Max Roytenberg

Sabbath of life

I am one of the fortunates who has achieved the treasured time of contemplation, a time to appreciate in the profoundest way some inkling of what it has meant to be alive. I am not unique; I do not claim that. There are many around us who share, and have shared, this gift. Usually, it comes to those who have added years to their time on earth.

We have survived the birthing process in the wider sense. We have learned what it takes to live among our fellows. We have found a trade to gain the resources to provide for our creature comforts. We have succeeded in making connections with others to ensure our emotional needs are met. Hopefully, we have made a contribution to others. These things are in our past although we may carry them on for our own pleasure. They seem to be necessary elements in arriving at a time of peace within ourselves.

No matter what your religious persuasion is, or if you are agnostic or an atheist, there is room for this idea within your consciousness. We can survive “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, to arrive at this state and spend some of our time contemplating the mysteries of life. Behind us are so many things we would do differently if only we could. Behind us are the many times of terror, threatening unknowns regarding our plans and projects. Behind us are our brushes with an untimely death for which we were not ready.

If we have been incredibly lucky, we may be leaving behind some material evidence of our passage – a child, a service, some indelible scratch in the wall of time, whether remembered by others or not. Some of us may still have a file folder full of plans, a list of to-do items on our agenda. Godspeed to you! But, if you recognize that this is your Sabbath time, you are now more than willing to pass the baton to others. You are now more than willing to accept that there will always be more things to be done. And you are ready to contemplate that others will be found to carry out and complete those tasks. You are ready to sit back for awhile in the sun, enjoy the beauties of nature, the bounties of nature, the beauty of your children and your children’s children. Or the beauty of other people’s accomplishments, the beauty of other people’s children!

Much remains to be fixed in the world and some of it hurts dreadfully to contemplate. It is not surprising that we sometimes feel overwhelmed. But there are blessings we can count on our fingers. There are things you can point to that you have been responsible for, some positives that you can take credit for. You can take a deep breath and hug yourself. You did good! Real good! You deserve to celebrate the Sabbath, a rest day for your soul.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Continuing to give it a whirl

A whirligig is a top, or spinning device, something constantly changing. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes feel my head spinning. Whether we are talking about the internal – the radical changes many of us experience in our lives – or the external, the remarkable way the world around us has changed, I think I have got it right, in describing life as a whirligig.

Sometimes, I feel a churning in my insides, as I try to decide whether to laugh or cry. Isn’t it incredible that we start out as these wee things, helpless as puppies? We are even worse – we don’t, as newborns, have the survival instincts of other animals. Then, we grow up as creatures capable of organizing events that can shake the world, at least events that can shake the world around us, metamorphose the people and environment around us. I find that an astounding reality, don’t you?

Creating a new life, as some of us have been blessed with the chance to do, potentially alters all of human history every time it happens. Some humans have done that, and they were born of man and woman. Now, we are seven going on eight billion. What amazing potential lies in human hands! Who knows what intelligences currently lying outside our ken we are yet to master.

I grew up as one of the nonentities and, yet, I have affected the lives of millions who don’t even know my name. No guarantees. We could arrive here just to be another creature consuming resources. But, when I consider the trajectory of my all-too-common life, I shake and twirl, like a spinning top. What about those around us whose names we all know? They also started out on this planet as being more helpless than puppies, but became forces of nature that thrust themselves into our consciousness.

Maybe that is not the most important model. What about those unseen and unknown to us who led a life that yielded offspring, providing the continuity necessary to ensure the survival of humanity’s way of life? All of us started out as an idea that was born into flesh and blood, presenting the option of acting for good or evil. That it works out for the good so many times is astounding, when there are multiple things that can go wrong. We know about those, too. I am letting it all wash over me, making me happy and sad.

