often used to describe mere wakefulness, and so are insufficiently clear for the purposes of this discussion.

There are terms that do work. The best among these, because it cannot be hijacked by folks that don’t understand it, is atman, a Hindu term. “Witness,” as used by the followers of Gurdjieff, is also clear, but only so long as we agree that we are speaking in terms of The Fourth Way. There are other possibilities, but let’s stick with atman.

If I can call an item “mine,” then it is not “me.” (Forget grammar for a moment.) “My” car is not me. I say “She ran into me” when another driver collides with my car, but she didn’t hit me. My clothes are not me. My body is not me. It’s an object I drag around but it’s not me.

More subjectively, I have feelings but they are not me. They are my feelings. My ideas, my thoughts are not me. I observe them. If I claim them, I am objectifying them.

Finally, my mind is not me. It is mine. “I have a good mind.” “I’m losing my mind.” Spending some time in silence, I sit and watch the mind cavort, tug at my heartstrings, worry me, chastise me. That mind is not me.

There is something that is truly I that watches what the mind and perceptions present. Well, I can’t really call it watching, because this atman does nothing, feels nothing, thinks nothing—just witnesses. That whatever-it-is is always the very last stop on any journey to the depth of introspection, but I can never get there, because even if I convince myself that I am identifying with atman, it is actually atman that is observing my mind thinking about identifying with atman.

Everything in our world could function just the same without atman witnessing. These days especially, with ever advancing technology of artificial intelligence, we can imagine a world of mosquitos and dogs and people programmed to do what they do, even to think about what they do, even to think about thinking, and yet never have this sense of “I-ness.”

And that is what these three authors are claiming is happening. They present the scientific evidence that the mind and feelings are brain functions, as if the brain is an extremely complex computer and no more. Well, maybe it is, and this research is profound and fascinating. But they go too far, inferring that since every feeling and idea can be theoretically explained in electrical terms, with no reference to an atman, then that must be all there is.

They conclude that consciousness—atman—is an illusion.

Look, I don’t know how or why this well-oiled human machine comes with atman, such an ineffable connection. I read books like these in the hope that someone else brighter than I has some insight into this difficult problem, but to say there is no such thing as consciousness, that it is an illusion?

“Illusion: an unreal vision presented to the bodily or mental eye” (Webster). Right, so to whom is the illusion presented? I know! Atman! Consciousness! The mere mention of illusion negates their entire argument.

These books just pissed me off.

I think they were written by robots.

Gratitude for Grace

Along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In 2014 I drove the whole thing, through Virginia and North Carolina, at the speed limit, 45 MPH. I just needed to be quiet for a while.

A minister friend of mine invited me over for dinner. He cooked, and while his wife and I sat at the table, he served us. I didn’t start eating right away and he said, “You’re waiting for the blessing. You don’t need to do that. The food is already blessed!”

Actually I had been waiting politely for him to be seated, but I didn’t think fast enough to say so, and instead picked up my fork. But you know, there is a whole lot more to say about this.

Certainly a human being is in no way qualified to bless anything; she can only request that God do so. Even so, do we imagine that God waits for our request before he blesses our food? Seems to me that our food is blessed by its very existence. That God provides for us, I am trying to say, is the blessing. But this is a quibble.

Shouldn’t the blessing, or grace, then, be an expression of gratitude? “Give thanks to Him and praise His name,” Psalm 100.  If so, how can anyone but me speak my thanks?

Let me, then, also express my gratitude for the company of an enlightened friend.

I am sure that he would be chagrined at my very non-traditional beliefs—or lack thereof—but no matter. Any human being worthy of the label can and should certainly be grateful for her life, her abilities, and her support by whatever you want to call this infinite environment through which we find ourselves drifting.