#799 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday November 20)
Good morning,
ROSALYNN CARTER, RIP
I didn’t vote for, and didn’t always like, Jimmy Carter when he was president. He was, however, a man of principle, who served his country admirably both as president and in his long career post-presidency. His love story and partnership in politics with Rosalynn is the stuff of legend.
Mrs. Carter did a lot to shape the modern role of First Lady. One of her signature initiatives was in raising awareness of mental health. When her husband was governor, she sat on the Commission to Improve Service for the Mentally and Emotionally Handicapped, opening 134 day-care centers. As First Lady, she continued working in that area, noting, “I wanted to take mental illnesses and emotional disorders out of the closet, to let people know it is all right to admit having a problem without the fear of being called crazy.” She raised awareness back then of what has now become a scourge. It is one of the great issues of our time, particularly among high school and college-age youth.
SELF AWARENESS AND SELF-CARE
I haven’t had much to say recently about coping with life’s struggles and self care. Mrs. Carter’s death has is reason to revisit the “inner world” of the mind, our emotions, and the richness of life. Here is great advice from a book excerpt provided by Adam Torson:
“Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status. But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever we are able to achieve. As we grow, we all develop a wide range of emotions responding to this predicament: fear that bad things will happen and that we will be powerless to ward them off; love for those who help and support us; grief when a loved one is lost; hope for good things in the future; anger when someone else damages something we care about. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger…We are all going to encounter illness, loss, and aging, and we’re not well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our possessions of externals.
What is the remedy of these ills? A kind of self-love that does not shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts those with interest and curiosity, and tries to develop a language with which to talk about needs and feelings. Storytelling plays a big role in the process of development. As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves. As we grow older, we encounter more and more complex stories — in literature, film, visual art, music — that give us a richer and more subtle grasp of human emotions and of our own inner world. So my second piece of advice, closely related to the first, is: Read a lot of stories, listen to a lot of music, and think about what the stories you encounter mean for your own life and lives of those you love. In that way, you will not be alone with an empty self; you will have a newly rich life with yourself, and enhanced possibilities of real communication with others.”
-- Martha Nussbaum, in James Harmon, Take My Advice: Letters to the Next Generation from People Who Know a Thing or Two (2007)
GREAT SAYING
On For All Mankind, the wonderful alternative history of the space program and life through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, always surprises with reminders of those days. Sometimes, there is a saying that’s become passe. One such saying probably was passe even back then… “Bob’s your uncle,” which is a British saying that means something like, “so there it is” or “voila” or Q.E.D. Made me smile.
Have a great day,
Glenn