Can I talk about some of the ways in which the nature of my external world has changed? I was challenged by the existence of the computer when I was in my 50s. Before that, I remember going into a computer centre in the business I worked in. It occupied a vast air-conditioned space, tended by individuals who were regarded as acolytes of a mysterious priesthood. Today, I have more computing power in the machine I am typing this tale on than was contained in the whole of that metaphoric temple. All that data stuff held for the world’s business has vanished from their physical premises; it’s now in the “cloud,” held electronically in an obscure corner of the United States.

Nowadays, in an instant, I can be present at an event occurring in real time in a place I have never heard of that is 6,000 miles away. If I have the number, I can talk face-to-face with a person halfway around the world!

I can remember shivering in fear as the radio announced what our losses were on land and sea during the Second World War. How immediate would those things be today? We have seen it depicted on TV. Star Trek, with its once-only-imaginable technology, is coming into our living rooms and lives, in living colour. Our appliances are becoming smarter than we are. Is it any wonder that my head begins to spin when I think about it? Our grandkids take this all for granted. They stare at us in disbelief and laugh.

We don’t understand the half of what is going on. But we try to cope with all of this. I have not yet thrown up my hands. I take courses and try to learn new things. I watch webinars. I blunder about expecting failure, and experience it. Bit by bit, I learn a minimum, and I gratefully accept any help offered. I am grateful for the patience of others and try to be patient myself. I revel in small victories of understanding. I resist computer updates that may change the things I know how to work, putting off improvements that leave me at a loss. I accept that I will not learn to know it all.

So, my head is spinning on the turntable of my life, which is also spinning. I make an effort to keep in contact with others of my ilk who are in the same place. We can compare notes and share news of gains and losses. So far, my younger near and dear speak to me in languages I still understand. They make allowances for my decrepitude and hide their amusement at my distresses. I hug my Bride and friends close and closer to ensure I retain human contact. We continue full speed into an evolving future that may be even more beyond my understanding.

I know that, at some time or another, I will have to get off the turntable and hand in my IDs and passwords. Until then, I continue to give it a whirl!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Don’t wait to tell story

The other day, I went looking for a friend I met during my university days, one I had lost touch with after years of companionship. I looked him up on the internet and discovered to my dismay that he had passed away some 11 years ago. I was too late to hear his story from his own lips. I was too late to tell him my story from my own lips to his conscious mind. I felt robbed of something I felt I was entitled to. Up until the moment I learned of his fate, he was very much alive for me.

Recently, an acquaintance of my Bride’s, someone I had gotten to know through her, a person we had been visiting because of an illness, died in hospital. She unexpectedly took a turn for the worse and, in the space of seven days, had changed from someone we had been conversing with, to a mere body. I am not a stranger to this phenomenon, having lost a spouse similarly to a lingering disease, but I was shocked at this sudden transition.

I am long since retired from being an active presence in an enterprise. I recently gave up being an active manager of my own financial affairs. What I have evolved into during the last decade or so is being a teller of stories. I am still very busy at that. One of my greatest pleasures is to hear from one of my correspondents that I have expressed for them their very thoughts, if only they had put a pen to them.

All of us have stories we want to tell. We all have lots to say, lots we wish to say. Often, we do not go to the trouble of communicating our thoughts and experiences. Too often, our stories die with us. I think that is a pity. I am trying my best to ensure I am not guilty of that.

It has been a long time since my thoughts have been shared with millions of listeners. It has been many years since mine was a household name. Little matter! Though my stories, as of late, have been shared with only a few, my pleasure is gained in the telling. And in the rare responses of some of my fellows. And in the continuing hope that I leave some residues of thought here and there. That is my immortality. (Not true, of course, as I have been blessed with progeny, but you know what I mean.)

These days, death stalks us with every breath we take. The “us” I speak of are those among us who often have more stories to tell than our younger companions, by virtue of our having been around longer. We seem to be more vulnerable to the rampant virus seeking a place for replication in the air we breathe, and this vulnerability is a reminder of how important it is to take the trouble to share some of the riches many of us have dearly accumulated. The stories we have not yet told die with us.

