The quest

I always breathe a sigh of relief, to turn the page on the shortest and often-bleakest month. Twenty-eight days of February, many of them gray and chill and too many of them dangerously icy, were quite enough.  On the 28th we zoomed again with Older Daughter in LA, and then Iturned on the A's-Dodgers Cactus League game from Mesa and opened my arms to Spring. 

Also began seriously pondering how to top my sister's wonderfully silly  birthday/v-day gift (hers is on St. Patty's Day). She keeps finding clever Python-esque presents, year after year. This one arrived from India, mysteriously bundled.

What is my quest? That's always the question, indeed.

Well, one part of my quest this week is to evoke the ever-positive and supportive presence of our departed friend Don, in Democracy class, as we conclude Democracy in Chains and begin report presentations. Over the weekend I reviewed the Zoom recording of his last time with us, on February 9. He appeared tired but still vigorous, enthusiastically sharing several thoughts. He didn't appreciate the over-officiousness of the Super Bowl refs. He encouraged us to stand up and resist the Charter School movement and its subversion of support for public education. He asked us all to get engaged in public life, identify causes worth our time and efforts, write letters to the editor etc.

But I think Don also understood: there's finally only so much any of us can do to save the world, as individuals. We should do what we can, of course, especially in league and in solidarity with like-minded peers. 

And then we should do what only we can really do for ourselves, viz., accept the limitations of our personal reach, and resolve nonetheless to be kind and, in just that way, to pursue our happiness. This is how you resolve the dilemma E.B. White faced, when he said "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." And that is my quest too, to both do what I can to improve the world and to enjoy it.

A student in the MALA Communication class quoted Matthieu Ricard ("the happiest man in the world") quoting Buddhist sage Shantideva: "All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself." Could be.

So, to further our noble quest: be a Stoic Pragmatist, or a Conscientious Epicurean, or a Dewey-eyed Realist, or a Jamesian Meliorist who takes Moral Holidays, and remember what Kurt Vonnegut said: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

Let's pay Don's kindness forward. It'll improve the world and we'll enjoy it.