I am highlighting this part of our mission in life. We have held a job and hopefully it contributed something. It gave us a livelihood, which may have allowed us to raise a family and accumulate something material to pass on. We may have shared things and thoughts with others, publicly and privately. We may have enriched our own lives and the lives of others. We have stories to tell. Wouldn’t it be a pity not to share them with others? Surely there are valuable secrets in that treasure chest! Even the things you may not be proud of may have paid off in valuable lessons that you made good use of.

There is a reason for us to survive the dangers around us a little longer. So, please, more masks, more handwashing, more social distancing! We need to hear your stories before you go. You owe it to your public. You owe it to yourself.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Clearing the decks

In every grouping of humans, there is a leadership structure. That’s the way it works for humans. That’s the way it works for animals, too, when they organize in groups.

Generally, for animals, it’s a combination of smarts and strength that wins the day, with physical strength often being an important part of the equation. The same must have been true for humans in our primitive days, and still is to an extent. In some periods of human history, there were those who were able to establish dynasties, where successive generations achieved leadership by right of birth, sometimes sanctioned by what was called “divine right.” The deity was called in to account for the continuing rule by a family in tribal or national context.

In more recent times, leadership has often been gifted to those who exhibited merit, rather than pure might. Those who were successful at their life tasks were called upon to serve in leadership roles to the benefit of those for whom they took responsibility. Therefore, many in leadership positions are more advanced in age, except in the most competitive arenas.

Well, guess what? There is suddenly a new selector in town! Coronavirus!

Some people are forecasting that we will see as much as three-quarters of the world’s population infected by COVID-19. Try as we might, and even as we may be successful in flattening the curve, most of us will eventually have to face the test of living through an infection by the virus. If we can find a vaccine, that will alleviate the losses. But, for the next year-and-a-half, at least, many of us will have to face the test. If our healthcare systems can sustain themselves under the onslaught, again, the losses will be fewer. If not, the choices will favour the younger and those more likely to survive. What this all means is that those who are older, those who are more likely to be among those in leadership, will be more likely to be among the fallen. Fate has taken a hand in our succession planning.

I am among the somewhat longer in the tooth, facing my 86th birthday. It is apparent that, in the current environment, this epistle may turn out to be my eulogy. Not many in my situation have the opportunity to deliver this kind of message ahead of time.

I have had meaningful work and the satisfaction of making, in my own mind, a worthwhile contribution to the lives of others, of my fellows. I feel my parents would have been proud of me. I had the joy of fathering children who have turned out to be good human beings. I have had the joy of finding and living with the love of my life. Flawed as I am, I am content. I am among the fortunate in this world. I am not abandoning the race but I am prepared for whatever the future holds. I wish the same for all my fellows.

This event we are living through is a feature of any life on any planet in our cosmos. A meteor struck our globe millennia ago, causing a global winter, which doomed the dinosaurs and permitted a mammalian ascendancy. Homo sapiens has prospered. We have survived plagues and influenzas. We have conquered many communicable diseases. We have managed to increase our food production capabilities so we did not starve when our numbers on this planet increased so much that our wise men believed we were doomed. We have continued to consume that arable land for our structures at a rapid pace and yet survive.

We are facing a crisis in the way we pollute our air and our waters, one we have yet to come to terms with. Rising temperatures on our globe may yet reach a point of no return. The pandemic we are facing, as other life forms on our planet seek their place in the sun, may turn out to be the least of the problems we will have to cope with.

In the meantime, this pandemic is clearing the decks of those in the age range I share. I don’t know about you, but it has captured my full attention – I can feel the target on my back. Keep your physical distance, please!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Adding colour to our lives

Life is such an adventure, but its appeal for us depends so much on our attitude. One of the amazing things about this fact – that our attitude makes all the difference – is that this appears to be a law of nature. How we “reflect off” the events in our lives is crucial to our fate.

Most of us know a little bit about the nature of sight, the mechanics of seeing. We know less about the role played by light in our world. Light travels in units called photons. We know that these photons travel really fast, even when they have to bounce around in a world full of atoms to get where they are headed, which is everywhere. Photons travel so fast, we don’t notice that random atoms are impeding their progress a bit. In spite of that, they reflect off all the objects in our world and succeed in entering our eyes.

The lenses in our eyes focus this reflected light onto the light-sensitive rods and cones on the retina at the back of our eyeballs. (The rods work in dim or dark situations and the cones in bright light.) These create variable electrical charges sent along the optic nerve to the brain. Our brains interpret these stimuli as the visions that we see before our eyes. Did you know that the curvature of our eyes results in the images we receive being upside down? Our brains turn them right-side up for us.

What we are seeing is the reflected light. Any light absorbed by the objects we are looking at, we will not see. The same is true about colour. We only see the colours that the objects we are looking at reflect. All other colours are the ones that have been absorbed by these objects and we will not see them. Colour is all about light reflecting off the things in the world around us.

In the same way, it is our reactions to the realities we face in life that determine the kinds of lives we will lead. Different reactions, different lives. What does it mean to say that our reactions can be of overwhelming importance in determining our fates? It means that, to an important extent, our fates are in our own hands. (What does that do to the blame-games we have been nursing all our lives?)

I am getting to be what some people might term “an old guy.” Others, less kind, might say, “an old fool.” One would have to be foolish to live a whole life without understanding the principle I have enunciated above. And yet, it is only at this late date that this has become so clear to me.

Of course, I always knew I had to hustle my butt if I wanted to achieve the things I desired for my family and me. Yet, I never achieved the clarity of insight that I now have. I would venture to say that there are others of my fellow travelers who might have been, who might still be, wanting in this matter.

When all is said and done, there is no substitute for having a positive attitude. There are so many good things in our lives that we have to appreciate, that we have to be grateful for. There are so many people we pass every day who are less fortunate than we are. But that does not absolve us from the need to actively present our own best case to the world, to be up and at ’em every day, meeting the challenges we all face and will face. Without that, we are beat before we start.

Being open to the positive is a necessity if we hope to take advantage of any opportunities that might come our way if we reach out. Like the photons of light in our world, we move forward in our lives toward our goals in spite of impediments we might face; or we find paths to goals we hadn’t considered before.

I am not talking merely about amassing material possessions. I am talking about spending time working out how to ensure we are adding the colour we want to see in our lives. If all of this is dependent wholly on ourselves to determine what the elements of our lives are going to be – not our parents or our partners or our bosses or the economy – then what are we going to do about it? If, in spite of our positive attitude, we are not happy, if we are not satisfied, what are we going to do about it? I must confess, I never had this moment of clarity until I was 70 years of age. That’s a whole lot of living to have gone through without thinking about such things.

At the age of 71, unheralded, I flew across half a continent to try and reconnect with a woman I had known when we were teenagers more than 50 years before. I can report that we can look back now at almost 15 years of happily married life. We are keeping each other alive.

So, what I am writing about here is seeing the reflections off the objects (subjects?) that make up the elements of our lives. We have to be aware of the reflections streaming into our eyes, and consciously translate the images making their way into our brain. What colours are being reflected? Are we absorbing what those images are telling us? Or are we seeing them without really seeing them, same old, same old? And, if we do see them, and we don’t like what we see, what are we going to do about it? It is never too late to make an effort, I can tell you that!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Building of community

Originally, the only focus of Jewish camp was to offer Jewish children an opportunity to spend some time in a woodland environment. (photo from pxfuel.com)

Camping and camps may have been around forever. But Jewish camps, at least those in North America, have a contemporary history.

In 1893, a group called the Jewish Working Girls Vacation Society organized a camp for Jewish children in New York. These women sought to create a place to give their children a break from life in the industrialized city where they worked. The initial focus of Jewish camps was on the children of Eastern European immigrants, and there was a drive to use the camps to Americanize participants. Jews were not the only ones to take an interest in this vehicle for integration. By 1900, there were 100 camps of all kinds and, by 1915, there were more than 1,000.

Originally, the only focus was to offer Jewish children an opportunity to spend some time in a woodland environment, perhaps with access to water. Camps also offered children opportunities to interact with their peers from various backgrounds, without parental oversight, something they might not find in their home environment. Over time, Jewish camp programs expanded to include acculturation into things Jewish, along with athletics, social skills-building, the arts and related activities. Among the Jewish camps, there was the development of those that promoted a particular religious observance, or Zionism, Hebrew usage, socialism and the like. Zionist camps were given a special impetus with the worldwide effort to establish a Jewish state.

What Jewish organizers found over time was that camp experiences were crucial in binding young people to the Jewish community. The relationships forged among young people through camp have played an important role in this area. Anyone who has lived through the camping experience understands the powerful emotional connections this activity can carry with it, particularly when it occurs year after year. Many community leaders believe that sleep-away camps were (and are) an important element in the maintenance of a Jewish identity in the face of all the forces that encourage assimilation into the general population.

The summer camp has become a feature of Jewish life wherever the numbers are available to support this community service. In addition to private ventures, over time, Jewish communities have invested substantial resources into these programs and see them as an important part of Jewish communal activity. Some synagogues have camps as part of their program.

Interest in this aspect of Jewish camp has increased over time. For some parents, Jewish camps are an alternative to expensive primary schooling at Jewish educational institutions.

As a reflection of the growing appreciation of the importance of sleep-away camps in maintaining strong communities, philanthropic groups funded, in 2014, an organization in the United States to assist Jewish camps in carrying out their work. The Foundation for Jewish Camp now works with more than 180 Jewish summer camps, assisting in the training of personnel and providing other services and resources. Among other things, it assists Jewish camps in recruiting professionals, offers grants to first-time campers and helps fund upgrades for camps to accommodate participants with special needs.

An estimate published in January 2019 reported that there were 77,000 attendees at Jewish camps in the United States, and the foundation reports that there are 195 Jewish camps in North America. In Canada, there are Jewish camps in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

A time to learn who we are

For many kids, camp is the only time they find themselves in a less structured environment. (photo from pixabay.com)

I remember the days when going to camp was the annual ritual, part of the summer holiday agenda. In our Winnipeg Jewish community, camps were standard practice. It seemed to me that all of my friends were going to be there, but there were always new faces. Some of them would prove to be the companions of my growing up.

Camp was there to free us from the constraints of everyday life, school and parental supervision. For some of us, being out there, in a natural setting, was the only time we ever found ourselves in a less structured environment, as most of us were city-dwellers. And there were always elements of Jewish culture to be shared.

But what I remember most of all was the consciousness that I was alone in a way different from the ordinary. I was in a cabin or a tent where most of my companions were strangers, at least at the start of the summer. Parents were far away. There was a counselor, but he or she was more like a referee than a parent. Whatever issues might arise between my companions and me, resolution would require direct negotiation without intervenors.

Here was an opportunity to test out our interpersonal skills and discover whether we would be leaders or followers, and in what areas did we have knowledge we could share. Here we could discover what issues might be important to us in person-to-person relationships. It had a different feel than our relations with siblings but with the intimacy of living together. We might even have to get into a physical fight if a conflict were grave enough. Would we allow someone to bully us? I certainly had to develop my capacities in these areas in my home environment.

In my case, I went the whole route: camper, counselor, program director. I can honestly say that the camping experience was my personal proving ground for skills I would hone and embellish throughout my life. In retrospect, I realize how important these occasions were for me.

I had the good fortune to attend a camp in my teen years that included subsisting for a few days in a wilderness environment. We hiked. We canoed. We even spent some time in a lake waiting for rescue when our canoe foundered in a sudden storm. I actually have started a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I have slept several nights in a forest with my companions listening to all the mysterious night sounds. We never saw a wolf or a bear, but we got to use copious amounts of mosquito repellent. I have lugged in the groceries and I have cooked food over an open fire. Potatoes are easy, but eggs are more difficult. The experiences were unforgettable.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Renewal requires courage

Did you notice what a great day it was today? Rain or shine, there are lots of people out there who are so happy you are alive. Besides yourself, I mean. I bet you did some things today that added to that number.

I’m feeling pretty good myself, remembering stuff from my youth. In December, we light the candles marking Chanukah, the Festival of Lights, as it is called. I always liked this holiday as a kid, along with Rosh Hashanah, because there were good things to eat at the party we always had. And older people in the family gave you money, Chanukah gelt. I hope they still do that, although I haven’t heard much about it since the kids got big and left home to form their own households.

Many people – unless they have Jewish neighbours or notice the lights around Christmas time – don’t know about Chanukah because it is not in the Bible, and because the events surrounding it happened later. After the empire forged by Alexander the Great broke up, the piece in which Israel was included was under the rule of kings named Antiochus.

These kings liked to fancy themselves gods. One of them put a statue of himself in the Jewish Temple. This was just too much for the Israelites and they rose up under the leadership of the Maccabees – Mattathias and his five sons – and drove out their Greek rulers.

Chanukah is about renewal, because that’s what the holiday celebrates, the renewal of the Temple in Jerusalem after the land was freed. Current Israel is part of that same story, as the ingathered exiles renewed national life on their land. Our national renewal is an assertion that our past is merely prologue, with the full story yet to be written.

Jewish history of the recent two millennia may not illustrate it, but Jews can be fighters when roused. The self-rule reestablished back then was ultimately surrendered to Roman rule, when they lost their unity. But Jews kept on fighting to achieve independence until, finally, the Romans used their power to exile Jews from their land. We must remember that the Romans executed Jesus because they feared that he would lead such a revolt, but the Jews continued their opposition after his death.

It took 12 legions to pacify the Jews – Rome conquered the Britons with only two legions. The Romans exiled the survivors to secure their rule, but the power of the religious ideas spawned in Israel conquered Rome itself a hundred years later. Those ideas were borne into exile by Jews who proved to be among the first martyrs.

More recent Jewish military history, in Israel – leaving aside the resistance without weapons in the Warsaw Ghetto, holding off the Nazi soldiers for weeks – proves that Jews can be fierce fighters.

The whole idea of renewal excites the blood. Renewal can make you feel like you can cancel out all the ills of the past, as if they never really happened. One can turn a corner and start out fresh. It is an idea around which one can rally believers, as has been done in so many places at so many different times.

Many people have fought and died in defence of renewal. It is at the heart of every movement that seeks to channel people’s efforts for change. It can be local, regional, national or global. It can have a religious or patriotic motivation. Its beauty is that it can have its origin in the lives of each and every one of us.

Change is not easy. We may be very unhappy with important elements of our lives, but taking drastic action to materially transform our lives takes courage and, often, an acceptance of the risk of substantial loss. Some of us may have done this at some time in our lives and not even appreciated that we were risking all for renewal.

It may not have been on a battlefield, but I consciously sought to renew my life when I reached out at the age of 70. I reached out to seek a relationship with a person I had known only superficially more than 50 years earlier as a teenager. The object of my continued memory and attention, my future bride, mustered up the courage to take me on as an unknown quantity, and her courage has enriched both our lives.

Truth be told, the times that haunt us most in our lives are those when we did not “seize the bull by the horns” and do the thing we really wanted to do. But, in the end, failing to act for lack of courage, or for some other reason, we settled for less than we ached to reach for. We can count every one of those times in our mind’s eye. Don’t we agonize sometimes about those steps not taken? We can never know for sure what the ultimate outcome would have been.

Looking out through the windows of my eyes, seeing the young and not so young, I am filled with enthusiasm for the future. I see the possibilities we all face in our lives to reengineer what the future holds for us.

There is so much happening out there of which I may have no understanding. What I do know is, if we really put our minds to it and concentrate on this renewal business, we can be sure to make our tomorrows fantastic.

Happy renewal in whatever calendar you follow, wherever in the world you are!

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Our life accomplishments

We humans spend most of our lives searching for a path forward. Our priorities tend toward avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. We don’t even think about it, it is the instinctive reaction of any living thing. In this, we are essentially the same as any other life form on our globe. Humanity is no different than an amoeba, for example, in its instinctive struggle to survive, seeking the positive environment and avoiding the negative.

It is reported that Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. In his day, he was reportedly a gadfly, challenging everyone and everything with his relentless questioning. Difficult and sometimes uncomfortable though it may be, we ourselves often feel the need to honestly examine the what, the who and the why of our lives. And we have to look at both its micro and macro elements.

As for myself, on the macro side, I find I have a huge loyalty to my tribe, the Jewish tribe that I was born into. I am so proud of the contribution we have made, as a people and as individuals, and are continuing to make, in the advancement of the human condition in so many fields. I believe that much of this flows from the unique cultural package that adherents absorb with their mother’s milk.

But I am also aware that, along with the benefits of the moral code that our religiosity has contributed to improving the life on our planet, comes the distressing tendency for religion’s most orthodox adherents, whatever their stripe, to insist on a closing of minds to ideas that do not fit into an inflexible and unalterable worldview. I have needed to come to terms with the role my tribe (e.g. Baruch Spinoza) has played in that.

We have seen that, when religious and political dogma become state policy for believers and non-believers, and these are forced on the unwilling (e.g. the Inquisition, Communism), humanity stumbles on its way forward. We have seen the expression of the effort to avoid this in the adoption of the principle of separation of church and state, but this is imperfect and does not solve the problem of secular fanaticism. For me, humanity must always move to avoid extremism and the inevitable pain and destruction it causes to so many people.

Historically, we have seen how the advances that humanity made during the Greek flowering in the arts, philosophy and science were lost for a millennium. Some of this was salvaged under early Rome. They were then smothered for centuries by religious orthodoxy. We have seen how we have benefitted as humans from their liberation. These forces have shaped the world we live in, and the lives we are living, as we seek our pleasures and strive to avoid life’s pains.

On the micro side, I, like many of you must have, and must have been, studying the trajectory of our lives. Thinking back over my times, I wonder at the career decisions that I have made. I wonder at my actions during what proved to be watersheds in my life. Some of it was not much fun. I wonder at the impact on those whose lives, willy-nilly, were carried alongside of me in the tide of my life.

Then there is the question of nature or nurture. To what degree are our futures driven by the DNA package we inherited? Surely, to some extent, we are programmed in our reactions to fate by our inheritance. I wonder at the impact if our blood is programmed to run a certain way or another, or if our hormones, liver and kidneys function efficiently, the quickness of our minds, the quickness of our step, the state of our health. Doesn’t that make a huge difference in what we can accomplish? How much do we owe to our forbears for our results?

And then, what if we are raised on the “right side of the tracks,” our parents are educated, they pay attention to the development of their offspring, or none of these things? If we were born into abject poverty or in a country in turmoil, how greatly would our opportunities be constrained? Does not colour, economic circumstance and location make a huge difference in our range of opportunities? Doesn’t the political system, religion, sex and sexual orientation, the very epoch in which we were raised, make a difference even in these so-enlightened times?

Some of us can believe we deserve all the credit for our accomplishments, but how much do we owe to all the positive circumstances that affected our lives? Or, we may weep over our misfortunes, and surely we can truly finger the circumstances and the evidence that show that all of us do not start out on a level playing field.

We have little room for arrogance about our outcomes in the lottery. We can count on our lucky stars if we are winners, if we overcame our disadvantages enough and, summoning the best of the resources we salvaged, we can find some satisfaction in the outcomes. For those still on the trail, you may wish to proceed with caution with your assertions of personal mastery. As well, the knowledge that we face disadvantages will not absolve us from desperately trying our best in our lives. We have that obligation to ourselves.

We will know in our hearts at the end of the trail where we failed and where we succeeded. Special pleading will not help when we face our internal judge and jury, as we are the harshest of the judges we face when we examine our lives. My advice is to be kind to yourself and to one another.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Looking forward, back

Kierkegaard Kierkegaard Kierkegaard Kierkegaard Søren Kierkegaard once observed that we begin life by only looking forward, and end by looking back to understand it. The existentialists leave me cold with their nihilism and I find their approaches hard to digest, but I consider Kierkegaard’s comment very much an accurate description of life’s dynamic.

I can remember how my early thoughts were very much about what my future was going to look like. In my mind, all my presents were events that I would have to get through to get to the really important stuff. I knew we had to put up with living with the people we found ourselves tied to by the happenstance of birth. We had to follow the rules we learned from those around us to traverse this period, but our secret focus was on the future, on that time when we would be able to organize our world in a way it would better serve us.

Yes, we had to do what we were told. Yes, we sometimes formed attachments because it was expected, and even convenient. Yes, there were programmed behaviours that had to be followed faithfully. But we knew, didn’t we, that the real stuff would begin when we were in a position to be fully in charge. It sounds bloody-minded now, but those were really my thoughts. All I was living through at the time was just the price of admission, wasn’t it?

And the school years. Were we really going to need all this knowledge we were cramming? Everybody knew that this material was ancient history and that the real world was going to make it all irrelevant. Were any of the teachers people we could respect? I was cleaning out the shelves of the library with the books I was reading. That’s where my education came from, from the stories of real lives that people were leading, that people had led. I was finding my heroes there, and imagining the wonders I would realize when I finally broke free. Until then, I knew to play the game, do the work, pass the exams, collect the admission cards I was going to need. There was the brightly shining future ahead of me. I would accomplish wonders!

Then, there I was. Off on my own. Now I would remake the world. But I was a father, supporting a family. And the “membership cards” I had earned were the only things I had that were going to help pay the bills. I could see then that the stories I told myself and that I read in the library were just fairy tales – the parent who slogged away at work for many years to support us was the model I was going to have to follow. And the parent who took care of my creature comforts was the one who taught me I was valuable and that I could accomplish whatever I set my mind to. And the family members I took for granted were the only ones in the world who took me at face value, no questions asked.

Could I measure up to the hero I believed I was? Could I leave a mark, or marks, that would have the kind of impact I had always assumed I would realize in my life’s work? I am now looking back and trying to understand. I am looking back to appreciate what I have come to believe are the things that have value, and which may have escaped me when I was so focused on looking forward into the glare of a bright future.

I am evaluating what I offered, what I left for the generation I helped usher into the world. When they were able to free themselves from the burden of my stewardship, did they come away with anything that proved useful to them for their lives? I hope so. It was something I didn’t appreciate enough in my growing up.

I am evaluating what I offered, what I left to others, as I was serving to glorify my own image to myself. Am I satisfied that, while I was seeking to realize the potential I believed I had, some of the things I accomplished also helped others? I hope so. That was at the heart of the fairy tales I dreamed for myself when I fantasized about the future all those years ago.

What I now appreciate is how radically the looking-forward person I was has been altered by the living experience. The inexplicable arrogance and self-indulgence of the creature who was cast forward into the world is revealed and, looking back, he has learned to eat and relish humble pie.

Hopefully, we learn how much of what we earn for ourselves in life flows from the generosity of others, in the form of love, attention, time and materials. Hopefully, we learn that, if we are to be happy, we in turn have to be willing to share what we have to offer. Hopefully, we become eager to share, if only to taste the psychic rewards such actions yield.

Nowadays, I spend my time looking back, trying to understand my life more fully. Am I that much different from you?

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.